When you have many team members and volunteers, it might be challenging to manage them all. What’s even more difficult is keeping them engaged. For the growth of your nonprofit proper community engagement is crucial. This task won’t seem difficult with advanced volunteer management software.
A volunteer management software is a perfect solution for your nonprofit needs. It simplifies many complex tasks that may take too long to complete. So, whether it’s hiring the best talent or assigning the right task to the best candidate, this program will be your go-to option. Furthermore, it aids in automating your workflow, thus it saves time.
Nonprofits need advanced volunteer software that must have certain important features. What exactly are these? Here are a few of them that you must know before you choose any software. With these features effective community engagement will become simpler.
Continue reading to know more!
Volunteer Management Software: Some Essential Features
- User-Friendly Interface:
Many volunteer platforms are available with an intuitive dashboard. This type of dashboard makes this software easy to use for everyone. Moreover, with this user-friendly dashboard, your team will enjoy easy navigation. Thus, give your team members a better image of all your upcoming events and relevant announcements.
- Strong Volunteer Database:
Assigning the right task to the ideal candidate is not possible without knowing all of them well. But knowing everyone one by one and keeping in mind their skills is impossible. With such an advanced platform you get a robust volunteer database. So, maintain all the details of each one of them and include all their crucial information. Apart from their details, the database keeps track of their skills. Moreover, it also keeps all the volunteer profiles well-managed and organized. So, keep your volunteers engaged by assigning them tasks ideal for them.
- Proper Scheduling Tool:
To keep your community engaged you must keep them updated and well-informed about all the events and various types of volunteering activities. That’s why your software must have a perfect scheduling tool. So, choose a volunteer software that comes with an event calendar. With this, your organization will be able to schedule events and shifts. Moreover, scheduling training sessions won’t be difficult with it. With this feature, all your volunteers will be able to check all their shifts and assigned tasks properly. Thus keeping them engaged will be simple and also you can send them more updates.
- Sending Real-Time Updates:
When it comes to engaging your volunteers this software plays a vital role. So, make sure that the one you choose must have some features that enable it to act like an effective communication tool. Thus, you will be able to stay in touch with your team and volunteers. But communication does not mean engaging them via chatting only. Rather sending real-time updates can also help you keep your community engaged. So, choose a software that helps you to send notifications, instant chatting, and sending alerts. These features make it easy to keep them informed about all the recent changes.
- A Proper Resource Library:
Upskilling your team members benefits not just them but also your organization. That’s why you must provide the scope to train your team members whenever needed. So, you must choose a platform that comes with a proper resource library. How will that help? It allows you to give access to training materials, manuals, and resources to upskill your team. Also with onboarding manuals, you can explain to new joiners their roles and the goals of your organization.
- Tracking and Reporting:
Advanced tools like this also have features that let you monitor volunteer contributions. So, ensure that your software has certain built-in tracking and reporting tools. These will help you track the progress of any event that you conduct and will help you analyze the performance of your volunteers. So, it will be easy for you to track data related to volunteer satisfaction and make improvements when needed.
- Easy to Integrate with Other Tools:
Don’t make your final decision without ensuring this crucial point. You must buy a platform that is scalable and can be enhanced by integrating it with other tools. By easy integration, you can improve its capacity and keep your community engaged. Also, you must be able to integrate it with social media platforms and email marketing tools.
Endnote:
Community engagement is not simple without taking the help of technology. That’s why your nonprofit needs the right tool with appropriate features. These features are necessary to let you stay connected with your team no matter how huge it is. Therefore, you must make a list of required features of volunteer software for your organization. Also, consider the points that we have highlighted here for your benefit. Ultimately, you need a perfect strategy to keep your team members and volunteers engaged. With the right software, you will have to put in the least amount of effort. Moreover, you will be able to expect your desired result with the assistance of this software.