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Introduction
Simplify how you manage your volunteers.
Spreadsheets, smartphones, and sticky notes. It's a typical toolkit for volunteer coordinators everywhere. You see it every day—your coordinator chasing volunteer data across disconnected systems, outdated email lists, and illegible event signup sheets.
It doesn't have to be this hard.
At Salesforce.org, we believe that your volunteer program can do even more good with a lot less work. And we'd like to show you how Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S) helps free you from sticky notes and spreadsheets, so that you can focus on what really matters.
Maybe you're an experienced Salesforce admin. Or maybe you're new to basic admin tasks such as managing users and permissions, or customizing page layouts. Wherever you are, we'll take it step by step and be there with you from start to finish. Let's build the better way together.
- What You Get Out of the Box
We recommend reviewing all of the Volunteering for Salesforce documentation before you configure, so you can see how the tools work together and how automation takes care of tracking volunteers and volunteer opportunities. - The Underlying Data Structure
Objects hold and organize the data you need to manage your volunteers. - Tools for Website Integration
While you can use Volunteers for Salesforce as a standalone system, it's even more powerful when it's an integral part of your organization's website. It's another level of automation that keeps volunteer opportunities updated automatically and allows volunteers to go online to register, report their hours worked, and take pride in their personal volunteering dashboard. - Limitations
Be aware of these limitations in support for certain features.
What You Get Out of the Box
We recommend reviewing all of the Volunteering for Salesforce documentation before you configure, so you can see how the tools work together and how automation takes care of tracking volunteers and volunteer opportunities.
See Volunteers for Salesforce Documentation.
Now, with a clear vision of our end goal in mind, let's start by reviewing what comes in the V4S box.
- Tabs in the Application
The Volunteers for Salesforce user interface gives you a set of tabs, where your users go to get things done.
Tabs in the Application
The Volunteers for Salesforce user interface gives you a set of tabs, where your users go to get things done.
As the Salesforce admin, you've done your job well when the tabs function seamlessly to make it as simple as possible to:
- Find volunteers
- Create one-time and recurring volunteer opportunities
- Schedule volunteers
- Reconcile hours
- Mass email volunteers
- Monitor and report on volunteer engagement
The Underlying Data Structure
Objects hold and organize the data you need to manage your volunteers.
Behind the scenes, V4S comes with an underlying data structure.
Contacts and Leads are used for tracking people. Contacts are known, registered volunteers, and Leads are people who have expressed interest. Contacts and Leads are standard Salesforce database objects that are customized in V4S to track extra information about individual volunteers' skills and availability.
The Campaign object tracks discrete volunteer engagements, such as a community dinner or a park cleanup event. It's also a standard Salesforce object, often used for managing marketing campaigns. In Volunteers for Salesforce, it includes custom fields to automatically calculate the total number of volunteers and total hours for engagements. (We call this type of automation roll-up summary fields.)
Custom objects are included to track volunteer-specific things of interest.
- Volunteer Job tracks volunteer opportunities, one level below the Campaign.
- Volunteer Shift tracks time-bound volunteer shifts, one level below the Volunteer Job.
- Volunteer Hours tracks the number of volunteer hours, both completed and committed.
- Job Recurrence Schedule tracks recurring volunteer opportunities.
- Volunteer Recurrence Schedule tracks your "regulars"—volunteers who sign up for recurring jobs.
Tools for Website Integration
While you can use Volunteers for Salesforce as a standalone system, it's even more powerful when it's an integral part of your organization's website. It's another level of automation that keeps volunteer opportunities updated automatically and allows volunteers to go online to register, report their hours worked, and take pride in their personal volunteering dashboard.
For a lot of organizations, website integration is the most daunting part of setup. The process involves working with features that may be less familiar to admins—templates, custom settings, field sets, and more. We hear you. The Volunteers for Salesforce articles show you, step-by-step, what you and your web developer need to do for successful integration.
