Looking for Great Software for Volunteer Management

November 13, 2012 8:59 AM

Can you all recommend a great volunteer management software for a non-profit? I'm an AmeriCorps volunteer coordinator and we have over 200 volunteers that I have to track, including their hours, activities, etc. If it's a free software, that would be even better. What software have you guys had a great experience with? Thanks!
posted by Kombucha3452 to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

You probably can get SalesForce.com for free, but YMMV whether or not it's helpful. I worked with a non-profit that used it for tracking volunteers but it wasn't really the right solution at least for the situation. However it was free and that was the major appeal.

I'd look into techsoup.org to see what normally not-free software packages are available to NPs either free or drastically discounted.
posted by radioamy at 9:15 AM on November 13, 2012

We have insightly through google apps at my nonprofit. It's a CRM software and although I haven't used it yet (my volunteer project hasn't launched yet), I've been told it will be great for this purpose. There's a free forever version, as well as paid versions, and google aps has a nonprofit rate.
posted by crush-onastick at 9:33 AM on November 13, 2012

I've used CiviCRM in the past and really liked it. It's an open source web app you install on top of a content management software, so unless you have nerds on hand, you might be better served with someone hosting and managing it for you.

I loved how easy it was for our volunteer managers on site to get to it on their smart phones.

It's probably worth noting that I do this kind of stuff for my day job, so the barrier to entry was small for us.
posted by advicepig at 9:48 AM on November 13, 2012

Hi there, I've Volunteer Works at my previous job where we oversaw 300 plus volunteers and had to track their hours. We had it installed at a visitor center where volunteers checked in and out and we could easily run reports of hours, pull mailing lists and helped up plan ahead by selecting profiles of volunteers interested in certain types of activities. I highly recommend it.
posted by i_wear_boots at 9:56 AM on November 13, 2012

I hear a lot of good things about Volgistics.
posted by trillian at 10:12 AM on November 13, 2012

To tie the two comments above me together, I used VolunteerWorks years and years ago and can attest that it worked well for tracking volunteer jobs, schedules, etc., but it looks like that program has been discontinued and replaced with Volgistics, which is web-based. Volgistics is not free, but it seems like the monthly cost would be pretty low, and the big advantage for you is that it would work right out of the box rather than having to customize a more general-purpose CRM or database to meet your needs.
posted by jessypie at 10:55 AM on November 13, 2012

Most NPOs I've worked at/with have used Volgistics. It's simple and web-based, which is one of the sort of selling points. As others have said, it's not free, but the cost isn't too high, and with 200+ volunteers (which is a goodly number), it's probably worth it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 2:47 PM on November 13, 2012

I also recommend Volgsitics - I use it at my organization and decided on it after a long search process where I reviewed lots of different options. What's nice is that it is super customizable and you pay based on the number of volunteers you have, so you can get it at pretty low-cost.
posted by nuclear_soup at 2:47 PM on November 13, 2012

Another vote for Volgistics. We've had it for two years for 400+ volunteers, and we're still finding new stuff to do with it.
posted by OHSnap at 10:20 PM on November 13, 2012