Hi Breanne!
I currently volunteer at a county museum with a large volunteer base.
Sign-ups are done in several different ways. There are two large white
boards with 2 months of school group visits posted, and people sign up for
certain times they'll be around for gallery tours and group visits.
Specific programs or events outside of groups are posted on a nearby
bulletin board. These posting include the event flyer or advertising, a
description of volunteer duties, and a sign-up sheet. For any other
specialty projects, the education curator reaches out individually to
appropriate volunteers. We still use paper logs to record hours and
activities, and there are several volunteers who solely do office support
work like entering volunteer hours into a computer record. There is one
non-techie volunteer who tallies up each volunteer's hours, and also
tallies the number of hours for each type of activity or program (essential
info for grant writing). Dedicated volunteers who are more comfortable
enter these tallies into a Microsoft Excel file. This isn't the most
effective method, but considering the large number of volunteers, this
works for the current volunteer population.
If I was going to redesign this system, I would do exactly what you've done
and seek out recommendations for a different, more efficient system. If you
have several dedicated volunteers who are comfortable with technology, then
maybe consider scheduling some computer literacy training to be facilitated
by those volunteers. Once you have your software set-up, then offer some
computer training sessions for those volunteers who may be a bit leery
about using technology.
Good luck with this project!

Dani Trynoski
[log in to unmask]

Seeking opportunities in museums and heritage management in the Inland
Empire


On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Breanne Wasinger <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for advice on volunteer management software. Any
> recommendations for a good program? Any I should avoid? We have a large
> volunteer base at our arboretum, and are looking for ways to streamline
> volunteer sign-ups/logged hours/preferences, etc. We want something with a
> user-friendly interface that might appeal to (or at least not intimidate)
> some of our less tech-savvy volunteers.
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Breanne L. Wasinger
> Volunteer Coordinator
> Overland Park Arboretum
> (913)-685-3604
>
>
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