What makes a good volunteer management system, and what are the needs you should consider? How do you evaluate off-the-shelf products, and what questions do you need to ask to make sure they’ll work for you? What if you have volunteers managing other volunteers? How do you know if you need a custom solution? We’ll talk about some great off-the-shelf products and in what situations they work best (because why take on technical debt if you don’t need to?), and then we’ll dive into a custom solution case study. Custom Solution Case Study: After reviewing their options, Washington Trails Association determined their needs were too complex for an off-the-shelf system, and so they built a custom platform that integrates with both their website and their CRM. Their old volunteer platform had served them for 15 years (or one million years in technological terms) and their volunteers were accustomed to how it functioned. WTA’s big challenge was to build a new platform that their volunteers would like (and hopefully love) and that would better integrate with their other tools and provide better efficiency for a stretched staff. Presented by Loren Drummond (Washington Trails Association), Sally Kleinfeldt (Jazkarta), Karen Uffelman (Percolator Consulting)

1. FOR THE LOVE OF VOLUNTEERS!
How do you choose the right technology to manage them?
Session: #17NTCvolunteerlove
Notes: http://po.st/17NTCvolunteerlove

2. LOREN DRUMMOND
DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER
wta.org

3. KAREN UFFELMAN
PRINCIPAL & SENIOR STRATEGIST
percolatorconsulting.com

4. SALLY KLEINFELDT
DIRECTOR OF CONSULTING SERVICES
jazkarta.com

5. What we’re covering in this session
● What do you need?
● Off-the-shelf options
● Custom systems
● Case study
● Q&A

6. What do you need?

7. What do you have now?

8. Who needs/gets access?

9. Who are your stakeholders?

10. What questions should you ask them?

11. Customize or streamline your processes?

12. Budget and timeline?

13. Remember!
1. What do you have now?
2. Who will need to use it?
3. Who are the stakeholders to bring into the discussion?
4. What questions should you ask them?
5. Customize the system or streamline your internal processes?
6. Budget & timeline?

14. Off-the-shelf systems

16. Pros
No technical debt
Someone else owns the code and it’s their
responsibility, not yours
Low upfront investment (sometimes)
Your initial costs are likely to be much less
Grab & Go
Because you’re not building anything, off-the-shelf solutions mean you don’t have to wait
Access to training and documentation
Good volunteer management apps should include user documentation and many will also
provide training. You may also have access to user communities which can be great for
support.

17. Cons
You have to match your process to their features
There will always be compromise between your workflow and an off-the-shelf feature set
Ongoing costs may be higher
Depending on the platform you select, your ongoing license fees may constitute
significant expense
You aren’t in control
If your needs change, your option is to change to a new platform
(however, some app providers are responsive to market requests:)
Integration?
Your off-the-shelf solution may offer no integration with your
database/CRM (Constituent Relationship Management system).

18. Hidden costs of no integration

19. Some
off-the-shelf
examples
● Volunteers for Salesforce $
● Cervis $$
● Volunteer Hub $$
● Hands on Connect $$$
● Samaritan eRecruiter $$$

20. How much does it cost? It’s Free!
Will it integrate with my CRM? If you use Salesforce (comes with
NPSP)
Who uses it? 9,000+ organizations
What do you get?
● Customizable site.com calendaring that can be managed by volunteers
● Volunteer dashboards of historical and upcoming activities
● Volunteers can search by jobs, locations, times, and registration
● Language localization

21. How much does it cost? $300 - $1,800 annually
Will it integrate with my CRM? API, and also advertises
integrations with common nonprofit database platforms
Who uses it? Salvation Army, Feeding America, NPR radio stations
What do you get?
● Volunteer Application/Registration that integrates with your website
● