Volunteer Module Advice?

Keith Norris
Keith Norris
Third Anniversary Participant
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

My organization is looking at tapping into the Raiser's Edge NXT Volunteer Module to maintain the amount of time some of our committee members have been involved with their committee (for instance, how long a volunteer has been on our Board of Trustees, etc.)

Does anybody have any experience with using the volunteer module in this way? If so, what worked or what didn't work? If you didn't find great success using the volunteer module, what other routes did you explore or take? We are currently using and abusing the attribute feature but want to venture away from this and see if the volunteer module is the right next step.

Any feedback or help is so greatly appreciated!

Comments

  • Nicole Holt
    Nicole Holt Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    We use the Volunteer Module, but manage our volunteer program through VolunteerHub (we have many daily shifts, which is hard to manage using the RE module). We do import timesheet data, though, which could be used to track hours spent, and there is also a Volunteer Type table with status & start/end dates that could easily be used for tracking board service dates, and a Job Assignments area that could be used to track committees.

    We were tracking this info in Attributes long before we got the Volunteer Module, so haven't migrated that info over--and I think we would run into problems creating NXT lists if we moved this all, as there doesn't seem to be filters based on Volunteer mod data in NXT. But if you are just using database view to query this sort of info, the Volunteer Module would probably work.

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    The volunteer module is VERY granular and (IMHO) overthought in what it can track. Just because it has a lot of fields doesn't mean you have to use them.

    The other big “miss” right now is that hardly any of the information displays in NXT at the moment, and you cannot edit any of it in NXT. At least 2 years ago, Blackbaud was about to start on a rebuild of the Volunteer component - ground up in NXT - but that has not gone very far. If you have users in NXT that would want to see and edit the volunteer information in that view, I wouldn't bother with Blackbaud's volunteer module.

    If you are just to answer “how long has Tony Stark been on our board of directors?" then you could easily do that using a constituent code with the “date from” in place. I most often see organizations use constituent code for board memberships, and constituent attributes for committee memberships. If you needed to report out on either of those and display the number of days or years someone was on a committee, you would need an Excel formula or Crystal Reports - I don't think any report in RE will show you “number of days since” for Constituent Codes or attributes.

    Another option might be to set up a specific action type. Add an action with the committee membership and do not mark it as complete. When someone leaves the committee, complete the action. Now you have a start date (action date) and end date (completed date) and can query for current and former committee members. It's a little out there, but an option!

    Karen

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 March 2026 Challenge: Answered Questions January 2026 Monthly Challenge

    We acquired the volunteer module last year. Am still at beginning stages of inputting data. Had not realized the shortcomings it has with the NXT side. Disappointing. Stuck on one field that can not find table for entry where it is supposed to be located. Work in process.

  • Nicole Holt
    Nicole Holt Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    I still can't believe how un-functional the volunteer mod is in webview--I attended a webinar on automating volunteer management with Golden, which links to NXT and---it uses events to track volunteer shifts instead of the already-existing volunteer functionality. Which may be fine, I just get so annoyed when data has to be moved because of the gaps in functionality (and, as we have several volunteer shifts per day, 365 days/year, I am frightened to see what the events area would end up looking like if we did switch volunteer management software).

  • Brenda Heyer
    Brenda Heyer
    Sixth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1

    Hi Keith, There are only a few tables that show in NXT. When in DB, the tables “Availability/Interests” and “Job Assignments” can be populated and these will show. We've decided to use these so at least the information will show for fundraisers and others in webview. Place some test information in those tables and you'll see how it displays over in webview.

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