Keep track of volunteer activity in Bloomerang CRM to better understand your constituents’ overall engagement. You can add volunteer activity and hours to constituent records.
When you track volunteer activity in Bloomerang CRM, you can:
Cultivate volunteers as prospective donors
Increase engagement, giving, and retention with communication personalized for volunteers
Run reports for volunteer activity and hours
View analytics for the Volunteer group to understand giving trends
See an accurate engagement level for each constituent, which is based on the number of volunteer activity interactions
For volunteer management, consider Bloomerang Volunteer, a robust volunteer management system (VMS) that integrates with Bloomerang CRM. Bloomerang Volunteer manages all aspects of your volunteer program and automatically syncs volunteer data to Bloomerang. For more information about this add-on, see Bloomerang Volunteer.
In this article:
Note: If your organization uses custom fields to track volunteers, and you need assistance, contact Customer Support.
How It Works
Constituent records include two built-in fields for volunteer tracking: Volunteer Activity and Volunteer Hours.
After you enter volunteer activity and hours in constituent records, you can add these fields to report filters. For example, run a report to generate a list of constituents who volunteered for a certain number of hours during a specific time period.
Bloomerang CRM automatically creates a Volunteer group for you, which you manage. Include the Volunteer group in filters for reports, emails, and letters. For example, send messages personalized for different volunteer segments. You might email new volunteers or recent volunteers, or send letters to acknowledge volunteer milestones.
Volunteer tracking with the built-in Volunteer Activity and Volunteer Hours fields does not support custom forms or the legacy volunteer activity form.
Important: If you use Bloomerang Volunteer, do not manually add volunteer activity interactions to constituent records in Bloomerang CRM. Bloomerang Volunteer automatically syncs volunteer activity to Bloomerang CRM. Bloomerang does not sync volunteer activity to Bloomerang Volunteer. Do not use the import tool to import volunteer activities and hours if you use Bloomerang Volunteer.
Edit Volunteer Activity
Bloomerang CRM includes a built-in list of common volunteer activities:
Special Event
Data Entry
Cleaning
You can edit this list so it reflects the volunteer opportunities at your organization.
To edit the volunteer activity list:
Click the Settings Gear icon.
Click Custom Data.
On the Interactions tile, click Select.
The Interaction Fields page opens.
In the Built-in Interactions Fields section, in the Volunteer Activity Interactions list, click Volunteer Activity or Edit.
To add a new value:
From the Available Values list, click New Value.
Type the New Value and click Save.
To rename a value:
Click the down arrow and Edit.
Rename the Value and click Save.
To delete a value, click the down arrow and Delete.
Note: You cannot delete values that are in use. For example, if any constituent timeline includes the Data Entry activity, or any report includes a filter for the Data Entry activity, you cannot delete the Data Entry value.
Enter or Import Volunteer Activity and Hours
After a volunteer completes an activity, enter the activity and hours in Bloomerang CRM. You can manually enter this information or import it.
To manually enter volunteer activity and hours:
Search for the constituent. For search tips, see Search.
In the constituent record, click the down arrow.
Select New Interaction.
The New Interaction page opens.Enter the Date and Subject of the interaction.
From the Purpose drop-down list, select Volunteer Activity.
From the Channel drop-down list, select an option. In most cases, organizations select In Person for volunteer activity.
From the Volunteer Information list, select an activity.
(Optional) In the Volunteer Hours text box, enter the number of hours. You can enter decimal values.
Click Save.
The volunteer activity appears as an interaction on the constituent’s timeline.
To import to the built-in Volunteer Activity and Volunteer Hours fields, use the import tool. Keep in mind the following:
Volunteer hours and activities import only if the Purpose field is Volunteer Activity.
You cannot use the import tool to create new volunteer activities. You must import to existing activities.
If you previously used custom fields to track volunteer activity and hours, and you plan to import to the built-in fields, rename the custom fields to avoid confusion during the import.
Important: Do not use the import tool if you are a Bloomerang Volunteer customer. Use Bloomerang Volunteer to enter or import your data. Data imported to Bloomerang CRM does not sync to Bloomerang Volunteer.
Run Reports
Run reports to understand how volunteers contribute to your organization. Add filters for the built-in Volunteer Activity and Volunteer Hours fields to see volunteer data.
For example, you can run a report that shows the total number of volunteer hours for a certain range of time.
Tip: In the list of report filters, a heart icon indicates built-in interaction fields for volunteers.
To run an interaction report for volunteer activity:
Select Reports.
Click New.
Click Build a Report From Scratch.
Click Interactions.
In the Include section, click Add Filters.
Select one of the built-in volunteer filters: Volunteer Activity or Volunteer Hours.
For Volunteer Activity, select the activity.
For Volunteer Hours, enter the minimum or maximum number of volunteer hours, or both.
To add another volunteer filter, repeat Steps 6–8.
Click OK.
To run a constituent report for volunteer activity:
Select Reports.
Click New.
Click Build a Report From Scratch.
Click Constituents.
In the Include section, click Add Filters.
Select one or more filters.
For example, to see a list of volunteers who volunteered for at least 10 hours last week, select these filters: Has Interactions, The Calculated, Sum, Volunteer Hours. In the Is Between > Zero text box, enter 10.
Related
4 Ways To Turn Volunteers Into Donors in the Bloomerang Blog