How a Digital Volunteer Calendar Streamlines Volunteer Management

Volunteers can provide immense value to nonprofits. By donating their time and money, these people can improve operations, boost visibility, attract donors, and diversify nonprofit activities. All this is possible with the right task planning. That's where volunteer calendars come in.

Volunteer managers, coordinators, and supervisors are always looking for new ways to streamline volunteer-related tasks. With the right tools, it's possible to automate many of these operations while giving some control to the volunteers themselves.

A volunteer calendar is an essential management and scheduling tool that can help you improve volunteering tasks, minimize time waste, and keep your volunteer teams satisfied. Here's how.

What Is a Volunteer Calendar?

A volunteer calendar is a digital tool that can help you coordinate events, schedule volunteer activities, and communicate with volunteer teams.

Depending on the type of volunteer calendar you use, you can either handle the entire volunteer scheduling strategy on your own or involve volunteers in the process.

The main features of a comprehensive volunteer calendar solution include:

• Full access to volunteer-related events
• Ability to browse the volunteer event calendar
• Volunteer event search features
• Sign-up options
• Volunteer shift scheduling
• Ability to add hours for approval
• Automated reminders for volunteers

If volunteers have easy access to this calendar from their digital profiles (also a part of a comprehensive volunteer management solution), they can browse tasks and events as well as choose where to apply their efforts.

This takes some of the burden of scheduling and volunteer event planning off the volunteer manager's shoulders. While it may seem as if you are relinquishing too much control, these solutions often work better than traditional volunteer scheduling.

Benefits of a Volunteer Calendar 

A comprehensive volunteer scheduling calendar solution is partially a self-serve feature that allows volunteers to improve volunteer scheduling.

By leveraging calendar functions from volunteer management software, you can enjoy these important benefits:

Increased Volunteer Satisfaction

From answering phone calls and working with the community to volunteer event planning, you need to constantly monitor volunteer satisfaction rates.

Satisfied volunteers are more likely to continue contributing their time to your nonprofit, turn into donors, and request volunteer grants from their employers.

Scheduling problems are among the most frustrating issues that volunteers face. By eliminating them, you can boost volunteer satisfaction and retention.

Higher Productivity

By implementing a digital calendar for volunteer programs, you are giving more power to your volunteers. They can browse the available events and nonprofit needs and sign up for activities that need their time and effort the most.

Streamlined Volunteer Engagement

Volunteer communication is key to keeping everyone involved in nonprofit activities happy. A volunteer event calendar can store information about volunteer participation and help managers figure out which people are best suited for upcoming programs and make these programs visible to them.

You can also use the calendar function from volunteer management software to send these volunteers personal invites to upcoming events. This could improve productivity and re-engage volunteers who've worked with your organization in the past.

How Volunteer Calendars Streamline Scheduling

Volunteer calendars significantly streamline your scheduling process.

Volunteer Calendars can:

• Provide a clear view of filled and vacant positions
• Empower volunteers to create their own schedules from home
• Consolidate all essential volunteer tasks for easier coordination
• Enhance the effectiveness of other volunteer management tools

These calendars simplify coordination, scheduling, and management for your internal team while enhancing the overall volunteer experience.

How to Schedule Volunteers Using a Volunteer Calendar

Scheduling volunteers through a calendar is a simple process. If you are taking advantage of comprehensive volunteer scheduling software, it can:

• Allow you to see open slots and volunteer schedules on one dashboard
• Schedule available volunteers
• Send invites to volunteers as part of event management tasks
• Coordinate volunteer opportunities for individuals and teams
• Create custom schedules

When you have all the information about upcoming events and open slots, you can enter them into the volunteer calendar. After that, a volunteer gains access to this information from their personal digital space.

Next, the volunteer can choose the available slots according to their preferences and skills. They can enter their request through the calendar and send it for confirmation. 

In short, a volunteer calendar is an interactive scheduling tool that helps volunteer managers achieve top scheduling capacity while keeping volunteers happy.

Leveraging Volunteer Calendars in Your Volunteer Program

Over the past few years, technologies have changed, though many nonprofits still use outdated solutions that offer fewer features than a simple Google Calendar. To stay on top of their game, nonprofits need to review the new technologies and take full advantage of them.

Implementing a volunteer calendar is a major step toward making the most out of non-profit volunteering. Besides making it easier to coordinate volunteers, this tool can help you discover hidden opportunities for leveraging your volunteer teams.

Volunteer management software integrates a volunteer calendar solution with the rest of the platform and its scheduling features.