Tracking Volunteers

Jolynn Uyehara

I reached out to Blackbaud support and as expected, they were no help at all and referred me to a KB article which was not helpful either. Hoping someone in the community can help with this.

I wanted to know the best way to keep track of volunteers. For example, if someone reaches out to us saying they would like to volunteer for future events in the area of data entry, or planning events, or making phone calls, etc. Where is the best place to store this information where if we wanted to run a report of some sort of all volunteers and show their areas of expertise.

Is this possible to house within their record and pull a report rather than using a google sheet?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Aloha,

Jolynn

JoAnn Strommen

@Jolynn Uyehara One option is the volunteer module - that can be an expense and may not be the most practical.

If I were tracking that in RE I would use a constituent attribute of something like “Volunteer Interest” as the category, create a table for the description of they types/areas (phone calls, fundraising, transportation, etc.) and you could use comment field for notes on their expertise or other info you want to collect.

Using a table for designation will keep data consistent so that you are able to query it more readily.

Notes would be another option but text fields are more difficult to query and have consistent data entry.

Just one opinion.

Jolynn Uyehara

@JoAnn Strommen thank you for your response. Sorry but I have never used attributes before so that is foreign to me. Can you explain further so I can test that option out? Appreciate your help!

Joe Moretti

@Jolynn Uyehara I agree with JoAnn, attributes are the best way to go. I find the Volunteer Module pretty much convoluted and not a very good module at all. Save your money and go with attributes.

JoAnn Strommen

@Jolynn Uyehara In webview they are called Custom fields. My experience setting up with table entries is in database view. Depending on your rights and system settings, you can type in the new category or add thru Config > Attributes >Constituent… This KB article should be helpful.