1. Getting Started on the
Volunteer Michigan
Partner Portal
For AmeriCorps Members and Host Sites
2. Today’s Agenda
1. Overview of the Volunteer Michigan Portal.
2. Registering and Getting Started.
3. Managing your organization and personal
information.
4. Creating Volunteer Opportunities.
5. Managing Existing Opportunities.
6. Managing Volunteers for Each Occurrence.
7. Using the Connection Grid to Verify Attendance.
3. Volunteer Michigan
• Volunteer Michigan is a program founded in partnership
between the Michigan Community Service Commission and
the Michigan Nonprofit Association’s Volunteer Centers of
Michigan.
• The Volunteer Michigan Initiative began in 2009, using a multi-
year grant from the Volunteer Generation Fund.
4. Volunteer Centers of Michigan
• The Volunteer Centers of Michigan is an organization affiliated
with the Michigan Nonprofit Association, which serves a
statewide network of 28 Volunteer Centers serving 43
Michigan counties.
• For more information about the Volunteer Centers of
Michigan, visit www.mivolunteers.org
5. Volunteer Michigan Portal
• The Volunteer Michigan initiative provided support for the
technology infrastructure of several local Volunteer Centers.
• MCSC and VCM also built a state-wide volunteer management
system, known as Volunteer Michigan.
• The Volunteer Michigan website:
– Connects volunteers to opportunities in their local communities.
– Serves nonprofits in areas without a local Volunteer Center.
6. Volunteer
Centers in
Michigan
• Volunteer Michigan aggregates
opportunities from certain Volunteer
Centers.
• Many Volunteer Centers use technology
that does not have the ability to aggregate
to Volunteer Michigan.
• Opportunities visible in Volunteer Michigan
also aggregate from allforgood.org
8. • A nonprofit organization can easily register for an
account at www.volunteermichigan.org.
• It is recommended that a staff member who is
responsible for coordinating volunteers registers their
organization’s account – this will be the “primary
contact”.
• Any other staff members who wish to coordinate events
and manage volunteers for the organization may be
added by the primary contact.
Registering a Nonprofit Account
13. Once we approve your
organization as a partner,
the primary contact will
receive an e-mail with a
temporary password for
their account.
Go back to the Volunteer
Michigan portal and click
“Login” to enter the
username and password.
Change your password
14. Navigating Your New Partner Account
Manage your organization’s
information
Create and Manage
Volunteer Opportunities
Interact with your
Volunteers
15. The Account
Management
Page
1. Only the Primary Contact can edit
the organization’s basic information.
2. Choose a Default Opportunity
Coordinator.
16. The Account
Management
Page
3. Add new Staff Contacts who can
manage opportunities.
4. Staff can add new Locations where
they will host volunteer opportunities.
17. The Opportunity
Management Page
In the Opportunities Menu, you can:
• Manage any of your existing
Volunteer Opportunities.
• Create new Volunteer Opportunities.
• View and edit your organization’s
existing Opportunity Locations.
18. The Manage Volunteers Page
In the Volunteers Menu, you can:
• View the records of individual
volunteers.
• Verify your volunteer’s attendance
and hours of service.
• Clicking on a volunteer’s name will
open the Volunteer Detail page,
which includes:
• Contact, Demographic, and
Volunteer Information.
• A Volunteer History grid.
• The volunteer’s skills.
• Teams the volunteer is
associated with.
• Answers to custom questions
created in your opportunities.
20. Types of Opportunities You Can Create!
Is your opportunity a project or an activity?
– A Project is a volunteer opportunity that will result in service
hours recorded for the participants.
– An Activity is any other event you would like to track, including:
• Recognition Events
• Training
• Academy
• Social
How do you want volunteers to register for your event?
– Ongoing vs. Date & Time Specific
– Sign-Up vs. Express Interest
• Ongoing Opportunities are always “Express Interest”.
21. Scenario 1: An Ongoing, Express
Interest Volunteer Project
When to use this kind of opportunity:
• When you need volunteers whenever they are available
each day.
• When the volunteers can come and go independently in
a certain time period.
• When you would like to track volunteers who participate
regularly with a variety of start and end times.
You can schedule an individual volunteer multiple times for this type
of Volunteer Opportunity, and verify their hours all in one place!
22. Step 1: What is the Opportunity?
In this first part, provide basic information
about your opportunity:
1. Name the Opportunity
2. Choose Impact Areas.
3. Describe your Opportunity
4. Is this Opportunity a project or an
activity?
5. Is this a Disaster Related Opportunity?
6. Select the kinds of Tasks volunteers will
be expected to perform.
7. Select a Local Program Area if your
Opportunity affects an AmeriCorps
Service Area.
23. Step 2: When would you like volunteers?
1. Start Date and End Date – we
recommend not setting the end date
more than 6 months in advance.
2. Specify the days and times when you
need volunteers.
3. Registration Start Date – when can
volunteers begin registering?
24. Step 3: Where is the Opportunity Located?
Here you define WHERE the opportunity
will take place.
• Lookup existing locations, or
• Click “Create New” to create a new
location record for your organization.
When you create a new location:
• Give it a ‘name’ so you can recall it for
future use.
• You can use the Special Directions field
to give volunteers additional information
about the location.
25. Step 4: Who is Involved
in the Opportunity?
1. Opportunity Coordinator
2. Minimum/Maximum # of Volunteers
3. Ages Served, Genders Served, Population
Served
4. Minimum Age and Maximum Age
5. Groups, Court Ordered, Senior and RSVP
6. Associate Skills with your Opportunity
26. Adding Skills to an Opportunity
For “express interest” opportunities, like
this one, volunteers can still express
interest in an opportunity, even if you
indicate that the skills are required.
This allows you to review the volunteers
and decide for yourself if they are a
good fit.
27. Step 5: Adding Custom Questions
In this step, you have the option to create questions that
will be asked in the signup process.
There are seven different types of questions you can
choose to create.
• Question: put the exact text of your question.
• Order: We recommend ranking questions using 10,
20, 30 etc. to make it easier to change the order of
questions later.
• Is this question required?
28. Step 6: Review and Submit!
Review the information you’ve entered.
Note: It is often easier to make
adjustments to an opportunity or
individual occurrence once it has been
approved, rather than going back and
re-entering information in the
Opportunity Wizard.
29. If everything looks satisfactory, click on
the SAVE button at the bottom to finish
creating your opportunity and submit it
for approval to Volunteer Michigan.
You’ll see a Success screen when the
opportunity has been submitted!
31. Scenario 2: A Date & Time Specific
Sign-Up Type Volunteer Project
When to use this kind of opportunity:
• When you need a certain number of volunteers to be scheduled
to attend at the same time on one or more days.
(Ex: You need 5 volunteers every Wednesday from 2pm to 5pm.)
• When you would like to create either one occurrence (for a one
time event), or multiple occurrences (for a recurring event).
