Website Review: VolunteerSpot

by Sean N. Henderson

Various types of group software (groupware) have been around for a long time. In my opinion, Yahoo! Groups (formerly eGroups) is still the best, or at least the benchmark, of this type of software. Yahoo! Groups provides a Calendar, Database (non-linked csv tables, really), File section, Polls, Links, besides being a list server suitable for an email forum or newsletter.

With all that Yahoo! Groups does, I've found it does not perform scheduling of people very well. There are workarounds, of course, but wouldn't it be refeshing if it did this better?

SITUATION

So, I had a group of volunteers for the DACS booth for a multi-day event. (The Interactive portion of the Connecticut Film Festival.) The final list of volunteers was not known. Some did not want to use Yahoo! Groups. Some did not give me their availability for this multi-day event or even their names. I needed something different from Yahoo! Groups or a personal spreadsheet to organize this volunteer situation. Most importantly, I didn't want to be the bottleneck for managing this since I was busy with other projects.

I saw the listing for VolunteerSpot on a TechSoup email. I read the description, then went to www.volunteerspot.com to learn a bit more. They had a nice video demonstration of their software and I was impressed enough to try it.

USING VOLUNTEER SPOT

VolunteerSpot is really very, very simple to use. The organizer creates an "Activity" by picking a day in the calendar. After that, Tasks are added and are one of two types - something to bring or something to do. "Bring" items can have a time assigned or not. Add some more "Bring" or "Do" items and then your "Day" is done, If the "Activity" is a multi-day event, then the entire "Day" setup can be copied using their calendar app - brilliant! When the "Activity" setup is done, then it prompts for an email invite list (think eVite) to send the URL to this "Activity". Time to get coffee and relax...

Between this first invitation email sent out to the volunteer list and the event, the organizer can choose to post the URL anywhere they like, or even use VolunteerSpot to send to additional volunteers. When a volunteer clicks the link, and decides to volunteer for a "Bring" item or "Do" item, they are required to enter their full name and phone before VolunteerSpot will accept them as a volunteer. If the organizer assigns a volunteer within VolunteerSpot, the same applies.

VolunteerSpot sends reminders two days before the event. If assignment changes are made, only the affected volunteers get an email and for multiple changes VolunteerSpot is smart enough to collapse them all into one email per recipient. Nice! The organizer can download the daily assignments and volunteer roster, and even get a CSV file download of the whole daily assignment. I particularly liked that feature and wish more websites would pick up on that sort of functionality. I was able to forward the spreadsheet to the person handling the passes at the venue and that-was-that. I didn't even have to read and/or open it.

LIMITATIONS

As nice as VolunteerSpot is, it is not without limitations. There can be only one organizer. After the initial setup of an "Activity", changes to that activity get "noisy" as far as email frequency goes, since setup changes go to everyone, it seems. There is no way to stop or aggregate assignment change emails to multiple days. The reminder email lead time is fixed. There is no way to email the volunteer list other than by invite, so it is not for use as a list server - that you'll still have to manage elsewhere. At DACS.org, our ISP's spam/UCE filter incorrectly listed VolunteerSpot on its blacklist so there was a bit of hassle navigating that situation. For that reason, like any application/software/website of this type, test it first and take any hiccups as a sign that it likely is not usable for your purpose. Lastly, the website uses some flashy screen overlays versus popups, so a modern browser is necessary. The website style is also very tall and makes poor use of screen space, so I found it hard to navigate on my laptop's 15.x inch display. Lastly, all the emails generated by VolunteerSpot are HTML and cannot be toggled.

WHO AND WHY

Within an organization, and if it is using Outlook/Exchange, then VolunteerSpot does not offer anything new or better. Where VolunteerSpot shines is where volunteers are from both within and outside an organization. So, this even is better than Yahoo! Groups and similar groupware. Even if Yahoo! Groups had scheduling, it would depend on the volunteers being a member of the Yahoo! Group where for VolunteerSpot, while registering (name and/or phone) is required, group membership is not.

In DACS.org's case, while we are finalizing our CMS/CRM back end system, VolunteerSpot became a great lightweight solution for scheduling a volunteer activity such as this, and saved me some time and effort. I would use it again.

Sean N. Henderson is a DACS Member

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