Volunteer Activities

A Volunteer Activity is the record of one volunteer engagement by a volunteer. A volunteer activity is created when a volunteer submits a volunteer opportunity in an online form, and can be created manually, ‘offline’ in the admin application or by the volunteer in the workplace portal.

A volunteer activity contains links to the contact and organization performing the volunteer effort, the impacted organization receiving the effort, the job being done, and the time and duration of the effort. The volunteer activities created using online forms also has links to the DonorPoint transaction, Volunteer Opportunity and shift which created the instance. The volunteer activity also includes any custom field values associated defined on the volunteer opportunity.

If the volunteer activity was self-reported by the contact, the writeIn field may contain the name of the impacted organization and a description of the job. Admins can later create and/or link the activity to the impacted organization, and approve or correct the job and hours performed.

In addition the volunteer activity contains notes entered from the admin application or engage application by a manager, and files attached to the record as well.

Volunteer Activity Status

Volunteer Activities have the standard DonorPoint Database Status field:

  • ACTIVE: a live record
  • TEST: a test record created by a form in test mode or set after creation. TEST records appear in the admin application by default, but do not appear in dashboards or reports
  • DELETED: marked as deleted from the database. DELETED records do not apear in dashboards or reports.

Volunteer Attendance Status

The Attendance Status field holds the status of the volunteer activity, and is used on dashboards and reports:

  • Registered - the registration was made online or entered as ‘Registered’ in the admin application
  • Checked-in/Kept - the volunteer was checked-into the event.
  • Cancelled - the volunteer activity was canceled and will no count in dashboards and reports
  • Abandoned/No-show - the volunteer did not check-into the event.
  • Checked-out/Confirmed/Completed - the organization confirmed that the volunteer completed the volunteer effort (optional for detailed reporting)
  • Self-Reported - the volunteer reported this instance via their portal

Volunteer Activities Created Online

Volunteer activities created online will have links to the DonorPoint transaction and line item which created the instance. If the volunteer activity was created via a workplace campaign a link to the workplace will also be set. If the form creating the volunteer activity is in Test mode, the instances will be created in TEST mode.

Creating Volunteer Activities Offline

Volunteer Activities appear on the Volunteer Activities tab of Volunteer Opportunities, Volunteer Events, Contacts and Organizations in the admin application. To create a new volunteer activity, you specify:

  • Contact and Organization, which will be pre-populated to the current contact or organization if you are working in one of those views. You can add new contacts of organizations which creating the volunteer activity.
  • Attendance Status - see above for values.
  • Volunteer Event - this will be pre-populated if you are adding the volunteer activity from a volunteer event. If you specify a volunteer event, the new volunteer activity will appear in its view and reports.
  • Impacted Organization - you can create an new organization if necessary, or enter free text in the WriteIn field
  • Volunteer Opportunity (optional) - this will be pre-populated if you are adding the volunteer activity from a volunteer opportunity. If you specify a volunteer opportunity, the new volunteer activity will appear in its view and reports
  • Job, start time, hours - you can select an existing job or create a new one.

Editing Volunteer Activities

Lists of Volunteer Activities can be found on the Volunteer Activities view on the left-hand sidebar, and on the Volunteer Activities tabs of the contacts, organizations, volunteer events and volunteer opportunities which contain them. Standard DonorPoint admin application popup windows can be used to edit basic properties from these lists, and the lists include links to detailed editors for the instances. ** Note that volunteers who have been entered as additional contacts (guests, group members) will not have any employer organziation information on their record. This will have to be added by DonorPoint adminstrators or workplace managers after the transaction **

Checking-in, Confirming and Canceling Volunteers

You can mark volunteers as checked-in to their acvitiy by changing the Attendance Status to Checked-in/Kept. Similarly if a volunteer cancels, you can change their attendance status to Canceled. If a volunteer does not show up, you can set the attendance status to Abandoned/No-show. And if you track completions distinctly from check-ins, you can set the attandance status to Checked-out/Confirmed/Completed.

Editing and Confirming Self-Reported Volunteer Activities

DonorPoint administrators and workplace managers can change the status of Self-Reported volunteer activities to ‘Checked-out/Confirmed/Completed’ and correct the submitted job and hours for dashboard and reporting purposes. Once self-reported activities are in the Checked-out/Confirmed/Completed status, they cannot be edited by the volunteer.

DonorPoint adminstrators and managers can also correct writeIn jobs and impacted organizations to the correct job and organization the their database, creating them if necessary from the writeIn information.

Annotating Volunteer Activities

The Notes field allows the volunteer or admin to add notes to a volunter activity. Note that notes are visible to volunteers in their portal. File attachments can also be added to volunteer activities, and these are not visible to volunteers.