Volunteer Management Calendar¶
The Volunteer Calendar feature in TouchPoint was designed to help a staff member (or a lay leader) easily manage groups of volunteers. The concept is to have an organization for each volunteer type with multiple time slots.
If you have have different types of volunteer positions - such as Ushers, Nursery Workers, Greeters - that serve at the same time, you would create multiple organizations.
Important
The Volunteer Calendar cannot have more than one time slot with the same day and time. You should create multiple calendars for those cases. The Time Slots on the Questions tab create the future meetings.
If you plan to take attendance for your volunteers using the TouchPoint Mobile App, you may be interested in a special Ad Hoc Extra Value you can add to your organization that will display only those committed for a given time slot.
See also
Scenario¶
Most churches have positions (like ushers or greeters) that are filled by volunteers. Usually, these volunteers do not serve every week, but serve one or more time slots during the month. You need to manage those volunteers and know when they will be serving.
The TouchPoint Volunteer Calendar feature will help you manage this in the following ways:
Enlist potential volunteers to serve in your ministry.
Display your volunteers on a calendar which you can easily manage.
Send weekly email reminders.
Send email reminders to everyone, not just those with commitments for the upcoming week.
Print a roll sheet each week so volunteers can sign in, or have them use TouchPoint check-in.
Allow volunteers themselves to be able to manage their time slots and/or request substitutes when they are unable to serve.
Request via email additional volunteers for a specific date and be able to monitor the responses.
For both get sub and request volunteers, once a sub has committed or the needed number of extra volunteers has been reached, anyone replying ‘yes’ will see a message that the number has been reached.
Easily identify those meetings/time slots with volunteers that have conflicts and then easily resolve the conflicts.
Tip
If you have a need for volunteers only one week out of each month,
such as for communion / Lord’s Supper, you can add an Extra Value
to the org to exclude all other weeks.
The Extra Value is named ExcludeWeeks
and the value would be the weeks you wish to exclude.
Example: make the value 2,3,4,5
to only have week 1 display on the calendar.
Add this on the organization Settings > Extra Values tab
selecting Text (multi-line) as the type.
This Extra Value will also work well if you want volunteers in
separate organizations for each week of the month.
Tip
When you set up a Volunteer Calendar, be sure to enter a First Meeting Date and a Last Meeting Date on the Settings > Attendance tab. If you do not enter these dates the calendar will begin on the next Sunday and go for 7 months. Example: If you need summer volunteers use a date range for just those few months.
The first step is to create the organization to use for your Volunteer Calendar. The Volunteer Enlistment article below has the how-to steps for that.
See also
Important Notes about Volunteer Calendars
For an organization to have a volunteer calendar, it must have a Registration Type of Choose Volunteer Times and must have Time Slots.
To manage the calendar on a volunteer org, the user must be enrolled, be a leader in that org, and have the user role Edit in addition to Access. Exception: a System Administrator can manage the calendar without being enrolled in the org. In other words, the only people able to manage the volunteer calendar are the leaders in the organization or the Administrator for your database.
To have volunteers select their own commitments online, you must send them a RegisterLink (be sure to include the org ID# when creating the link). This is not the type of registration for which you would post a link on your website.
To add instructions on the page where the volunteer selects their time slots, use the Options instructions on the Messages tab of the organization.
Calendar¶
Once you have the organization set up correctly as a volunteer calendar, most of your management will be done on the calendar itself. This is accessed from the gear icon on the Blue Toolbar on the organization.
The Volunteer Calendar is where you will do the following:
Move volunteers into their time slots
Make changes for volunteers, such as remove any or all of their commitments
Request extra volunteers
Send email reminders
Email volunteers with a commitment for a specific date/time
Print rollsheets for those committed for a specific date/time
Access the meeting for a time slot in order to record attendance
And, or course, see at a glance how many volunteers are committed for each slot, along with how many you need
Identify volunteers with conflicts in another Volunteer Calendar
Other Options¶
There are several other features that are part of the Volunteer Calendar.
- Weekly Email Reminders
On the Volunteer Calendar page, Click Email Reminders to send only to those volunteers serving in the next 7 days. These can also be sent from the organization page, by selecting the Blue Toolbar > Email > Send Volunteer Reminders.
Important
This reminder is created on the organization under Registration > Messages and is named Reminder. When reminders are sent, a notice is sent to the Online Notify Person/s with the body of the reminder and a list of the upcoming volunteers and their commitments. You can include a RegisterLink so your volunteers can manage future commitments and/or request a substitute. Be sure to always include the email replacement code {details}, so the person will see his upcoming time slots.
- Print Rollsheets
Instead of printing rollsheets for the entire organization, you will want to print them just for those with commitments that week.
On the Volunteer Calendar, click Rollsheet Report inside the box for the specific week and time slot. The numbers in parentheses on the calendar indicate how many people are scheduled and how many are needed. This number is from the Limit on the Time Slot on the org.
- Record attendance
Click the Meeting link (in time slot box) to go directly to the meeting page from the calendar and record the attendance.
Miscellaneous Notes:¶
- Meeting and Commitment Status:
On the meeting page, click Editing and Register in order to manually select a different Commitment status for a volunteer.
Example: Mary is showing as Attending the meeting on 12/31/12, but she calls and says she cannot be there. The leader over that org (or the system administrator), can click the Commitment and select Regrets. That will prevent Mary from receiving any future emails if a sub or more volunteers are requested for that meeting.
- Get Sub in Progress:
After a volunteer has requested a sub, his name will appear in italics on the calendar. If you hover over the name you will see that he has requested a sub. Once a person has responded, the original volunteer’s name will be marked through (so you know he was originally supposed to serve) and the substitute will be listed on the calendar in a different color font from the other volunteers.
- Member Type - VIP
You may want to assign the Member Type of VIP for all your volunteers, with the exception of the leaders. With this Member Type, a person’s attendance in another class that meets at the same time will be recorded as a Volunteer. The Attendance String will have a V and the Attend Type will be Volunteer. This lets the leader of the other class know that this member was serving elsewhere at the time of their meeting.
See also
Alternate Simple Calendar View¶
There are two options for viewing and managing the Volunteer Calendar - the original view (for which most of the documentation refers) and the Simple Volunteer Calendar which is described in a separate stand-alone article outlining the differences and how to manage the calendar using that view. Both options are accessed from the blue Toolbar > Gear. Choose either Volunteer Calendar or Simple Volunteer Calendar.
Alternative Option for Special Cases¶
If your needs do not fit with this existing Volunteer Calendar, you may want to use an online registration with checkboxes that create future meetings. Take a look at this video that demonstrates this option.
See also
Latest Update |
11/13/2020 |
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