Managing Volunteers, the Salesforce Way
We sat down with Groundwire Labs Manager Eric Magnuson to learn more about one of the Labs exciting new projects for 2011 – Volunteers for Salesforce.
So tell us about this exciting new application for Salesforce! Any software with the word “Volunteers” in it sounds exciting to my nonprofit ears.
Eric Magnuson (EM): It is exciting! Nonprofits often struggle with effective volunteer management yet volunteers are one of the best ways for those organizations to expand their talent pool and program capacity. By some accounts the nonprofit sector racks up $38 million a year in lost labor due to poor volunteer management. We think one of the missing tools is an application that takes care of the tedious aspects of tracking all the facets of a good volunteer program. We're building Volunteers for Salesforce to solve this problem and will make it freely available to the 9,000+ nonprofits who are using Salesforce.
How did this project come about?
EM: Last summer we received a generous grant from The Salesforce Foundation to tackle this volunteer management challenge. The Salesforce Foundation, from their vantage point, saw the need in the form of dozens of organizations applying for grants to solve the same problem. They chose Groundwire to build a single application and make it available for free for everyone. I think they liked what they saw in our Auctions for Salesforce app and believe we have what it takes to do a good job.
What features can we expect? When is the beta release?
EM: We designed Volunteers for Salesforce for nonprofits who manage around 200 volunteers at any time and who conduct around a few dozen volunteer events per month. Those events are typically either ongoing office volunteering or event-specific volunteering like a trail clean-up day. Rather than get into a full feature list here is a list of the volunteer management scenarios we designed the app to work well for:
- Tracking the volunteer jobs that an organization needs volunteers for.
- Tracking the hours a volunteer works.
- Tracking hours against specific volunteer shifts, if desired.
- Tracking all the volunteer hours and jobs for a specific event, or as ongoing needs that are not directly tied to a single event.
- Signing up to be a volunteer on a website.
- Match volunteers to available jobs by skills and availability.
- Reports (20+) and dashboards that provide useful information for effective management and grant reporting.
Who is involved in the pilot phase and how does it work?
EM: For the pilot phase we are working with three great organizations that are committed to putting Volunteers for Salesforce through the paces and to give us helpful feedback.
Special thanks to our Volunteers For Salesforce pilot groups:
Oregon Environmental Council
People for Puget Sound
Mountains to Sound Greenway
Will this free application be available to all nonprofits with Salesforce?
EM: Yes! It is designed to work with both the Nonprofit Starter Pack as well as all standard editions of Salesforce.
The beta release of Volunteers for Salesforce is expected in late March 2011. If you are interested in being notified when it's available for install please let us know.
