Volunteers in Altru Part 4: Extending Your Volunteer Program into Reservations, Special Events and Program Events

This is the last installment in a month long series of blog posts all related to Volunteer Management in Altru. Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you missed them.

A busy calendar of activities has a direct impact on your volunteer program: group tour reservations require docents, education programs need volunteer instructors,  fundraising events require the recruitment of volunteers to assist with the variety of tasks associated with hosting those events. One of the ways Altru adds value to your operations is that it extends the volunteer functionality into the operational areas of these activities – making it quite convenient to set up jobs and assign volunteers to the variety of these assignments. Let us have a closer look at each of the modules and see how volunteer module connects into them.

Group Sales Reservations

Volunteer assignments are set up as a staffing resource within the itinerary feature of the reservation. Please note that as you can set up multiple itinerary elements in a reservation, you can also assign different volunteers for each itinerary portion. For example, we may have a school group reservation that has a group tour, followed by lunch and then a workshop in a classroom. Altru has the flexibility of assigning volunteers for each of those items – which in turn means we can have volunteer job occurrences just for the portion of the reservation they are needed and not for the full duration of the reservation. So, in our example we can see a school group with three itinerary items, of which only the tour and class need volunteers:

A quick point before we discuss assigning volunteers in reservations: if you are going to assign a volunteer to a daily admission program, it is best to set up the occurrence in advance. For scheduled programs, Altru will automatically create a job occurrence when you attach a staffing resource to a volunteer job.

To set up volunteer resources, right-click on the appropriate itinerary item and select Edit to start setting up the volunteer assignment.
Within the Resources tab, select the staffing resource type that will be connected to the volunteer and the number of volunteers needed. Use the drop down in the Job being performed column to select the job occurrence prepared in advance. Altru will automatically populate the Job Name field. Click Save to save these changes.
If you navigate to the reservation page, you will see the volunteer assignment appear under Staffing with the default setting of "Unassigned." Under Staffing resources, you can also see how the price assigned in Altru for this type of staffing resource is automatically assigned to the reservation.
We will repeat this for the scheduled program item. After using right-click to edit the scheduled program, we select the appropriate staffing resource type and the volunteer job to be performed.
If we go to the reservation page, we can see confirm the second staffing assignment:
Assigning a volunteer can be completed from the Unassigned section under Staffing.  Use the double arrow expand icon and click Assign to access the assignment window.
The assignment window displays the volunteers that match the assignment and the number of openings. You can select the volunteer and move them to the Assigned volunteers section.
The assigned volunteer is now displayed on the reservation page in the Assigned section. Remaining Unassigned volunteer staffing resource needs are displayed just above.
Please note that to show the flexibility of assigning volunteers, we did not set up a volunteer assignment for the “Lunch” portion of the reservation. However, Altru does allow you to set up job occurrences and assign volunteers to custom items in a manner similar to process followed with program event itinerary items.

Special Events

After you have set up the special event, you can start the process of assigning volunteers by clicking on the Job Occurrences tab.
When you add the job occurrence, we recommend including a reference to the event and the job in the name of the occurrence so it is easy to identify on the job page. While Altru by default populates the date and time information with that of the special event, you can adjust it so the occurrence is only for part of the event or even occurs on a separate date from the event (for example, stuffing invitation envelopes or decorating the location.)
To assign volunteers to this occurrence just click on the double arrow expand icon and click Schedule.
Use the Assign volunteers link just above the calendar grid to display the volunteers that match and then complete your selection.
The rest of the process is very similar to how you would assign volunteers to a job in the volunteer module. Altru displays the list of matching volunteers with their match percentage. You can review the match details of the volunteers and then select them the volunteer and click Assign to connect the volunteer to the event job occurrence.
Once a volunteer is assigned, you can use the View schedule link on the Job Occurrences tab of the event record to get a display of volunteers assigned to that job occurrence.

Program Events

When you assign a volunteer-based staffing resource to a program, Altru automatically creates a job that connects the name of the program with that of the staffing resource. For the program below you can see we have assigned the Instructor resource to be filled by a volunteer:
Altru automatically creates a volunteer job with a job occurrence that matches the date of the program event:
We have a couple of options when it comes to assigning volunteers in this case: you can assign a volunteer directly from the program event using the constituent search feature or assign the volunteer through the job record in the volunteer module. Please note that when the assignment is made directly from the program event record, the process searches for all constituents in the database and so will not be restricted to volunteers nor will it display any match comparisons.
If you choose to assign the job through the volunteer module, however, your search will be restricted to active volunteers and also leverage the match process.
The examples above show how Altru provides your team with the operational tools to help manage the volunteer logistics associated with your day-to-day operations in an efficient manner. I hope the information and tips in this blog post have provided options to shave time off your operational processes.