Volunteers
Contents
Volunteers in Charitylog
Volunteers are very important to the vast majority of our customers, and the Charitylog system provides several ways of working with volunteers:
- Storage of volunteer details, including details of courses and qualifications
- Assigning a volunteer to a client, and creating/printing job cards for these appointments
- Recording contacts with volunteers as part of volunteer management
Creating volunteers
Volunteers, just like all the other people/organisations on Charitylog, don't exist only as volunteers. They could also be clients, and/or trustees, etc. So just like any other person/organisation, it's important to start the process of creating a new volunteer by searching the system to make sure they aren't already on it. Click the "Volunteers" menu item:
We now need to do a search, just in case this volunteer is already on the system, just as we would do when searching for a client. If the volunteer isn't on the system, use the "New" tab to create one. However, there's a good chance that the person will be on the system as a client - if they are active in another project. So even if the search brings up no results, watch out for this message:
That means, "although there were no volunteers by that name, there are organisations or people elsewhere in the system with that name". So you should click the "search all" button, just to make sure that the org/people elsewhere isn't the person you are working with...
...and if it turns out that it is the person you're working with, use the "Make into Volunteer" button to make them into a volunteer.
This will bring you back to the volunteer search, from where you can search to find your new volunteer. So however you've got there, you should find yourselves at a blank volunteer record, which you can fill in with the volunteer's details. How much information you demand from your volunteers is up to you, and will vary by project, but we suggest a minimum of:
- Surname
- First name
- Address (first line)
- Postcode
- Telephone number
Once you've filled in these details, click the "save details" button at the bottom of the screen.
Use Groups & Skills to log the volunteer's areas of interest
At the bottom of the volunteer record you will find the Groups & Skills link.
Clicking this link will take you to a screen where you can enter the volunteer's interests. You will need a start date logged against each one. The list of groups and skills is long, as it applies to lots of different people throughout the Charitylog system, but you should be able to find appropriate ones there - for example, someone might be interested in volunteering to do Admin, Walks and be a Digital Photography Tutor.
If the group/skill category you need isn't there, contact your administrators, who can add to the list.
If the volunteer decides that they are no longer interested in that particular area, enter an end date. This way, you will still be able to report on (for example) "how many befriending volunteers did we have six months ago, and how has this number changed?"
Log the volunteer's induction date, CRB expiry date and more using the "Personal Details" and "Work Details" tabs
These are found across the top of the volunteer record.
Log courses and qualifications obtained by the volunteer
As volunteers work with you, they may choose to go on courses to improve their skill set, and/or you may choose to send them on courses or help them gain qualifications. You can log these against the volunteer's record with the "Courses" and "Qualifications" links at the bottom of the screen:
