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Volunteer Software

People Helping People

See also: Terminate Volunteers Temporarily

You can customize codes to track the approval process or hiring tier of new volunteers. Use one of the five, new in version 6.0, List with Dates fields or simply use one of the many code fields to define the steps a prospective volunteer accomplishes to qualify to be a volunteer.

Volunteer Starting Date

The Reporter assigns a starting date of the current day whenever a new volunteer record is made. You can always edit that to suit your requirements. When approving an applicant from an online Web Assistant application, you can edit the date before the record enters for the volunteer.

When you make use of custom codes to define an applicant’s approval status you can then filter on that status to quickly access just those in-process volunteers.

List with Date Fields

List with Dates fields are one way to track the applicant approval tier. With version 6.0 the List with Dates fields let you date a selected value as well as select multiple values. You can add values to the list which might go something like: Applied on Web, Approved into Record, Interviewed, Background Check,…Final Approval. As a prospective volunteer completes each step of the approval tier you can check it and give it a date on the volunteer’s Profile tab.

Code Fields

Alternatively, you can add those values (e.g., Applied on Web, Approved into Record, Interviewed, Background Check,…Final Approval) to a list in a code field and simply select the next one in sequence as the prospect completes each successive stage. Numbering the steps puts them in order on the list if the approval process needs to follow a linear progression. In versions prior to 6.0 you could pair a date field with a code field to record the date of each accomplishment.

Setting Up the Codes

In version 6.0 access the “control panel” for adding code fields and values on the File menu:

File menu | Field Lists | Volunteer Fields | [Code Field / List with Date Field]

In version 5.9 and previous add code fields and values from the Reference Codes menu:

Reference Codes | Assign Field Names | Volunteer Field Names
Reference Codes | Volunteer Codes | User-Defined Codes | …

Terminate Applicants until Final Approval

Some customers actually terminate a prospective volunteer during the approval process and give as the cause for termination Pending Approval. Then they activate a person who has completed the process. This keeps reporting cleaner without tallying extra people who are not yet volunteering.

You can still bring up the people who are temporarily terminated by using filters on reports. The filters need to Include Terminated Volunteers and can isolate just which stage of the approval process you want to target by your setting limitations for the specific values in your custom codes.

See also: Terminate Volunteers Temporarily

Revised 05/15/2012 14:09:12

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