• When you want volunteers to just sign-up for the opportunity
without your staff needing to screen the volunteers and confirm
their ability to participate.
Next, we’ll discuss what questions you will need to
answer to create a Date & Time Specific Opportunity.
32. Step 1: What is the
Opportunity?
• The first page of the opportunity wizard looks
the same for any type of project or activity you
create.
33. 1. Is this an Ongoing or Date and Time
Specific opportunity?
2. Does the opportunity take place on a
regular schedule?
Best Practice: Never schedule further
than 6 months
3. You can set monthly, weekly, or daily
recurrence patterns.
4. How many hours before the
occurrence starts do you want to
close registration?
5. When can people begin registering?
6. What registration type is it?
• Sign Up
• Express Interest
Step 2: When would you like volunteers?
34. Step 3: Where is the Opportunity Located?
Here you define WHERE the opportunity will take place.
• If this is a location you’ve created before, you can look it up using the magnifying glass to
the right of the location field.
• If there are occurrences that will take place at different locations, you can assign locations
by individual occurrence.
35. Step 4: Who is Involved in the
Opportunity?
1. Opportunity Coordinator
2. You can assign a different member of
your staff as the Opportunity
Coordinator for separate occurrences.
3. Minimum/Maximum # of Volunteers:
4. You can individually assign the
minimum and maximum number of
volunteers needed for each
occurrence.
5. View all of the occurrences you’re
creating
36. 6. After you select the occurrences you
would like to modify (above), enter either
the minimum or maximum # of
volunteers needed for those
occurrences and click “apply to
selected.”
7. Who is served by the opportunity?
8. Define the Minimum and Maximum
Age of Volunteers.
9. Is the opportunity suitable for Groups,
Court Ordered, Senior, and RSVP
(Senior Corps)
10. Associate skills with your opportunity.
37. Step 5: Adding Custom Questions
In this step, you have the option to create questions that
will be asked in the signup process.
There are seven different types of questions you can
choose to create.
• Question: put the exact text of your question.
• Order: We recommend numbering 10, 20, 30 etc. to
make it easier to change the order of questions later.
• Is this question required?
39. You’ll see a Success
screen when the
opportunity has been
submitted!
In this step, you should review the
information you entered.
Note: It is often easier to make
adjustments to an opportunity or
individual occurrence once it has been
approved.
If everything looks satisfactory, click on
the SAVE button at the bottom to finish
creating your opportunity and submit it for
approval to Volunteer Michigan.
40. What Your Opportunity
Looks Like to a
Potential Volunteer
The Opportunity Details page for a Date & Time
specific, Sign Up opportunity includes:
1. The Opportunity Title and Link to Organization
Profile
2. Information about impact area, populations
served, types of volunteer activities, and
requirements for volunteering
3. The Opportunity Description
4. A Share Button – share this opportunity
through social media
5. Sign Up section
6. A link to sign up with a team of volunteers.
42. Opportunity
Management
Page
Inactive, Pending, and Awaiting Approval Opportunities
appear in the lower grid and are not visible on the public site.
Scrolling to the right will show additional columns of
information:
• Schedule Type
• Start Date
• End Date
• # of “active” occurrences (including those from the past
that do not appear on the public site)
The “Active Opportunities Grid”
Mark opportunities “Pending” or “Inactive”
43. The Volunteer Opportunity Detail View
1. View Opportunity on Public Site
2. Edit: Edit buttons appear in various
sections of the opportunity description,
and will take you to the corresponding
step in the opportunity wizard.
When editing an opportunity, make sure
you proceed to step 6 in the opportunity
wizard and SAVE your edits!
44. Opportunity
Management
Page
3. The Edit button in the related skills section is
the correct place to go need to go in order to
add, remove, or edit the skills you associate
with your opportunity.
46. Creating a New
Occurrence
1. Volunteer Opportunity Name
2. Occurrence Date: use the popup calendar, or
enter a date in the format xx/xx/xxxx.
3. Start and End Time: Use the proper format
(example: 7:00 AM).
4. Registration Start Date and Registration
Cutoff (Hours)
5. Minimum Attendance/Maximum Attendance
6. Location
7. Opportunity Coordinator
47. Creating a New
Recurrence
1. Volunteer Opportunity Name and Status
2. Coordinator Information
3. Time/Date Information
4. Recurrence Type: daily, weekly, or monthly?
48. Creating a New
Recurrence
5. Sign Up Information
6. Location Information
7. Description Information: For internal use
only. You can specify a simple description of
what the recurrence is.
Click SAVE at the top of the recurrence wizard to save
the recurrence and all the respective occurrences.
The status will remain in “Pending”.
Click SUBMIT FOR APPROVAL at the top of the
recurrence to submit the recurrence for approval.
This will change the status to “Awaiting Approval”.
50. The Occurrence Detail View
On the Volunteer Opportunity Detail Page, find the
occurrence overview at the bottom of the record,
and click on View/Edit to get to the Occurrence
Detail View.
51. The Occurrence Detail View
1. Click on EDIT to update any details
for this occurrence.
2. Print Check In Sheet – Produces a
Check-In Sheet that you can use to
keep track of attendance.
52. The Occurrence Detail View
3. Volunteer Summary
4. Custom Question Answers
5. Connections Grid
6. Create a Connection/Schedule a
Volunteer
53. Connection Grid Overview
1. The Connections Grid has four ‘tabs” to view
different types of connections
• Confirmed Volunteers
• Waitlisted Volunteers
• Pending Volunteers
• Declined Volunteers
2. Action Buttons allow you to take action on
selected volunteers.
3. Column headings allow you to sort connections
4. Any cell with a thick black border can be edited by
double clicking in that cell.
5. Any changes to individual cells (black boxes) will
give those cells a red border. To save the changes
in individual cells, click “Save Changes”.
54. Using the Connection Grid to Send Email
to Volunteers.
It’s easy to email volunteers individually, or
as a group from the connection grid.
• Any actions you take in the connection
grid start by adding a check box in the
row for the connections you wish to act
upon.
• If you put a checkbox at the top of the
column, it will automatically check All the
connections in that tab of the grid.
Next, click the “Email Volunteers” button.
A popup window presents the default text of a reminder
email for that occurrence, which is automatically
addressed to each of the selected contacts.
• The default text of the email contains “merge fields”
which personalize the email with the details of this
occurrence.
• You can edit the message as much as you like.
• Click SEND to send the email to each of the selected
volunteers.
• When the email is successfully sent, a confirmation
popup appears.
55. How to Add ‘Guest’ Volunteers to an
Occurrence.
You may have registered
volunteers who notify you
that they’ll be bringing
some friends or family
along, and they would
like you to reserve space
for them.
Sometimes volunteers
may show up with
additional people.
You want to track the service hours of these anonymous volunteers, without needing to create
new contacts for “guests,” so you add them to the connection grid as Guest Volunteers.
To track guest service hours, put the number of guests in the guest volunteer column next to
the person who is bringing them.
