What is Volunteer Management Software?

Introduction

Most nonprofits depend on volunteer work to run a part of their functions. Volunteer management software assists these organizations to find and manage volunteers. Considering that volunteers are not required to contractually commit for a particular time period to work with nonprofits, these foundations need to ensure they have a big enough volunteer pool who can support them in a motivated manner. Each unit of a nonprofit can utilize volunteers, therefore it is essential to find suitable persons for the activities.

Most volunteer management tools integrate smoothly with nonprofit CRMs to help delegate volunteers to marketing or sales activities. They can also integrate with event management platforms and online communication systems for messaging, social media, email, etc.

With volunteer management software, you can efficiently manage volunteer information like contact details, interests, skill sets, availability, and causes they are interested in. The system offers portals for volunteers to sign up for a generic team or for specific programs and activities. You can match volunteers with open programs based on their profiles and delegate them to the right department or team. The platform empowers you to track volunteer efficiency and activity, and interact with loyal volunteers.

Features of Volunteer Management Software

Recruitment

Volunteer management solutions include web-based volunteer applications that add contact info to the database, allowing you to save time on manual input and focus on the raising the number of volunteers. Plus, you can add customizable directories to your nonprofit’s website to enable potential volunteers to search for opportunities, site locations, and role descriptions.

Volunteer Schedules

Nonprofits can publish upcoming volunteer requirements with scheduling tools. Potential volunteers can peruse these opportunities and fill available empty slots depending on their availability.

Volunteer Portals

Portals permit volunteers to login into an organization’s website, get information on opportunities, register for events, and update contact details. They can also change their communication preferences via the portals, and opt in or out of specific communications.

Communication

Communication functionalities help you to send email messages to volunteers requesting their service and add automated reminders for the service commitments they’ve signed up for. Advanced applications also provide recognition functions that reward volunteers who deliver outstanding performance.

Management

A quality volunteer software allows you to organize contact info and history, including volunteer type, restrictions, frequency, and more. This helps you to group supporters, filter search parameters, and engage suitable volunteers.

Benefits of Volunteer Management Software

Attract More Volunteers

With volunteer management software, you can create attractive and easily accessible program and event web pages where prospects can learn about volunteer opportunities and register for open positions.

Go Viral

A good volunteer platform allows volunteers to track their personal accounts, record their hours, obtain accomplishment badges, and share this information on their profile for other volunteers to view. In addition, social sharing features make it simple for your volunteers to gain the attention and interest of more of their peers.

Easy for You and Volunteers

Volunteer management software simplifies operations as you can house all your programs and events in single location, where volunteers can inquire about, register, record their hours, and do other tasks. This makes things easy for them and also enables you to effortlessly monitor all of them.

Administration Benefits

Volunteer management software helps to free up coordinators’ time in the following ways:

Integration with your nonprofit CRM solution makes it simpler to assign specific tasks to volunteers.

You can easily access and organize volunteer data from anywhere, anytime.

Produce an automated procedure for your volunteer communications.

Integrates with Google Analytics to provide your organization actionable insights on trends.

Streamlined Volunteer Notifications

An important benefit of volunteer software is the capability to deliver notifications to volunteers. You can use these notifications to keep volunteers updated on the opportunity they registered for, alert your volunteer base about new opportunities, and thank supporters for their services and contributions in a program. These notifications can improve your organization’s ability to retain supporters and boost opportunity turn-out.