The full schedule of Volunteer Connect webinars and other relevant trainings can be found here.
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BLOG POST:
Monday, July 1, 2019
VOLUNTEER CONNECT FEATURES
With all the buzz about Volunteer Connect, you may be wondering, “What can this platform do?” While it cannot actually volunteer for your organization – technology isn’t quite there yet – it boasts a variety of functions that will enable you to easily recruit and manage volunteers to support your organization’s mission.
Do you coordinate or manage volunteers? Here are just a few ways you can use Volunteer Connect:
Promote volunteer opportunities, searchable by date, location, issue area, populations served or age groups served.
In addition to necessary details like date, place and time, Volunteer Connect allows volunteer coordinators to create detailed opportunity descriptions and designate a primary and secondary issue area for each volunteer opportunity. Thirteen categories are available to choose from including Arts and Culture, Housing, and Sports and Recreation.
You can also select the populations and age groups that each volunteer opportunity benefits. For instance, one opportunity may list “Persons with Disabilities” and “Youth (Middle/High School).” Another could be labeled “Veterans and Military Members” and “Seniors.”
You can also indicate a minimum appropriate age for volunteers, whether the opportunity works well for groups and whether the opportunity is appropriate for individuals who need to fulfill court-ordered service requirements.
Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that your organization attracts volunteers most interested in your opportunities and who are able to meet any necessary expectations.
Schedule volunteers by specific shift requests or general availability.
We know that an organization’s volunteer opportunities vary in terms of time and scheduling flexibility.
With Volunteer Connect, you can create specific shifts (i.e. 10 am to 2 pm) or open windows within shifts. You may even ask for volunteers to report when they are available and stay for as long as possible. There’s even a waitlist feature that can be enabled when an opportunity reaches maximum level of attendance.
Volunteer coordinators can also allow volunteers to simply express interest without signing up for shifts. This can be used if you need to review the individual’s information before confirming or denying their participation in an opportunity. This scheduling type is also helpful if preliminary background checks are required.
Track volunteer sign up, onsite attendance and service hours.
Volunteer Connect can help you track volunteer registration, day-of attendance and hours served for each volunteer opportunity.
You can monitor sign ups as they’re processed on the platform and manually add volunteers who sign up outside of the platform.
By marking volunteers present at the time of the actual event, the hours served will automatically be calculated based on the start and end times for that opportunity. Volunteer coordinators can generate detailed reports about the number of volunteers and hours served which are key outputs for any organization.
Communicate with volunteer teams or individuals.
Would you like to send emails to scheduled or interested volunteers? You can correspond with volunteers on Volunteer Connect with responses going directly to your inbox.
Volunteer coordinators can also generate reports of contact information for individual or multiple opportunities and add those details to existing databases or management software.
Ready to learn how to use these features? Join our “Volunteer Connect Basics: Volunteer Connect as a Powerful Volunteer Management Tool” webinar on Thursday, July 11 at 10 am (ET).
Are you a nonprofit with 501(c)(3) status or a government entity? Learn more about Volunteer Connect and register now to use the platform!
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Read the Volunteer Connect press release here.