Do this by double clicking the 0 in the ‘GUEST VOL’ column, and then put in the number. The
box will turn red to indicate the data has been edited.
Click SAVE CHANGES to record the changes to one or more connections.
56. Marking Attendance and Verifying
Service Hours.
To learn about verifying attendance
through the connection grid, let’s go back
to our Ongoing Opportunity, “Food Bank
Office Support”.
To view the ongoing occurrence for this
record, select View/Edit in the Occurrence
Overview.
57. Marking Attendance and Verifying
Service Hours.
At the bottom of the occurrence record,
we find the connection grid.
To mark attendance for volunteers who
registered for your opportunity:
• Place a checkbox next to each
volunteer for which you would like to
confirm the attendance status.
• Select either “Mark as Attended”
or, “Mark as Not Attended.”
Hours for volunteers and guests are
automatically calculated based on the
start and end time of the occurrence.
If a volunteer stays longer, you can edit
the hours field or change the end time
of the connection for that volunteer.
58. “Express Interest” Connections –
Confirming or Declining Volunteers.
A new volunteer, Corey Contributor, has
decided to express interest in our ongoing
opportunity “Food Bank Office Support.”
Organization staff can email Corey to make
sure he meets all of the criteria necessary to
volunteer with the organization.
When a volunteer indicates that they are
interested in participating in an opportunity,
two things happen:
1. The opportunity coordinator receives an
email
2. The volunteer is added to the “Pending
Volunteers” tab of the connection grid in
the Occurrence Detail View.
Once we decide that Corey is able to
volunteer, and we know when he would like
to attend, we check the box next to his
name, and Click “Mark Confirmed”.
59. “Express Interest” Connections –
Confirming or Declining Volunteers.
When Corey is confirmed as a
volunteer, he will be moved to the
“Confirmed Volunteers” Tab.
Double click in the Date box to set the
day he will volunteer. Use the
xx/xx/xxxx format for the date.
Double click in the Start Time and
End Time boxes to indicate what time
he will start and end his service on
that day.
Click Save Changes to save the
changes to Corey’s connection. When
the changes have been saved
successfully, the boxes you changed
will have black borders instead of red
borders.
60. Adding Volunteers to an Occurrence.
You can add any of your existing volunteers
to an occurrence, or schedule them for a To
Be Scheduled Opportunity in two places:
• Click on the “Schedule A Volunteer”
link in the action column of the
Occurrence Overview grid in the
Volunteer Opportunity Detail View.
• Click on the “Create a
Connection/Schedule a
Volunteer” button on the
Occurrence Detail View, near
the Connection Grid.
61. Adding Volunteers to an Occurrence.
Use the Lookup icon to find the
volunteer you would like to schedule.
You can schedule volunteers for:
• an Individual Shift (one-time), or
• a Recurring Shift (repeating pattern)
63. The Volunteer Detail View
The Volunteer History grid gives information about:
• Hours (the total verified hours per occurrence).
• Feedback (the star rating given by the volunteer).
• Decline Reason (if the volunteer was declined for an
opportunity).
• Action: “Go to Occurrence” – which takes you
directly to the occurrence detail page, so you can
update attendance, hours served etc.
65. Verifying Hours for Volunteers
The grid lists any contact, for any
opportunity, that is in confirmed status and
where the occurrence date is in the past.
The top grid contains confirmed volunteers
for your posted opportunities, the bottom
grid will show any unconfirmed self-
reported connections.
Place a checkbox next to each of the
connections who you would like to mark
attendance for and click “Mark as
Attended” or “Mark as Not Attended”.
The “Verify Hours” grid makes it easy to
see outstanding verifications.
66. Questions?
If you have additional questions about the
Volunteer Centers of Michigan, the
Volunteer Michigan portal, or if you need
technical support, please contact:
Shannon McCarthy
Volunteer Michigan Data Coordinator
(517) 335-3407
mccarthys3@michigan.gov
If you have questions about the Volunteer
Michigan Campaign, or want more
information about the use and/or ordering
of campaign materials, please contact:
Marnese Jackson
Volunteer Michigan Outreach Coordinator
(517) 335-4677
jacksonm6@michigan.gov
Editor's Notes
Good Morning!
Thank you for participating in the Volunteer Michigan Partner Portal Pilot Training Webinar.
I am Marnese Jackson the Volunteer Michigan Outreach Coordinator and I have here Shannon McCarthy the Volunteer Michigan Data Coordinator.
The purpose of the pilot will be to test the Volunteer Michigan portal and provide feedback on your experience.
After this webinar you will work with your site host to register your organization, post an opportunity, and manage volunteers
Work with your host sites to register your organization and manage a volunteer opportunity through the Volunteer Michigan portal
Finally, provide feedback and suggestions based on your experience with the training materials and use of the website.
Let’s go over what we’ll be talking about today:
First we’ll discuss what the Volunteer Michigan Portal is, and how it fits into the overall infrastructure of volunteerism in Michigan.
Next, we’ll show you how you can register your organization, and how to navigate some of the basic features of the partner portal.
We’ll demonstrate how you can manage your organization’s profile and your personal information.
Then, we’ll discuss how you can create Volunteer Opportunities using an easy six-step process in the Volunteer Opportunity Wizard.
We’ll go over how to manage existing opportunities in the partner portal, and
We’ll also talk about how you can use Volunteer Michigan to manage your organization’s volunteers.
When volunteers participate in your opportunities, you’ll want to go back into the portal and confirm who was there, and who wasn’t. We’ll talk about how to mark attendance and close out your opportunities.
At the end of this presentation, we will send you this PowerPoint, our Nonprofit User Guide, as well as a link to a brief survey, which will help us understand how your experience with using the Volunteer Michigan system went. We appreciate your participation in this pilot, as well as your feedback.
Volunteer Michigan is a program founded in partnership between the Michigan Community Service Commission and the Michigan Nonprofit Association’s Volunteer Centers of Michigan.
In 2009, the Michigan Community Service Commission secured a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Volunteer Generation Fund. In partnership with the Volunteer Centers of Michigan, we built the Volunteer Michigan initiative.
The goal of this initiative is to increase the number of volunteers recruited and retained in the state by strengthening the technology infrastructure of Volunteer Centers and developing a culture of volunteerism in Michigan.
The Volunteer Centers of Michigan is an organization affiliated with the Michigan Nonprofit Association, which serves a statewide network of 28 Volunteer Centers serving 43 Michigan Counties.
It is the mission of Volunteer Centers to mobilize people and resources to deliver creative solutions to community problems. Through the convening of organizations, the promotion of community service, and the matching of volunteers to nonprofit programs and events, Volunteer Centers take a leadership role in addressing key issues in Michigan.
Many Volunteer Centers also provide training in Volunteer Management, and can help recruit volunteers for service projects. We encourage members to find their Volunteer Center and engage them as a resource during their year of service.
