What is a Volunteer Management System?

A volunteer management system is a purpose-built software solution that helps nonprofits efficiently organize and manage their volunteer programs.

While volunteer management system product offerings can widely vary, most systems designed to streamline volunteer recruitment, organize volunteer events/activities, enhance volunteer engagement, and increase volunteer retention.

With features like volunteer hours tracking, automated event reminders, and digital waivers, these systems simplify communication and coordination- enabling nonprofits to maximize their impact. By adopting a purpose-built volunteer management system, nonprofit leaders and volunteer coordinators can unlock their organization's full potential, ensuring every volunteer's contribution is both recognized and effectively utilized.

Today, there are a wide variety of ways to volunteer, from virtual volunteering like teaching English as a second language, to reroofing a halfway house after a natural disaster, to helping rescue animals find their forever home.

Accordingly, choosing a volunteer management system that is a good fit for your organization will likely be determined by feature set. Selecting a volunteer management system with a robust feature set that's right for your organization can be a game changer. Below is a list of core features that you should expect from a comprehensive volunteer management system.

• Event Registration:
  • Dedicated event registration pages to make it easy to share and distribute volunteer opportunities.
• Event Shifts:
  • Event shifts allow for the organizing and division of events into specific volunteer shifts, which helps event organizers arrange volunteers by role, time, and location.
• Digital Waivers:
  • Adding digital waivers to event registration ensures 100% waiver compliance and reduces an organization's liability.
• Customizable Registration Forms:
  • From learning about volunteer skill sets to capturing important volunteer demographic data for grant writing, customizable registration forms are a must for most nonprofits. Customizable registration forms allow nonprofits to ask their volunteer questions that are uniquely important to their organization.
• Group Reservations:
  • Group reservations can be particularly helpful for nonprofits that work corporate volunteers, civic organizations, churches, schools or clubs. This functionality allows an individual to create and manage a group reservation on behalf of their organization- like a Rezy for volunteering events.
• Recurring Events:
  • This simple feature is not to be overlooked. For volunteer event organizers who oversee routinely occurring events, 'recurring events' functionality can be an incredible administrative saver.
• Digital Check-In/Out Tools:
  • Accurately accounting for volunteer hours is particularly important for annual reporting, volunteer recognition and grant writing. Digital check-in and check-out tools help ensure that every hour is accurately captured without the need for manual data entry. Popular digital check-in/out tools include kiosk URLs, event specific QR codes, and GPS options (allowing volunteers to check-in/out autonomously using a smartphone).
• Automated Volunteer Hours Tracking:
  • Not all event management software is created equal. While platforms like Eventbrite and Luma can be great tools for event registration, they don't automate the consolidation of an organization's volunteer hours. Purpose-built volunteer management systems This feature helps organizations monitor and record volunteer contributions, ensuring accurate reporting and recognition.
• Integrated Communication Tools:
  • Built-in messaging systems, email and SMS messaging, facilitate seamless communication between volunteers and coordinators without the challenge of manually building event/program-based distros.
• Volunteer Profiles:
  • Volunteer profiles have multiple benefits, to include expediting volunteer registration and allowing volunteers to easily keep track of the volunteering hours that they've completed.
• Event Templates:
  • Event Templates allow event organizers to create events and save their structure to be reused at any time in the future. This functionality can be particularly helpful for nonprofits that host specific events routinely or large quarterly/annual events.
• Embeddable Events Calendar:
  • An embeddable events calendar allows you to easily surface your upcoming volunteer events directly on your website. This simple feature allows individuals visiting your website to find and register for upcoming volunteer events without exchanging a single email.
• Reporting and Analytics:
  • Data-driven insights help organizations evaluate volunteer engagement, quantify the impact of their volunteer program, and automate reporting. Volunteer Management Systems with robust analytics functionality can help nonprofits evaluate their organization’s volunteer program performance and create quarterly/annual reports.
• Mobile-Friendly:
  • Hauling a laptop to every event isn't always ideal in a variety of circumstances. With a mobile-friendly volunteer management system, users can also access the platform from a phone or tablet. This functionality can be particularly useful while an event is ongoing, allowing organizers or staff members to facilitate volunteer check-in or send event updates right from their smartphone.

In today's fast-paced nonprofit landscape, the importance of efficiently managing volunteer resources cannot be overstated. Adopting the right volunteer management system will increase nonprofit’s operational capacity, volunteer retention, and donation revenue.

If you are considering adopting a volunteer management system and are looking to learn more about what solution may be the best fit for your organization, we got you covered! Here is a breakdown of the 5 Best Volunteer Management Systems on the market today.