Add a Volunteer Status

Posted almost 6 years ago by Jennifer Moran

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Jennifer Moran

I would like to request an upgrade to the site.

Much like there is a status for opportunities (active, inactive, pending), our organization would like to advocate that a volunteer status be added. For example some of the phases of a volunteer's life cycle at the City of Riverside include:

- Applied/under consideration

- Invited to interview

- Not selected (to move forward)

- Background check required

- Waiting to be cleared

- Cleared

- Inactive

For this purpose, I think applied, pending, active, and inactive would suffice.

Thank you for considering this suggestion.

13 Votes

15 Comments

Eli Poulos posted over 4 years ago Admin

Hi Brooke, thanks for reaching out! I can definitely see how this would be useful in sending your volunteers reminders, the main thing to consider on our end would be whether we want to expose email addresses of volunteers who have opted out of notifications on the site.

I will be sure to add this to our enhancement review board and discuss it with the team in our next enhancement meeting!

Thanks for all that you do,

Eli Poulos

0 Votes

Brooke Campbell posted over 4 years ago

Here's another take on the Sterling Volunteers report within the site from the agency manager's view:

As an agency manager I posted a volunteer need that required background checks. I see that 4 volunteers have completed their background check, and while I’m sure the system sent the automatic message to them (only if these volunteers have opted in to receiving messages from Galaxy Digital) reminding them to return to the need to complete their response….none of them have actually done that. My hands, as an agency manager are tied. Well I suppose I could manually look up the email addresses for each of the volunteers in the first screenshot below to send them a personal reminder….but it would be a lot easier if email addresses were included in this report AND I had the option to send an email to them from this screen. Would that be possible?

0 Votes

Eli Poulos posted over 4 years ago Admin

Hi all!

We love when our site managers connect to help each other come up with creative solutions, and this is one of the main reasons why we have a forum!

However, something to be aware of is that we have a wide of variety of different clients with different use cases and goals for their sites. Brooke's site is a Volunteer Center and Andrew's site is a Community Connect, which are set up very differently, and a good answer for one may cause problems for the other.

Our team are all experts in the software and the best ways to accomplish your goals, so if you would like any help with strategy, how to use a feature, or how to come up with a workaround, please reach out to us for this kind of advice at support@galaxydigital.com.

Thank you both for all that you do!

0 Votes

FCACC Volunteer Coordinator posted over 4 years ago

Hey Brooke,

email me at cacc.vol.coord@gmail.com

I can better explain what we have done.

0 Votes

Brooke Campbell posted over 4 years ago

Thanks! While I'm curious to know how the qualifications work around works, I'm also not a fan of work arounds for the sake of our customers. I hope the system can be intuitive enough for our nonprofit agencies to figure out how to use pretty painlessly, without much tech support from my team since they cannot reach out to Galaxy Digital for direct tech support.

0 Votes

FCACC Volunteer Coordinator posted over 4 years ago

Hey Brooke,

I had the same issue and have used the qualifications as a current work around.

0 Votes

Brooke Campbell posted over 4 years ago

Yes, it would be great for volunteers to have a one-stop shop so they can see their background check results without leaving the site. However, I was actually hoping there would be a way for agency managers to see whether a volunteer has already passed a background check. i.e. if an agency manager is looking at a list of volunteers who have responded to one of their needs, is there a tag/ribbon/indicator/column that would show the agency manager which of the volunteers have already passed a background check...even if that particular need did not require a background check.

0 Votes

Catina Swift posted over 4 years ago

Hello! Is there an update to the original request for the addition of a volunteer status?

0 Votes

Eli Poulos posted over 4 years ago Admin

Good morning Brooke!

I think this is a really interesting suggestion. This would likely have to be a new page in the volunteer profile, because there is actually a lot of information that would need to be conveyed to make this useful to the volunteers since each background check package belongs to a specific agency. I will be sure to bring this up to the team, but I want to make sure we aren't doing anything redundant here, or violating any privacy concerns. Is the idea to give the volunteers more of a one-stop shop so they can see their background check results without leaving the site?

0 Votes

Brooke Campbell posted over 4 years ago

We are a volunteer center, so we have hundreds of nonprofit agencies who use our portal. Some of those agencies opt in to a Sterling Volunteers integration so they can use Sterling's services via the Volunteer Houston portal. Similarly, individuals/volunteers can access their own background check through Sterling volunteers. i.e. they have their own user account with Sterling Volunteers. So, is it possible for volunteers to opt in to showing their background check eligibility results with Sterling on their Volunteer Houston profile? Specifically, their results would show up on the GalDig volunteer resume and dashboard.

0 Votes

Eli Poulos posted over 4 years ago Admin

Good morning, Brooke!

This is a really interesting take on this enhancement request, and we'd love to hear more about it! Is the idea here for site managers to be able to download the civic transcript from a user profile, and for the agency manager to be able to view the resumes of volunteers who responded to their needs/opportunities?

Let me know if there is something I'm missing about your workflow, or if you have any specific ideas about how you would like to access this information!

1 Votes

Brooke Campbell posted over 4 years ago

Has Galaxy Digital considered integrating Sterling Volunteer’s new version of their own “volunteer resume” or "civic transcript" into the GalDig platform so we can avoid this problem and streamline the process for volunteers, agency managers and site managers all at the same time?

0 Votes

Eli Poulos posted over 5 years ago Admin

Hi Victoria, thanks for adding your voice here. I will update our enhancement board, and be sure to bring this up in our next enhancements meeting!

1 Votes

Victoria Long posted over 5 years ago

Totally agree with the suggestion above! Currently we are not sure if the volunteer has been contacted or where they might be in the process. This upgrade would really help with the work flow.

1 Votes

Eli Poulos posted almost 6 years ago Admin

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for reaching out! You are not the only one to request a new way to categorize volunteers based on where they are in their volunteerism lifecycle. I will add this to our internal enhancements board, and include this forum post as a reference.

Thank you for your suggestion!

2 Votes