The website for the Volunteer Centers of Michigan is www.mivolunteers.org. You can visit that website to learn more about Volunteer Centers, and also to find your local Volunteer Center .
Through the Volunteer Generation Fund, the Michigan Community Service Commission provided support for several local volunteer centers to acquire a Volunteer Management system through HandsOn Connect. This system enables local nonprofits to post opportunities, and makes it easy for volunteers to connect to these opportunities and track their activities.
The MCSC and the Volunteer Centers of Michigan also built a state-wide volunteer management system, known as Volunteer Michigan, which serves as a central location for volunteers to find opportunities from many Volunteer Center databases across Michigan.
Volunteer Michigan serves directly as a volunteer management system for areas of the state where there is not a local Volunteer Center.
In Michigan, there are 28 local Volunteer Centers who serve their communities and connect volunteers to the nonprofits who need them. These centers offer a variety of Volunteer Management systems for nonprofits to use to manage their volunteers and projects.
The Volunteer Michigan website is able to aggregate opportunities from certain Volunteer Management systems, but many of the Volunteer Centers use systems that do not populate opportunities into the Volunteer Michigan portal.
On this map, green colored counties are served by a volunteer center whose opportunities already populate the Volunteer Michigan portal. If an organization uses these volunteer centers, their Volunteer Opportunities are automatically copied to the Volunteer Michigan website, and receive a state-wide audience. The UP Volunteer Network is comprised of three volunteer centers that serve the entire Upper Peninsula using a single Volunteer Management System.
The Counties in Blue on this map indicate Volunteer Centers who either use a Volunteer Management System that does not automatically populate to the Volunteer Michigan website, or do not offer any kind of Volunteer Management system. For these blue counties, the Volunteer Michigan Website is an additional resource for nonprofits to recruit and manage volunteers, and track participants for their opportunities.
The counties that appear in White are not currently served by a local Volunteer Center. Nonprofits in these counties are served directly by the Volunteer Michigan virtual volunteer center.
If anyone has questions about the background of Volunteer Michigan, please feel free to type them into the chat window, and we’ll answer them as soon as we can.
Let’s talk about how you can register your nonprofit host-site in the Volunteer Michigan Portal.
Nonprofit organizations can easily create an account on the Volunteer Michigan website by going to www.volunteermichigan.org, and clicking on “Submit” . This will bring you to the “Organization Sign Up” page
It is recommended that a staff member who is responsible for coordinating volunteers registers their organization’s account – this will be the “Primary Contact”
Any other staff members who wish to coordinate events and manage volunteers for the organization may be added by the primary contact, once the organization is approved.
Also, the Primary Contact can easily transfer the Primary Contact Designation to any other staff member in the organization if needed. Volunteer Michigan staff can also make this transfer if the primary contact leaves the organization without completing the transfer.
When you go to www.volunteermichigan.org , you’ll be greeted by the Volunteer Michigan Campaign splash page, which can direct you to various areas of the website. A nonprofit organization wishing to register on the public site can click “SUBMIT” to reach the organization signup page.
From this page, you can also access our Volunteer Michigan Campaign Assets. These marketing materials were developed to help local organizations promote their volunteer opportunities and help build a culture of Volunteerism in the state of Michigan. For more information on the Volunteer Michigan Campaign, and how you can leverage these materials to recruit more volunteers, please attend our AmeriCorps Week webinar on next Tuesday or Wednesday. The link to the AmeriCorps Week webinar will be sent to participants after this training.
On the Organization Signup Page, you can provide the basic information about your nonprofit organization.
This information is used to automatically create a public profile where volunteers can get a link to your website, and view your mission statement, what impact areas and population your organization serves, and your organization’s logo.
Items marked with a blue asterisk are required, but we encourage organizations to fill their profile out as completely as possible.
In the lower half of the organization signup page, you can provide the contact information of the individual who will be serving as the primary contact for the organization. This person is responsible for managing and updating the organization’s profile page. The email that is entered will be the contact’s username when the login to the website
The “Submit” button automatically sends an email to the Volunteer Michigan administrator, who will approve the organization.
When your organization submits their information, you’ll see this “success” page, and an email is sent to the organization’s primary contact.
We strive to approve organization partner requests within 3 business days, and we may reach out to the primary contact for more information if needed.
Once we approve your organization as a partner, the primary contact will receive an email with a temporary password for their account.
Go back to connect.volunteermichigan.org and click “login” to enter your username and the temporary password.
The system will prompt you to change your password. A good strong password is something you can remember, but is not easy to guess.
When you first log into the Volunteer Michigan portal, you will be brought to the “Volunteer Management” home page.
Using the navigation items, you can:
Manage your organization’s information.
Create and manage volunteer opportunities
Interact with your volunteers by:
Viewing the contact information for anyone who has registered with your organization
Scheduling shifts for your volunteers.
And verifying hours for individuals who have served your organization.
When you click on the “Account” menu, you are brought to the “Organization Information” page.
On this page:
The primary contact can update the organization’s basic contact information and mission statement.
The primary contact can also update the “Default Opportunity Coordinator” – this staff member is automatically populated as the opportunity coordinator when you create a new Volunteer Opportunity, though it can easily be changed for each opportunity.
Organization staff can send Volunteer Michigan a request for a new staff member to have access to the portal. We always check with the primary contact before granting organization login access for a new staff person.
Staff can add new locations where they will host volunteer opportunities.
When you click on the “Opportunities” menu, you can:
Manage any of your existing Volunteer Opportunities
Create new Volunteer Opportunities, or
View and edit your location’s existing Opportunity Locations.
You can tell whether an opportunity is available for volunteers to sign up for based on the “Status” of the opportunity:
Active opportunities have been approved, and if there is an occurrence on a future date, the opportunity is available in the portal.
Awaiting Approval means that the opportunity has not yet been approved by Volunteer Michigan.
Pending means the opportunity is still being edited, and has not been submitted for approval
Inactive means that the opportunity has been archived, and is not intended to be published in the Volunteer Portal.
When you click on the “Volunteers” Menu, you are brought to the place where you can view and schedule any individual who has volunteered with your organization.
Clicking on a volunteer’s name will open a page where you can see all of the information for that volunteer, including:
their demographic and contact information.
A volunteer history grid
The skills that the volunteer has indicated they have
Teams the volunteer is associated with.
Answers to any custom questions you have added to your opportunities.
On the “Verify Hours” page, you can see all of your outstanding verifications, and confirm whether volunteers have shown up for the opportunities they registered for.
So let’s talk about how you can use Volunteer Michigan to create a Volunteer Opportunity.
There are two different kinds of opportunities you can create within Volunteer Michigan.
A Project is a volunteer opportunity that provides value to the community. Service hours are awarded to volunteers who participate in Volunteer “Projects”
An Activity is any other event you would like to track registration for, including:
Recognition events – where you can recognize the service your volunteers have provided.
