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

Seeking opportunities in museums and heritage management in the Inland Empire