Volunteer Management Overview
It is very common for clubs to cater for volunteer contributions in some form as part of the registration fee schedule. Sometimes a discount is available at the time of registration - other clubs prefer to offer a rebate once a certain measure of time contributed has been surpassed.
Whatever the case, up until this point it has been necessary to manage and track contributions outside of the Majestri system. By (extremely) popular request, clubs wanted to do away with the spreadsheets containing names and hours, and have it instead integrated into Majestri.
We listened, and we built it. Please read on to learn about the tools available to manage your volunteers over the course of the season.
Design Philosophies
When addressing the problem of managing volunteers, it became evident that there's really no conceivable limit to the functionality that could be built. In order to get a functional first-cut together in fairly quick time, we drew our own line in the sand as to which problems we were going to try and solve in the first instance.
What this solution is for
- Centralising a group of volunteers that have given indication at the time of registration that they are interested in volunteering for the club.
- Scheduling tasks over the course of the season that volunteers can register themselves into fulfilling via the system.
- Tracking the total contribution per volunteer over the course of the season to help financial decision-making.
What this solution isn't for
- Managing team officials (ie. coaches and managers). They can be included in the central group of Volunteers, but the system already has native tools for team management.
- Paying umpires or other casual staff who perform work on behalf of a club.
Enabling Volunteer Management
A club's main outdoor season matches pretty closely the time-span of commitment required by volunteers. For this reason, the ability to manage volunteers is enabled on a per-event basis. This allows you to only 'see' the Volunteer cues for events where it makes sense (eg. The functionality is overkill for minor events that you run during the year).
To switch it all on for an event, you can find the relevant setting on the Event Settings screen. If you are unsure where this is, then please read our Event Setup guidance.
Using your Registration Form
A lot of clubs already ask the question of parents/senior players whether they're interested in volunteering their time to the club. If you're doing this, then that's perfect. You're already in a great position to start identifying who your volunteers are.
If you're not already doing this, then it may be something worth considering. Our advice is to not go overboard with the questions for potential volunteers - you don't want to scare them off. We recommend the following at the most:
- Interested in Volunteering?
- Preference (we can create a custom drop-down list of roles per clubs)
- General Notes
- Information about credentials for working with children (terminology differs by state).
If it's common for both parents to contribute their time, then you may think of laying out these fields for both the Primary and Emergency Contacts.
Volunteer Hub
Once you've got registrations coming in, you can visit the Volunteer Hub so that you can get to work identifying your volunteers and rostering tasks. Once you're up and running, this screen will have a snapshot of relevant numbers ready to greet you as soon as you come in.
The Volunteer Hub can be accessed from 3 locations;
the Seasons screen in your Control Room:
or two places on the Event Dashboard screen:
Either of these methods gets you to the Volunteer Hub page.
You can now manage your list of Volunteers and your Tasks.
Building your Volunteer Group
The first step you need to do is build your central collection of volunteers. 99% of your volunteers will be sourced from the Primary and Emergency Contacts (ie. the adults) specified in your registrations.
Click on the button indicated below to start this process.
For an overview on assembling your volunteers, please see our guide.
Task Rostering
Once you've got your collection of workers in place, you'll want to start building your roster of tasks so that you can put these people to work.
Click on the button highlighted below to start this process.
For an overview on creating tasks and opening them up to your volunteers for fulfilment, please see our guide.
FAQ
If you've got a specific question about our Volunteer Management tools, chances are that somebody has asked it before you.
Please head over to our Volunteer Management FAQ to get the information you need.