Mr or Ms Volunteer...Tell Me About Yourself

Just as donors are an important part of your mission as a non-profit, volunteers are also a familiar and integral feature of the non-profit landscape and success of many organizations. In the U.S., approximately 65 million people per year volunteer for a cause worthy to their hearts.

eTapestry’s newest module, the DIY (Do It Yourself) forms, offers a Volunteer Page option. You can access DIY forms by selecting the main tab and then click “DIY Forms (Online Forms)”.  The Volunteer Page allows your constituents to register as volunteers with your organization.  The volunteer form offers a sign-up option where you can collect personal data on the volunteer, as well as gather additional information such as the volunteer’s talents and skills.

The page itself serves as an empty canvas for you to build upon. User defined fields can be added to the page, making it a more personalized option for gathering data. User defined fields that can be utilized include:

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• Volunteer Availability, Days of the week: What days work best for your volunteers? Are they free on Saturdays for events? Can they help stuff envelopes on a weekday? This field will capture that information for you.
  
• Volunteer Availability, Times of day: What time works best for your volunteers? This field will help you find that info out so that you can gather your forces!
  
• Volunteer Activity/Interest: Do your volunteers like working with kids? Love to help with event planning? This field will allow you to pinpoint not only what your volunteers like to do, but will help market to them what activities you have available to volunteers.
  
• Volunteer Skills: This field will help capture what special skills or talents your volunteer pool may have. Maybe they have a law background, a grant writing specialty, or maybe they’re a doctor or dentist that can help with special missions to areas in need. These values are meant to match the skills you find desirable in volunteers.
  

Once your DIY form is set up and the page is live, your volunteers can begin filling out the form!  The data submitted via your DIY form is automatically added to your eTapestry database. Constituent records will be created if these volunteers do not already exist in your database. Contact information will be captured, along with the volunteer preferences that your donors have chosen.