The CiviVolunteer extension provides tools for signing up, managing and tracking volunteers. The features for this release focus on volunteering at events, but the design creates a foundation for adding support for volunteering in a wide variety of situations.
After installing the extension using the automated installer from Manage Extensions, you'll see a new Volunteers tab for each event (Manage Events > Configure). Check the 'Enable Volunteer Management' box to get started.
You can then build a list of volunteer shifts by clicking 'Define Volunteer Needs.' Shifts consist of a volunteer role (e.g. Usher, Box Office, etc.) plus a date and time period. For each shift you can specify the number of volunteers required.
Once you've defined your volunteer needs, you can decide to include a volunteer signup form as part of your public event. A "Volunteer Now" button will appear on your event info page (next to the "Register" button). Volunteers can select a shift or let you know that they are available for any shift.
You will need to enable the "CiviVolunteer: register to volunteer permission" if you want to provide self-service signup for anonymous and/or authenticated users. (Joomla users should see Known Issues for more information about permissions.)
The 'Manage Assignments' widget allows you to assign flexible volunteers to shifts, add new volunteers and change shift assignments - all in an easy to use drag-and-drop panel.
Finally, staff can log actual hours worked by each volunteer on a regular basis if needed for funder reports (click "Log Volunteer Hours" from the event's Volunteer tab). Then you can access the new Volunteer Activity Report (Contacts > Contact Reports) to get statistics on volunteering. You can even add that report as a dashlet on your dashboard if you want to keep track of your organization's cumulative volunteering totals.
For versions of CiviCRM prior to and including 4.5, the installer will not create extension-defined permissions for Joomla installations (see CRM-12059). As a result, the "register to volunteer" permission does not appear in Joomla's access control interface. As a workaround (see VOL-71), CiviVolunteer will not create or enforce the "register to volunteer" permission in Joomla installations; Joomla admins won't enjoy the same level of permissions granularity as installations on other frameworks, and the public sign-up form will be accessible to everyone.
For versions of CiviCRM prior to and including 4.4.0, when viewing an existing volunteer activity record, the Need field in the CiviVolunteer custom data set appears as an integer, rather than as user-friendly text. This is fixed in CiviCRM 4.4.1.
Going forward there are some great ideas on the drawing board for phase 2, including specification of qualifications and skill-matching, public recognition/reward, and self-service logging of volunteer hours.
If your organization has invested in a CiviCRM installation, and you foresee a need for CiviVolunteer, consider donating to the ongoing development of CiviVolunteer through the Make it Happen program.
Developers within organizations that would like to use CiviVolunteer are more than welcome to participate in the development and testing effort. Contact us via the project's GitHub repository.