February 1, 2010

 
Keeping Volunteer Information Up-to-Date

 
Keeping track of volunteer information is a challenge. At minimum, an organization has to keep track of volunteers' up-to-date email address and phone number. Organizations also need volunteers to report what they are doing as volunteers and how many hours they are contributing -- each day, each week or each month. Having this information for volunteers is vital to the sustainability of volunteer involvement.

Organizations struggle with keeping very basic contact information about their volunteers up-to-date because email addresses and phone numbers change so frequently (my mother has had the same phone number for the last 40 years, while mine has changed probably a dozen times in the last 25 years), and volunteers often forget to notify organizations they are helping about such changes. But in addition, organizations need volunteers to report in about their activities, for internal program reports, budgeting, program proposals and donor reports.

The easiest way to keep volunteer information up-to-date is to

Your goal is to get the information you need with minimal effort on your part (you being the person who tracks or works with volunteers).

Whatever requirements you choose, tell new volunteers about these requirements during their first volunteer orientation, and make sure they understand why you have these requirements. Volunteers won't see these requirements as heavy-handed if they understand from the beginning why having their contact information up-to-date is so important to the organization (for instance, do they realize that having the volunteer coordinator tracking down volunteers with incorrect contact info takes away from that person being able to work with and support other volunteers, or being able to mobilize volunteers quickly for a critical situation?).

The key to getting accurate information about what volunteers are doing is to focus on keeping their contact information up-to-date; that allows you to easily contact volunteers regarding their work. Some suggestions on how to keep volunteers' contact information up-to-date, as well as how to track other information (number of hours contributed, accomplishments, challenges, etc.):

One of the reasons I love YahooGroups, in addition to it being free and so feature-rich, is that, when I use it to create a group for volunteers I'm working with, I require the volunteers to keep their information up-to-date themselves. If someone writes me and says, "I've changed my email; here's the new address" I can write them back and say, "Please update your subscription information on the YahooGroup; here's how..." Eventually, volunteers learn that they are in control of their own information, and don't have to wait for me to update their email address. In addition, I can see whose email addresses are not working (click on "members", then "bouncing"), and target those volunteers at our next onsite meeting, or with a phone call.

I strongly discourage you from trying to input all updates about volunteers yourself, if at all possible. If you are in charge of changing contact information for volunteers (rather than the volunteers themselves, via an input screen on a computer), make sure you change data within 48 hours after receiving the updated information.

Also see:

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