Training – you’ll be asked to further specify what kind of training
Academy – any educational gathering that aims to make a volunteer a better citizen (for example: film series, book club, discussion group)
Social – Any outing that is just for fun
You can select “Other” for any opportunity that does not fall into one of these other categories.
You can create either an Ongoing (also known as To Be Scheduled), or a Date and Time Specific opportunity.
You can have volunteers simply “Sign Up” for the project, or, if you have screening requirements for volunteers, you can ask them to “Express Interest,” which will send the opportunity coordinator an email with that volunteer’s contact information.
Ongoing opportunities are always “Express Interest” because you will need to arrange a time for the volunteer to come in.
Let’s go through a couple of scenarios to help you get familiar with how to create a Volunteer Opportunity.
For the first scenario, we’ll create an Ongoing, Express Interest Volunteer Project
The best time to use this kind of opportunity is:
When you need volunteers whenever they are available each day.
When the volunteers can come and go independently in a certain time period
For example: if volunteers can come and go anytime on Monday – Friday between 9am and 5pm
When you would like to keep track of volunteers who participate regularly with a variety of start and end times.
An ongoing opportunity has only one “Occurrence”, which you can connect an individual to multiple times over the course of the opportunity.
In the first step of the Volunteer Opportunity Wizard, you are asked to begin describing your opportunity:
First, give the opportunity a descriptive name that will make it easy for volunteers to understand what the opportunity is about
Next, choose from a picklist of impact areas. This will help volunteers narrow their search and find your opportunity.
In the Opportunity Description, give as much detail as you can about the a volunteer will be doing. This is a description of the opportunity itself, to help volunteers determine if this is something they wish to volunteer for.
Define if the opportunity is a Project or an Activity?
Projects provide value to the community and earn service hours
Activities are other things, and if selected, you’ll be asked what type of activity it is. There are four kinds of Activities
Recognition events
Training
Academy – which is any educational gathering
Social – which could be any outing that is just for fun
Is this opportunity disaster related? If so, is it related to disaster preparation or response?
What kinds of tasks will volunteers perform? You can choose as many items from the list as you like.
Local Program Area – Choose an AmeriCorps program impact area, if one applies.
In the second step, you’ll give information about WHEN the opportunity takes place:
We’ll say this is an Ongoing Opportunity. In an ongoing opportunity we put out a call for volunteers in general terms, and then we work with our volunteers to schedule WHEN they will volunteer after they have expressed interest.
The Start and End dates determine when the opportunity appears on the public site, and when it should end. We recommend setting the end date no more than 6 months in advance. When the end date approaches, you’ll get a reminder email, and you can go back into the opportunity and extend the end date. This ensures the opportunity details are always up to date.
Specify the days and times you need volunteers. These are not time specific, but allow you to describe if you need volunteers in the morning, afternoon, or evening, by day.
If the registration start date is left blank, volunteers can register for the opportunity as soon as it is approved and published in the Volunteer Michigan portal. Put in a date if you would like your opportunity to appear on the site, but not allow people to register until a future date.
In step 3, we define WHERE the opportunity will take place.
In this step, you can choose from a location your organization already has on file by looking up using the magnifying glass to the right of the location field.
If your opportunity takes place at a new location, you can click “Create New” to create a new location record for your organization. You’ll be able to retrieve this location and use it for future opportunities.
When you create a new location, you’ll be asked to:
Give the location a name that you can use to identify it in the future.
Fill out the address of the location
Indicate any special directions you would like to provide to registered volunteers. This could include parking instructions, or instructions to get into the building.
Based on the address you provide, a google map will be automatically created and added to the location record.
Step 4 asks you to define details about the people involved in the opportunity
The Opportunity Coordinator is the person on your staff who will be the main point of contact for the volunteers, and will supervise them during the event. You can use the magnifying glass to look up any of your existing staff, or click the CREATE button to add a new staff contact.
Minimum and Maximum # of volunteers needed. The minimum number is optional, and the Maximum number determines the cutoff for the number of confirmed volunteers.
The Ages Served, Genders Served, and Population Served fields help volunteers understand who is being served by the opportunity, and can help narrow down search results.
The Minimum Age of Volunteers can be indicated to let volunteers know what ages the opportunity is appropriate for. You can also indicate whether adults can bring a younger volunteer if they are supervised. Maximum Age is an optional field.
Indicate whether the opportunity is appropriate for Groups, Court Ordered Volunteers, or RSVP (Senior Corps) Volunteers. These fields help volunteers find opportunities that are appropriate for their needs.
You have the option to associate particular skills with your opportunity, and you can also indicate whether these skills are required in order to participate.
When you click the ADD Skills Button, you can indicate skills that are useful for volunteers to have in order to participate in the opportunity.
A popup window lets you choose the skill category, find the skill you’re looking for, and indicate the level of experience needed.
For Ongoing opportunities like ours, If the box next to “Yes, these skills are required to participate” is checked, volunteers without these skills will still be able to express interest in your opportunity. It is up to you to look at the volunteer’s details and determine if they are a good fit for your project.
You have the option to create as many custom questions as you like. Volunteers are asked these questions as part of the sign-up process.
There are seven different types of questions you can create in order to specify how volunteers will answer the questions.
To create a question:
Fill in the exact text of the question that you would like volunteers to see.
Indicate which order you want the question to be asked. Because questions are asked in the order they’re ranked, we recommend numbering your questions using 10, 20, 30 etc. rather than 1, 2, 3. Questions can be reused in other opportunities, so later, if you want to rearrange the questions, or add another question between two others, you can use the number 15 to place a question between 10 and 20, rather than needing to re-number all of your questions.
Say whether volunteers are required to answer the question in order to register.
For question types where users can pick one or more answers, you’ll see a place where you can list the answer options, with one option per line.
If you decide that you would rather remove the question from the opportunity, you can accomplish this by clicking “make inactive” in the custom questions section.
In the final step, you can review all of the information you have included in the Opportunity, and make any adjustments before you submit it to Volunteer Michigan for approval.
If you notice something that needs to be changed, it is often easier to make adjustments to the opportunity or individual occurrence once it has been approved, rather than going back to a previous step in the Opportunity Wizard and having to re-enter a lot of information in subsequent steps.
If everything looks satisfactory, click on the “Save” button a the bottom to finish creating your opportunity. This will send a notification to the Volunteer Michigan staff. We will either approve your opportunity for posting to the Volunteer Michigan website, or contact the opportunity coordinator for more information if needed before we approve the opportunity.
You will see a “success” page when you have successfully submitted the opportunity.
From here, you can either create another opportunity, or go to the Opportunity Management page to manage your existing opportunities.
When a volunteer finds your opportunity in the Volunteer Michigan Portal, this is what they will see.
For an Ongoing or Express Interest opportunity, volunteers see the basic information about the opportunity that they need to determine whether this is an opportunity they are interested in volunteering for.
Volunteers can click “Express Interest” to send the opportunity coordinator an email notification with their contact information.
