Volunteer Calendars: How to Schedule Supporters in 3 Steps

Creating a volunteer calendar—either from a volunteer calendar template or from scratch—can take a lot of time and effort. But, creating an easily accessible calendar full of searchable opportunities is a win-win for nonprofits and their volunteers—simple sign-up, calendar syncing, and easy scheduling ensure that both parties are organized and ready to make an impact.

In this article, we’ll cover what a volunteer calendar is and how to schedule volunteers with ease—plus, we'll list the exact tools and technology to launch your volunteer scheduling process in minutes.

What is a Volunteer Calendar?

A volunteer calendar is a tool used by nonprofit organizations to plan, schedule, and manage their volunteer activities and events throughout the year.

The volunteer calendar is an essential tool for nonprofits to:

• Organize and promote all their volunteer opportunities in one place
• Coordinate scheduling and attendance for both recurring and one-time volunteer activities
• Keep track of volunteer hours

How Do I Create a Volunteer Schedule?

There are lots of ways to create volunteer schedules for your volunteer program, but most require nonprofits to complete these three steps.

1. Assess Your Needs

First, evaluate your organization's ongoing and upcoming volunteer requirements based on programs, events, and daily operations. This should give you a baseline idea of the number of volunteers you'll need.

2. Identify Tasks, Timelines, and Roles

Next, you’ll want to get into the finer details of the volunteer opportunities, including defining:

• Skills and qualifications required: Some nonprofits use skill-based volunteerism to maximize volunteer efforts. Determine whether or not you need your volunteers to have specific specialties in order to make a positive impact.
  
  
• Time commitment: For each volunteer experience, clearly define how long each event or opportunity will be, whether the opportunity is a few hours or something even less time-consuming.
  
  
• Role descriptions: Next, create detailed role descriptions that are compelling to volunteers and include all of the information they need to get started, including the role’s expectations and its importance to your mission.

3. Build and Launch Your Schedule 

Last but not least, using volunteer management software like Get Connected, you’ll input all of the information you've compiled above — volunteer roles, descriptions, timelines, and responsibilities — into a calendar that both staff and volunteers can view at any time.

Pro tip: In addition to using your calendar to schedule event staff and volunteers, you can use your volunteer schedule to list volunteering holidays, specific months that celebrate volunteers (like National Volunteer Month), and even note volunteer vacations, too.

Create Your Volunteer Calendar in Minutes

Get Connected's volunteer calendar and volunteer scheduling software is a simple way for your volunteers to search and sign up for your opportunities and events.

       Learn more about Get Connected's Volunteer Calendar

With Get Connected, both coordinators and volunteers can manage their volunteer schedules with ease, allowing volunteers to:

• Search: Easily search for volunteer opportunities and volunteer events, as well as view volunteer role descriptions
  
  
• Sign up and sync: Quickly sign up for shifts and sync their commitments to their Google calendars.
  
  
• Succeed: Receive automated reminders as their opportunity approaches so they never miss or show up late to a commitment.