The Volunteer Reporter has an availability feature for volunteers on which you can search. With a filter you can bring up volunteers who have both a certain skill and availability.
In addition, the skills bank applies to jobs as well as volunteers, so that you can run Match and bring up suggested volunteers for jobs requesting their skills.
Managing Time Availability
Here are some ways that our customers handle time availability with the Reporter.
SKILLS:
Organize Volunteers’ Schedule Availability Using Volunteers Skills
In the Volunteers section, on the Skills tab, you can put any “skills” you want, including schedule availability. The Reporter comes with many suggested skills, but you can delete those and/or add new ones.
- Add your schedule skills in the Reference Codes menu –> Skills. Add, Edit, or delete skills as required.
- For instance, you can add schedule blocks to the skills. You could name one, e.g., Schedule: Monday AM. Another: Schedule, weekends, etc. By prefixing each skill with the same word you assure that they will all be grouped together on the jobs list for easy access.
- Then for each volunteer, select the appropriate skills/aka schedules in the Volunteers section on the Skills tab. You can select and add one at a time for each volunteer, as many as appropriate for each volunteer.
Jobs Skills Requested
Here we tell the Volunteer Reporter which skills a job needs. You will have already defined those skills according to the schedules you need filled by volunteers.
In the Jobs section on the Codes tab, you select skills in up to three fields which list your custom skills/schedules. The same list in each field allows you to indicate three schedule times for each job.
Match Report
Then the Reporter uses this skills bank information to help you try to match qualified volunteers with jobs requesting specific skills or schedules. In earlier versions, click the Match button match button on the Volunteers screen.
In version 6.0 and greater, click the Print button on the Volunteers Profile screen and choose the Volunteer Match report.
JOB NAMES & SCHEDULES:
Organize Volunteers’ Availability Using Placements and Schedules
Another way some people manage jobs that are schedule dependent is to include the schedule times in their job names. Most people use the Stations feature so that a station is a location. Each station can have one or many jobs, which can be designated time blocks. The next step in the Reporter is to assign Volunteers to Jobs with Placements.
The Reporter also has a Scheduling section which allows you to view at a glance who is scheduled for a job. Some people even make a pseudo volunteer named Pending which they place in unfilled jobs so that they can look at the schedule to see which jobs need attention.
Revised 05/29/2012 11:19:53