When the opportunity coordinator approves a volunteer’s participation in the opportunity, the location information associated with the opportunity is automatically sent to the .
Another kind of opportunity you can create in Volunteer Michigan, is a Date and Time Specific, Sign Up Type Volunteer Project.
Date and Time specific opportunities are great when you need a certain number of volunteers to be scheduled to attend at the same time on one or more days.
For example, if you need 5 volunteers every Wednesday from 2pm – 5pm
With Date and Time specific opportunities, you can create either one occurrence (for a one time event), or multiple occurrences, if the opportunity occurs more than once.
Sign Up type opportunities allow volunteers to just sign up for the opportunity, without your staff needed to screen the volunteers and confirm their ability to participate.
Let’s go over what questions you will need to answer in order to create a Date and Time Specific Opportunity.
Regardless of the type of opportunity you’re creating, the first step always looks the same.
Make sure you provide all of the necessary details for a volunteer to determine whether this opportunity is something they want to participate in, and define whether the opportunity is a Project (which awards service hours), or an Activity (which does not award service hours to volunteers).
In the second step, we indicate that this opportunity is NOT an Ongoing Opportunity.
This opportunity will take place on a regular schedule, so we’re prompted over what period of time we wish to create multiple occurrences.
It’s always best to schedule occurrences no more than 6 months out. This ensures that the opportunity is updated if there is staff turnover or if any other details change.
Next, set the parameters for the recurrence. You can set monthly, weekly, or daily recurrence patterns. In this case, our opportunity will occur weekly on Fridays. All occurrences should have the same start time and end time.
You can indicate how many hours before the start time you would like to close the volunteer registration. If this is left blank, volunteers will be able to register right up until the time the opportunity starts.
By default, people can register for the opportunity as soon as it is approved and published. Leave this blank if that’s your desire. Put in a date is you wish it to appear on the site but not allow people to register until a future date.
What registration type is it?
Sign Up – You define how many volunteers you need, and the volunteers are automatically confirmed if they meet the age restrictions you will assign. When you reach the maximum number of volunteers, registration will be closed, and volunteers can choose to be added to a waitlist.
Express Interest – in this registration type, volunteers are added in “pending” status, and the opportunity coordinator needs to review their connection and either confirm or decline the volunteer. Use this registration type if you need to screen volunteers.
Define WHERE the opportunity will take place
You can either lookup a location your organization has already created, or create a new location.
If you’re creating multiple occurrences like we are in this example, you can assign different locations if the occurrences do not all occur at the same location.
If you wish to assign different locations to certain occurrences, select the occurrences you want to associate with a specific location, and then either lookup the location you want to assign or create a new location, and click “Apply to Selected” to assign the location to those occurrences.
Then, select the remaining occurrences you wish to assign to a different location and follow the same process to assign a location to those occurrences.
It Is Important to Make Sure Each Occurrence Has A Location Selected Before Going On To The Next Step
This can be used if, for example, you have a gardening group that works at a different community garden each week.
Next, we define who is involved in the opportunity.
The Opportunity Coordinator is the main point of contact for this opportunity.
If all of the occurrences are coordinated by the same person, that field will be automatically populated for all of the occurrences. You have the option to individually assign occurrences to different members of your staff, and you can also add new staff members from this page.
The Maximum # of volunteers determines the cutoff number of confirmed connections allowed.
After this number of volunteers have registered for the event, unregistered volunteers will have the option to be added to a waitlist, and they will be notified in the order they signed up if registered volunteers cancel their participation.
If all of the occurrences require the same number of volunteers, this field will be automatically populated. You also have the option to individually assign the minimum and maximum number of volunteers needed for each occurrence.
Review all of the occurrences you are creating, and make sure you have the appropriate opportunity coordinator and number of volunteers assigned for each occurrence. Select the check box for any occurrence that you would like to modify.
After you select the occurrences you would like to modify, enter either the maximum or minimum number of volunteers needed for those occurrences and click “apply to selected”.
The Ages, Genders, and Populations Served picklists give potential volunteers information about what populations will be served by this opportunity.
You can set the age parameters for the opportunity to restrict who can sign up.
Indicate if the opportunity is appropriate for group of volunteers, for court ordered volunteers, and for Senior Corps members.
Associate skills with your opportunity the same way you would for any type of opportunity. For a Sign-Up type opportunity like this one, if we indicate that the skills are required, volunteers whose skill profile does not match the skills we require will not be able to sign up for the opportunity.
You have the option to create as many custom questions as you like. Volunteers are asked these questions as part of the sign-up process.
There are seven different types of questions you can create in order to specify how volunteers will answer the questions.
To create a question:
Fill in the exact text of the question that you would like volunteers to see.
Indicate which order you want the question to be asked. Because questions are asked in the order they’re ranked, we recommend numbering your questions using 10, 20, 30 etc. rather than 1, 2, 3. This will make reordering your questions easier in the future.
Say whether volunteers are required to answer the question in order to register.
For question types where users can pick one or more answers, you’ll see a place where you can list the answer options, with one option per line.
If you decide that you would rather remove the question from the opportunity, you can accomplish this by clicking “make inactive” in the custom questions section.
In the final step, make sure all of the details you entered are correct.
If you notice that something minor needs to be changed, it is easier to submit the opportunity and then go back an edit it once it has been approved, rather than going back into the Opportunity Wizard and re-entering information in each of the steps.
When the opportunity is submitted successfully, you’ll see a “Success” page, which gives you the option to create another opportunity, or go back to the “Opportunity Management” page.
Volunteers who view a Date and Time Specific, Sign Up type Opportunity will see the Opportunity Details page, which includes:
The Opportunity Title, and a link to the organization’s website (when available) and profile page.
Information about the issues, populations, type of volunteer activity, and requirements for volunteering.
The Opportunity Description, which was created at the beginning of the Opportunity Wizard.
A Share button, which allows volunteers (or you!) to share the opportunity through many different social media platforms
A sign up section, which gives the date and time information about each occurrence, with a signup link to volunteers can register for the occurrences they would like to volunteer for.
A link to sign up with a team of volunteers.
Once you have created a Volunteer Opportunity, you have the ability to actively manage that opportunity through your Volunteer Michigan account.
In order to manage your Organization’s volunteer opportunities, visit the “Manage Opportunities” page in the “Opportunities” menu.
Here, you can add additional occurrences and recurrences to your organization’s opportunities, as well as make changes to the details of Volunteer Opportunities, or specific occurrences.
The “Active Opportunities Grid” shows opportunities that are active and have at least one occurrence with an end date in the future.
You can make opportunities “pending” if you would like to temporarily remove them from the public portal, or “inactive” if you want to permanently archive them and remove them from the portal.
We recommend not making opportunities “inactive” if there are volunteers signed up for a future occurrence, as the system will not notify the volunteers that you have made the opportunity inactive. We’ll go over how to properly cancel an opportunity in a few minutes.
