Manage a contact's Volunteer interactions.

Depending on your subscription level, you will have up to four types of interactions available for you to manage for your contacts:

• Communication
• Attendance
• Giving
• Volunteering

You can click the links above for more information on managing Giving or Communication/Attendance Interactions.

Manage a single Volunteer interaction

There are currently three primary ways in which volunteer interactions are created.  The first is manually by an administrator (via bulk add, individually from a contact's record, or via an import file), which we will be discussing here.  The second is by the volunteer via 'My Profile' (if configured).  The third is created automatically based on sign-ups to volunteer shifts.  Interactions created manually (the first and second types) can be edited/updated from the contact's record.  Automatically created interactions (the third type) can only be changed by updates made to the shift or assignment. For example, if a volunteer withdraws or is marked as a no-show, the interaction is automatically updated by the system.  Since the volunteer interactions automatically created by a shift assignment/sign-up adopts the start and end time of the shift's scheduled start and end times, the current method of updating actual start and end times (e.g., did the volunteer show up late or leave early) is via our kiosk tool.   Please contact your account manager or support for more information on the kiosk tool.

To add a volunteer interaction record for a contact:

1. Log into your organization's VolunteerMatters Administrative Site
2. Click on Admin > Database (note you must have the appropriate permissions to perform this action)
3. Locate the Contact you wish to manage and click on 'View Record Detail' Icon on the right.
4. Click on the 'Volunteering' tab for those interactions.
5. Click ‘New‘ and enter the appropriate data for the available fields.

• Date - you may either manually enter a date in mm/dd/yyyy format or use the ‘Date Chooser’ to select a date from a graphical calendar.
• Start Time - you may either manually enter the time in hh:mm AM/PM format or use the ‘Now’ button to have the current time inserted in the field for you.
• End Time - you may either manually enter the time in hh:mm AM/PM format or use the ‘Now’ button to have the current time inserted in the field for you.
• Scheduled Date - you may either manually enter a date in mm/dd/yyyy format or use the ‘Date Chooser’ to select a date from a graphical calendar.
• Scheduled Start Time - you may either manually enter the time in hh:mm AM/PM format or use the ‘Now’ button to have the current time inserted in the field for you.
• Scheduled End Time - you may either manually enter the time in hh:mm AM/PM format or use the ‘Now’ button to have the current time inserted in the field for you.
• Volunteering Type -  please select the pre-configured sub-types of this interaction.  Click here for more information on managing these.
• Project Calendar - please select the pre-configured projects/calendars of this interaction.  This is a dynamically populated list of all calendars.  Click here for more information on managing these.
• Volunteer Role - please select the pre-configured volunteer roles of this interaction.  This is a dynamically populated list of all roles defined in step 2 of the Volunteer Project Wizard for each specific calendar.  When you change the Project Calendar drop down, the role list will automatically update for the roles for that calendar.
• Subject -  you may enter text to describe the interaction.
• Notes - enter any relevant additional text.

Please Note: Actual versus Scheduled Dates and Times may not be used much when manually creating Volunteer Interactions.   For the most part for manually created volunteer interactions you will leave the "scheduled" fields blank.

To delete or update an existing entry, click the ‘Edit’ icon to the right of its listing.    Remember, this is only for manually created Volunteer Interactions.

NOTE: There is a list view filter on those interactions at the top of the interaction tab. This is populated with administrative list views created at your Volunteer Interactions list page.   You can manage and create list views here to produce any number of filtered displays of giving interactions.

Add in Bulk

You may also add interaction records in bulk either by using the Bulk Add Interaction Utility (Admin > Bulk Add under the Interaction section) or by using the Import Utility. 

When using the Bulk Add Interaction utility you will just need to select the interaction type from the drop down and the system will automatically display the correct fields.

For more information on importing, please refer to the "Importing" forum.