Volunteer Module - yay or nay?

Shauna Kipper 2 · October 2020

We are considering adding the Volunteer module at our organization (a 9-12 co-ed high school) but I would like to hear from others how you use it and if you find it helpful.

Does anyone use the module to track board members and sub-committee members? Do you find it useful or does putting it somewhere else reach the same goal?

Crystal Bruce · October 2020

Hi! I feel like this question might do better in a product community. What product is volunteer module in and I can move this question to that product/solution community. Thanks!

Shauna Kipper 2 · October 2020

Raiser's Edge

Crystal Bruce · October 2020

Thanks! Discussion moved to Raiser's Edge forums. :-)

Karen Diener 2 · October 2020

A lot consider here....

It is VERY granular. For instance, it can track a person's availability down to the hour and day of the week. I don't know any organizations that have used it to that extent, even the ones with pretty robust volunteer programs. It does not have features like online scheduling, online check-in, email confirmations, etc.

In my opinion, there is more of a disconnect between database view and webview (NXT) than the other additional modules. I'm not sure if you have webview and are using it, but really none of the functionality of the volunteer module exists in webview. My understanding is that Blackbaud is completely rebuilding the webview functionality, but I haven't heard or seen much about that lately at all.

You should definitely do some research, but determine your core functional needs first. Then bounce those against RE's volunteer module as well as other volunteer software. If you consider external software, do not minimize the work that will be involved to keep data synchronized between the two, if that is important. There are a lot of factors to consider, such as the size of your volunteer program, size of your staff, how your program operates, budget, and so on.

Karen

Shauna Kipper 2 · October 2020

Thanks Karen!

Our organization is large, but our volunteer group and usage is minimal. If the module was a base price we would jump on it in a heartbeat. But to pay a very high annual fee for another field to put information that will be hardly touched seems not worthwhile.

I thought that maybe if we did have the module we would use it to list Board Members, Board Sub-Committee Members, Event Committees, Parent Volunteers, etc. But again, not worth it to buy just for that.

I wondered if anyone thought it was so fantastic that we MUST have it. Just asking around to see opinions....

JoAnn Strommen · October 2020

My thanks as well, Karen Diener‍. Last week we began discussion about getting the volunteer module. Shauna Kipper‍'s post was timely as I looked for comments in the forum.

For other's using the module, please share your thoughts.

Brian Davies · October 2020

We are a PK-12 school and migrated over to hosted RE7 and NXT last year. Currently we use constituent codes for board memberships and attributes for tracking subcommittees which has its limitations.
We did not have the volunteer module when we were self-hosted, but have it now. I am looking at the functionality of using it for board membership and sub committees. So far I like how it works in RE7 database view, but find the output in the volunteer tile in NXT to be lacking which is where I really want it available for our development officers and head of school. The NXT tile only shows first and most recent volunteer assignment, with no option to expand to all volunteer assignments.

Daniel R. Snyder · October 2020

Shauna Kipper‍, there is also another thread that discussed the volunteer module and some of the backend setup that you might find helpful. You can see it here.

Michelle Tribe · October 2020

Hi Shauna, I work at a humane society, and we have more than 800 active volunteers. We use the volunteer module (RE 7, self hosted) with great success. It's an easy way to keep track of volunteers, pull reports and set up queries (for emailing, mailing, invites, etc.) for them. We keep track of the volunteer role, the start and end date of each role and we use the timesheets. It also gives us a history on a constituent -- maybe they started with donating, then volunteered, then attended a gala, etc.

Putting volunteers in Raiser's Edge also means we can save their document history in the media tab (police check, application, photo) and create actions and notes for points of contact. I appreciate that we can use RE organizationally almost as an "all in one" database for various departments in the org.

We track board members in the module (and also give them a constituent code so it shows up in red at the bottom of their Bio 1 tab).

Shauna Kipper 2 · October 2020

Thanks Michelle! With an organization like the humane society I definitely see the need to track volunteers. The problem is that we rarely use volunteers (maybe once or twice a year for an event, which could be tracked in the event module).

When you say you add their documents to the media tab, does that mean that the volunteer module has its own media tab or do you put it in the constituent's main media tab?

Michelle Tribe · October 2020

Hi Shauna -- oh with the number of volunteers we have it definitely makes sense for us to use the volunteer module. The volunteer module itself doesn't have a media section -- it's the media section of the constituent record where we put the items.

Judy Spigarelli · October 2020

I purchased it at a former organization (RE7,self-hosted) and it was far too detailed for our needs so we never ended up using it. Also, we wanted volunteers to be able to get in to update their own info or log in their hours and we decided we did not want that many RE log-ins created. It wasn't a fit for our needs, since we too didn't have enough volunteers to manage to make it worth that nor the time to add such detail. I track board members in relationships to an org record. Then I have start and end dates, which I find more helpful than an attribute. Good luck in your research!

Volunteer Module - yay or nay?

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