Scrolling to the right will give you more information about the opportunities.
Opportunities that are Inactive, Pending, or Awaiting Approval appear in the lower grid, and are not visible to volunteers in the Volunteer Michigan Portal.
Let’s click “View/Edit Details” to see the Opportunity Detail view for the Date and Time Specific Opportunity we created a moment ago.
In the Volunteer Opportunity Detail View, we can see the details of the opportunity we’ve created, as well as edit the details for this opportunity and it’s occurrences.
Once the opportunity has been approved and the search index has been refreshed so the opportunity is visible in the Volunteer Michigan Portal, we can click “View Opportunity on Public Site” to open the opportunity sign-up page as a potential volunteer sees it.
Edit buttons appear in various places in the Opportunity Detail View. Clicking on these “Edit” buttons will take you to the appropriate step in the opportunity wizard. Once you’ve made any changes to the opportunity, make sure you proceed to step 6 and click “SAVE” to save your edits.
The “Edit” button in the related skills section is where you need to go in order to add, remove, or edit the skills you’ve associated with your opportunity. You can also edit whether the skills are required in order for a volunteer to register.
The Occurrence Overview section allows you to edit the individual occurrences you’ve created with this opportunity.
You can update the Opportunity Coordinator or the # of volunteers for all of the occurrences by clicking “Edit Coordinator/# of Volunteers”
Clicking “Edit Location” will take you to a screen where you can edit the location information for all of your upcoming occurrences.
The Occurrence Overview Grid shows you all of the existing occurrences that have been created for this Opportunity. You can perform the following actions on individual occurrences from here:
Schedule a Volunteer allows you to schedule any of your organization’s existing volunteers for this occurrence.
View/Edit allows you to view the exiting occurrence record, print the check-in sheet for that occurrence, and/or edit the occurrence record details. You can also see and interact with the volunteers who have signed up or expressed interest in the opportunity here.
If you click “Cancel”, the occurrence will be cancelled, and the volunteers who had signed up for the occurrence will automatically be emailed to notify them that the occurrence has been cancelled.
If the occurrence is still in “Pending” status, this button will submit the occurrence to the Volunteer Michigan staff for approval. Only occurrences that have been approved are visible on the Public Site.
The “Add Occurrence” button can be used to add a single occurrence to the opportunity
Click “Add Recurrence” if you want to add a recurring pattern of new occurrences to the opportunity.
The View/Add Skills button does to an older, less efficient interface for working with skills and will soon be removed. Please ignore that button.
If you would like to add a single occurrence to your Volunteer Opportunity, you’ll be taken to this form, where you can fill in the details of the occurrence, including:
The Opportunity you’re creating the occurrence for
The Date that the occurrence will take place
What the start and end time of the occurrence is
The Registration Start Date, and when you would like to close registration to volunteers
The Minimum and Maximum number of volunteers. If this is left blank, the defaults from the opportunity will be brought over.
The default location is automatically populated, but you can change it, or create a new location if needed.
The default Opportunity Coordinator is populated, but you can look up other staff members who can be the opportunity coordinator, or request that a new staff member be added to your organization from here.
Click Save and New, or Save and Return, to submit your occurrence to Volunteer Michigan for approval.
To create a new Recurrence for an existing opportunity, fill in the necessary details for the new recurrence, including:
The Volunteer Opportunity Name (which is brought over from the Opportunity record).
The Opportunity Coordinator – if individual occurrences need different coordinators, you’ll need to edit those occurrences after they have been created.
Specify the date range of your recurrence, and the start and end time for the occurrences.
Set the parameters for the recurrence here. You can set daily, weekly, or monthly recurrences and specify the days of the week they will occur.
In the Sign Up Information Section, indicate when volunteers can begin registering for the occurrences, and the number of volunteers needed for the occurrences.
Location information: The default information is brought over from the Opportunity record, but you can look up other locations or create a new location. If the occurrences take place at different locations, go back and edit the occurrences after they have been created.
The Description Information field is for internal user only and is not visible to volunteers. Here you can create a simple description of what the recurrence is.
Click SAVE at the top of the recurrence wizard to save the recurrence and all respective occurrences. At this point the status will remain in “Pending”.
Then, click “SUBMIT FOR APPROVAL” at the top of the recurrence form to submit the recurrence for approval. If the recurrence is successfully submitted, the status will change to “Awaiting Approval”.
As volunteers Sign Up or Express Interest in your opportunities, you’ll need to manage your interactions with those volunteers. Next, we’ll talk about the different ways you can use Volunteer Michigan to communicate with your volunteers.
Volunteers sign up for the Occurrences associated with each Opportunity, and It is in the Occurrence Detail View that you can view and interact with the volunteers that have signed up to participate in opportunities with your organization.
To reach the Occurrence Detail View, go to the bottom of the Opportunity Detail View, find the occurrence you would like to manage, and click View/Edit.
Click on “Edit” to update any details for this occurrence. If you change the date and time that the occurrence starts and/or ends, volunteers who have been confirmed to attend will be automatically notified that a change has been made to the occurrence that are signed up for.
When the occurrence is coming up, you can Print a Check In Sheet which will list all registered volunteers. This can be used to check in volunteers on-site, so you have a record of who participated in the opportunity.
The Volunteer Summary provides statistics about the occurrence before and after it has taken place.
If the occurrence had any custom questions, and volunteers have given answers to those questions, the answers appear in the Custom Question Answers section.
The Connections Grid is used to see all of the volunteers associated with this occurrence, as well as to report attendance, assign guest volunteers, and send emails. We’ll go over this in detail in a moment.
The “Create a Connection/Schedule a Volunteer” button can be used to schedule any of your organization’s volunteers for the occurrence – we’ll go over this as well.
The Connection Grid is used to interact with volunteers who have registered for an opportunity.
There are four tabs in the Connection Grid, which are used to view different types of connections, including:
Confirmed Volunteers – which are volunteers who have been confirmed to attend an occurrence
Waitlisted Volunteers – shows volunteers who are waiting to be notified if a spot becomes available, in case a confirmed volunteer cancels
Pending Volunteers – shows volunteers who have expressed interest in participating in an opportunity, and are waiting for be confirmed.
Declined Volunteers – shows volunteers who have been declined by the opportunity coordinator, or have removed themselves from the occurrence.
Action buttons along the top of the connection grid allow you to interact with volunteers. Check the boxes to the left of volunteers you want to take action on, then click the appropriate button
You can sort connections by clicking on the column headings. Columns can also be resized by clicking and dragging the edges of the columns.
Any cell with a thick black border can be edited by double clicking that cell.
When you change an individual cell, that cell will get a red border. To save the changes to those cells, click “Save Changes”
Scrolling to the right will reveal more columns with information about the connections.
It’s easy to use the connection grid to email volunteers, either individually, or as a group.
Any actions you take in the connection grid begin with you adding a check box on the left side of the row for the connection you wish to act upon.
