Volunteers (Administrator guide)

Charitylog's Volunteer framework

Volunteers are at the heart of most voluntary organisations, and almost all Charitylog customers use the Volunteers functionality of Charitylog to manage their volunteers. This chapter deals specifically with the process of assigning volunteers to clients and the job card system, and also some specific topics around volunteer management. If your volunteers are allowed to log in to Charitylog themselves, to fill in their own job cards etc, the rest of the manual will be relevant to them too, just like staff.

Should volunteers have direct access to my Charitylog system?

The answer, really, is "it depends" - both on your individual organisation's needs, and the roles of the volunteers in question. There is no reason that volunteers cannot be given a Charitylog user account, just like any other member of staff. They can then use the "Record a Contact" screen to record their own interactions with clients, and assign work to others in the organisation just as a staff member would. Indeed, it is a very good idea to have such volunteers using the system, because if they do not, it is likely that a supervisor will have to log their interactions on Charitylog for them, which means more work for the supervisor! As well as being unneccesary, creation of extra work like this is likely to "turn people off" the Charitylog system, and may impact your long-term use.

In most organisations there are volunteers who do not want to be "burdened" with using a computer to do their work. It's often difficult to take a hard line with such volunteers and say "you must use this system", because they are not paid staff and it doesn't feel fair to these volunteers to make extra demands on them. If at all possible, they should be encouraged (rather than forced!) to try out the system for a few weeks at least; usually this is enough time for them to get used to Charitylog, see the benefits, and be happy to continue using the system. New volunteers can be shown the Charitylog system as part of their induction, and they will usually simply accept the use of a computer and Charitylog as something that comes with the job.

We believe that using Charitylog should always result in less paperwork for an organisation. Therefore, if everyone uses the system, volunteers included, this will mean the organisation will benefit. Indeed, the more people in an organisation "take on" the system, the greater the organisation's chance of success.

Ways to use the Volunteer framework

Broadly speaking there are two ways to