When I did my fundraising workshop at the No More Homeless Pets Conference, I discussed the issue of working with volunteers. I asked folks in the audience (about 250 people) to raise their hand if they'd ever had problems with volunteers.
Pretty much every hand shot up.
Although it can't help with the inevitable personality conflicts, I recently found out about a new tool that can help with some of the logistics related to managing volunteers. I received an email from Karen Bantuveris who is the founder and CEO of VolunteerSpot, which is an online volunteer scheduling and signup tool that is designed to improve the volunteer experience. And it's free.
As a volunteer coordinator, you probably have to spend a lot of time calling people, playing with lists and spreadsheets, and sending countless e-mails. With VolunteerSpot you can avoid these tasks and work with volunteers with a few clicks.
You can try out the demo here:
http://www.volunteerspot.com/login/tryitoutnow
The demo sends you an invitation as if you were actually volunteering for one of the sample groups. I tried out the Community Kitchen one. It fired out an invitation to my email account.
When I clicked the link in the invitation, VolunteerSpot took me to a Web page with a calendar that has little clipboards on the days where volunteer help is required. By clicking a clipboard, I can see the various tasks that must be performed and the items the organizer needs.
I clicked on the Entertainment task, and the calendar shows me that I'm the entertainment for the evening of November 25. (Woo hoo!) After you've signed up, you can print out the list of stuff you are supposed to do or bring. Volunteer Spot also sends you an email that details what you signed up for.
The VolunteerSpot interface is easy to use and although I couldn't set up an event using the demo, apparently you use a planning wizard to set up your sign up sheets. If you are doing any type of live fundraising event or need to coordinate a lot of volunteer tasks, it's certainly worth a try. The price is right, after all ;-)
As always thanks for all you do to help the animals!
~ Susan Daffron
Founder & President, NAPRP
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