If you put a check box at the top of the column, it will automatically check all of the connections in that tab of the grid.
Select which volunteers you would like to email, and click the “Email Volunteers” button
A popup window will include the default text of a reminder email for that occurrence, which is automatically addressed to each of the selected contacts.
The default text contains “merge fields” which personalize the email with the details of the occurrence.
You can change the message as much as you like
Click SEND to send the email to each of the selected volunteers.
Once the email has been sent successfully, a confirmation popup appears.
Occasionally, you may have registered volunteers who notify you that they’ll be bringing additional volunteers who have not registered on the Volunteer Michigan portal, and they would like you to reserve space for them.
Sometimes you may have volunteers who just show up with additional people.
You want to keep track of service hours for these anonymous volunteers, without requiring them to register in the portal. To do this, you can add them to the connection grid as “Guest Volunteers”
To track guest service hours:
Double click the 0 in the “GUEST VOL” column next to the name of the person who brought the guest volunteers. The box will turn red to indicate the data ha been edited.
Click SAVE CHANGES to record the changes to one or more connections.
Once an occurrence has taken place, or a scheduled volunteer has participated in their scheduled shift, you’ll want to go back into the occurrence record to verify attendance for the volunteers who registered for your opportunity.
To learn more about how we can verify attendance, let’s go back to the Ongoing Opportunity “Food Bank Office Support," that we created earlier.
To view the ongoing occurrence for this record, we’ll select View/Edit in the Occurrence Overview.
At the bottom of the Occurrence Detail View, we find the connection record
To Mark attendance for volunteers who registered for your opportunity,
Place a checkbox next to each volunteer for which you would like to confirm the attendance status.
Select the attendance status that is appropriate for the volunteer. For volunteers who participated in the opportunity, click “Mark as Attended.” For volunteers who did not participate as scheduled, click “Mark as Not Attended.”
Hours for volunteers and guests are automatically calculated based on the start and end time of the occurrence.
If a volunteer stays longer than they were scheduled, you can edit the hours field or change the end time of the connection for that volunteer. Just be sure to click Save Changes to save any changes you make to fields in the Connection Grid.
For ongoing opportunities, volunteers will “Express Interest” and notify you that you need to get in contact with them and schedule their volunteer shifts.
For this example, a volunteer named Corey Contributor has decided to express interest in our ongoing opportunity “Food Bank Office Support”
When a volunteer indicates that they are interested in participating in an opportunity, two things happen:
First, The Opportunity Coordinator is automatically sent an email notifying them that someone has expressed interest in the opportunity.
The Volunteer is also added to the “Pending Volunteers” tab in the connection grid in the Occurrence Detail View.
Organization staff can email Corey to make sure he meets all of the criteria necessary to volunteer with the organization, and to find out when he is available to come volunteer.
Once we decide that Corey is able to volunteer, and we know when he would like to come, we can check the box next to his name and click “Mark Confirmed.”
When Corey is confirmed as a Volunteer, he will be moved to the “Confirmed Volunteers” tab.
Double click in the Date box to set the day he will volunteer. Make sure you use the proper format for the date.
Double click the Start Time and End Time boxes to indicate what time he will start and end his service on that day.
Click Save Changes to save the changes to Corey’s connection. When the changes have been saved successfully, the boxes you changed will have black borders instead of red borders.
Corey has now been confirmed and scheduled for his first volunteer shift!
You can add any of your organization’s existing volunteers to an occurrence, or schedule them for an Ongoing opportunity in two places:
Click on the “Schedule a Volunteer” link in the action column of the Occurrence Overview list in the Opportunity Record, or
Click on the “Create a Connection/Schedule a Volunteer” button on the Occurrence Detail View, near the Connection Grid.
This will bring you to the “schedule a volunteer” form.
Use the Lookup icon to find the volunteer you would like to schedule.
You can schedule volunteers for an individual shift or a recurring shift, which is a repeating pattern of shifts. You would use a recurring shift if a volunteer said they would like to serve your organization every Tuesday from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM for the next month.
Save the connection by clicking “Save and Close” or “Save and Schedule Another”.
From the Volunteers Menu, organization staff can view and manage volunteers who have connected to any of their occurrences.
The search field at the top of the page currently only searches one page of search results at a time, and if your organization has many volunteers, this function would not be effective in finding the volunteer you’re looking for.
We recommend that you search for volunteers by scrolling through the list , or alphabetically narrow the list by clicking on a letter which will give you all of the volunteers with that letter as the first letter of their First Name.
The volunteer list tells you basic information about each volunteer. Scrolling to the right reveals more information about your volunteers, including a link to schedule the volunteer for any of your existing occurrences.
If you click on a volunteer’s name, you can view the Volunteer Detail Page for that volunteer.
This gives you all of the information that volunteers have submitted about themselves, as well as their volunteer history.
In the Volunteer History grid, you can see:
The volunteer’s total verified hours per occurrence.
Any feedback the volunteer has given for the opportunity.
If the volunteer was declined for an opportunity, what the reason was.
The action link “Go to Occurrence” takes you directly to the occurrence detail page, so you can update attendance, hours served etc.
If the volunteer has answered any custom questions you have associated with your occurrences, the answers appear under the “Volunteer Opportunity Answers” section.
After an occurrence has taken place, or after one of your ongoing volunteers participates in a scheduled shift, you’ll want to make sure you verify the attendance of volunteers who have served your organization.
Volunteer Michigan allows volunteers to keep a civic transcript, which tracks all of their volunteer activities. Volunteers count on the organizations they serve to help keep their transcript as accurate as possible, and this happens through the verification of service hours.
To make it easy for you to see any outstanding verifications, there is a grid where you can see all of the volunteers who have registered to serve your organization. This is accessed through the “Verify Hours” page in the Volunteers Menu.
This grid lists any contact, for any opportunity that has been approved and where the occurrence date is in the past.
The top grid contains confirmed volunteers for your posted opportunities, and the bottom grid shows any unconfirmed self-reported connections.
Place a checkbox next to each of the connections who participated and click “Mark as Attended”. Then place a checkbox next to the names of volunteers who did not attend occurrences they were scheduled for, and click “Mark as Not Attended”.
*Open the Floor for Questions*
As you work with the staff at your host sites to register your organization and create volunteer opportunities in the Volunteer Michigan Portal, please feel free to contact Shannon McCarthy by phone or email if you have any questions.
If you have questions about the new Volunteer Michigan campaign, and how you can use the campaign materials to promote volunteerism in your communities, please reach out to Marnese Jackson.
Thank you for participating in this Volunteer Michigan training webinar.
As part of this pilot project, we would appreciate it if you would complete in a brief survey to provide your feedback on your experience with Volunteer Michigan once you have successfully registered your organization and posted a volunteer opportunity.
We will provide the link for the survey, along with this recorded webinar, and our Volunteer Michigan Portal Guide.
