Volunteer Connect Volunteers
On the Volunteers tab for your team, you can see the full list of volunteers. Other volunteers will only see names and photos (if available), along with any contact information that is shared with the team. Leaders see everyone's information (including what they've shared and what they've hidden), which comes from the Contact record in MinistryPlatform. When needed, leaders can add volunteers to their team from this tab.
Roles
A volunteer's role on the team determines which assignments they can sign up for or be assigned to.
If a volunteer serves multiple roles in a team (such as a teacher and a driver), they must be added in the group with each of those roles. That way, when you're filling a role, you can select from the people who have that role on the team.
The roles to select in Volunteer Connect are sourced from the active participants of a group in MinistryPlatform.
Compliance
Compliance alerts let administrators and leaders know what is missing for volunteers' background checks, certifications, milestones, and custom forms. These are defined on the Requirements tab of the Group Role record in the Platform. Requirements are considered to be "expiring soon" based on the Expiring Soon Days field on the Background Check Type, Certification Type, or Form record.
In addition to the alert that displays at the top of the Volunteers tab, an alert displays beside each applicable volunteer to show their expiring or out-of-compliance items. A leader can copy this information and send it to an administrator who can then update or add the necessary information.
When you add a volunteer to a schedule, the Available drop-down list shows volunteers who are in compliance (meaning they meet all the requirements for the role). If needed, you can select from volunteers who may be out of compliance. The Potential Conflicts drop-down list shows the volunteers and what they are missing. The Strictly Enforced field on the Requirement record determines whether a volunteer can still be added to the schedule if they are out of compliance. Strictly enforced requirements display in red, while those that are not display in yellow. If a requirement is expiring soon, the volunteer can be added (as long as the event date is before the expiration) but you'll see a warning.
- Scenario 1: Anne is scheduling volunteers and doesn't have enough people in the Available list. So she clicks Search from unavailable and sees John Smith in the Potential Conflicts list. Anne sees that John is missing a form but isn't concerned about that. She adds John to the schedule and makes a note to have him complete his form before the schedule date.
- Scenario 2: Henry is scheduling nursery workers and doesn't have enough people in the Available list. So he clicks Search from unavailable and sees Susan Brown in the Potential Conflicts list. However, Susan's background check is expired. Henry is not able to select Susan since background checks are a strictly enforced requirement. He makes a note to speak to the person who runs background checks.
You can see all the details in the Compliance section of MinistryPlatform.
Add a Volunteer to a Team
- You must be a volunteer coordinator or leader to do this.
- CLOUDAPPS, VCShowAddVolunteerButton must be set to 1 in order to show the Add Volunteer button.
You can add new volunteers to your team within Volunteer Connect.
Once you add the volunteer, MinistryPlatform attempts to match them to someone in the database using their first name or nickname, last name, and email address or phone number. If no match is found, new Contact and Household records are created for them. The household's congregation is assigned as the one associated with the group. The Participant Type is set as the type defined in the COMMON, defaultParticipantType configuration setting.
The Contact record displays "Created by Volunteer Connect App" in the Notes field.
Send a Message to Volunteers
- You must be a volunteer coordinator or leader to do this.
You can send a message to one or more volunteers on your team within Volunteer Connect.
Message records are created in the Platform.