Many organisations rely heavily on volunteers’ commitment and it is important to provide an accurate record of their hours as recognition, as well as reporting to funders and stakeholders.
To collect data on volunteer engagement – when, for how long and the nature of their work – we recommend using
Session Registers. There are other ways to measure this and some of these are featured in this guide. Please do consult with
support@upshot.org.uk for advice on what may work best for your organisation.
Collecting data about Volunteer Engagement on session registers
Within a Register you will find a variety of columns where you can add extra detail about an attendee, for this particular session.
1) Volunteer: Tick this box if an attendee has volunteered at the session. Once ticked you can enter how many minutes they volunteered for, in the text box that appears to the right. This is particularly useful if someone has volunteered before and/or after the session, helping to set up before or clean up after for example.
Note: The number of minutes will default to the duration of the session but can be edited.
2) Volunteer role: With this optional step you can also select multiple roles for a volunteer from the list provided, such as if they
‘Helped set up the session’, ‘Organised/Led part of the session’, ‘Helped with administration’.
3) Volunteer level: an optional ranking for volunteers, which can be determined by individual organisations. For instance, a Level 1 Volunteer may bring along some equipment, whereas a Level 5 Volunteer may be able to run the whole session.
You can also use the set list
Attendee Type which indicates various roles which are separate from
volunteer. For example - some organisations use this list to indicate if this person was a
Session Leader or
Support Mentor. This can be a good way to differentiate different roles played in a session.
For example, it may be helpful from a reporting perspective that volunteers are not classified as part of your total number of participants recorded at a session, but rather as a Session Leader or another role. The default is
Participant and is optional to change to another role.
Once you are happy with your register,
Save or
Submit - saving a register as a
draft means that it does not count towards your statistics, whereas submitting it does. You can amend or
edit saved or submitted registers at any time.
Reporting on Volunteer Engagement via the Attendance Report
The data on volunteering, once submitted on the register can be reported via the Attendance report. Go to Reports > Attendance.
Select
Session Type > Register Session and the
Project, Activity, Activity Type, Location you are looking to report on. Specify the
Session Status for example
Past Sessions Submitted, any Tags that may have been used in the creation of the session or
Date Range required.
For
Data to display option, select either
Volunteer, Volunteer Time, Volunteer Level. Each one is explained below:
Volunteer
Data to display > Volunteer
Volunteer Time
Data to display > Volunteer Time
Volunteer Level
Data to display > Volunteer Level
For more information on the Attendance Report please click here.
Other ways of reporting on Volunteer Engagement
Reporting on who is volunteering via the People Report
It is also possible to report on the people who are volunteering using the
People report (
Reports > People).
Scroll down to the
Attendance section of the
People report and click
Yes for
Attended Sessions.
Leave the
Attendance as filter as
All. Use the second filter down
Hours Volunteered to specify the number of hours (
From and
to). In this example, all those people who have volunteered for more than 3 hours.
Click
Go and the report will be generated to show all those people who have volunteered for the number of hours you have specified.
This can be used in combination with the other filters on your
People Report to understand the demographic details of individuals who are volunteering for example.
Specifying volunteer role in Registration Form fields
Some organisations use a
custom field on their
Registration form to specify the role an individual plays in their work. Often this will include
‘Volunteer’ as an option.
While the
People report could then be used to identify for example demographic details of all those who, on the registration form, are specified by this custom field as a
‘Volunteer’ – it is important to note this does
NOT relate to the information on volunteering gathered in the session registers (see above).
For instance, a person who is a volunteer on their registration form, who attends a session but is not ticked as having volunteered at that session on the register, will not appear on the
Attendance report showing volunteering data.
Collecting data on volunteer engagement in Head count registers
It is possible to confirm numbers of volunteers (and other roles) who attended a specific session, through customised
Head count fields. To find out more about using
Head count registers please refer to the
Head counts guide.
Monitoring volunteer engagement through Measured Indicators
It is possible to monitor the
Number of unique attendees or the
Number of attendances submitted on registers for volunteers by using a
Measured Indicator.
The example below shows an indicator of
Number of unique attendees who have volunteered and been recorded as such on registers. It is also possible to add an indicator of
Number of attendances as a volunteer.
To find out more about using Measured Indicators please refer to the Measured Indicators guide.
Tracking volunteer engagement through Timeline events
It is possible to track milestones for individual volunteers through customised Timeline Events. For example, date-stamped events such as Completed accreditation or Started Volunteering can be recorded on an individual’s profile in their timeline and reported on via the Timeline Events Report.
To find out more about
Timeline Events please refer to the
Timeline Events guide.
Reporting Template - Volunteering
A further way to report on your volunteering information includes a volunteering template that we have designed to be used with data from the Attendance Report, pulling out data about your volunteers and the time spent volunteering.
Click here to download a Reporting Template for reporting on your volunteers.
The pre-built Reporting Template allows organisations to quickly see key stats around their volunteers in a number of ready made tables, such as the below.
The different tabs within the template will provide overall summary information about your volunteers, such as the number of times they have volunteered and their number of volunteering hours and minutes. Additionally, information about volunteers can be broken down by project or activity, as well as looking at specific sessions.
For guidance on how to use the Reporting Template, please see the video below.
Webinar
As part of the Upshot Community Webinar series in 2020 a thirty minute webinar was delivered called ' Question Time.' This focused on common questions received from the Upshot community, including how to Record Volunteers (from 23:30) and can be seen below:
Key Terms
Attendee:
This is a participant, someone who accesses your services. You track your work with attendees through session registers, timeline events, media and surveys.
Sessions:
These are individual occurrences of an activity. You specify the date, time, duration and location of each session.
Registers:
Registers are added to each session so you can record attendance. If you choose to record the names of people that attend this allows you to record the names of all the attendees at a particular session. It also allows you to define the attendee type (e.g. participant, session leader, support worker etc.), whether the attendees have paid for the session, whether they volunteered and how they volunteered. This extra information enhances your reporting capability. If you choose to use a Head count register you can record numbers of people who attended (and other pre-defined count fields as required) but these are not linked to specific profiles.
Measured Indicators:
These provide certain quantifiable metrics that measure the performance of your project in real time. Targets can then be set against this, giving you a visual depiction of how your project is performing.
Timeline Events:
Each attendee on the system has a timeline and you can track points of interest on their journey as "timeline events". These record what has happened or changed with a participant outside of regular session data and can often be viewed as individual outcomes from participating in the project. These events can be customised.
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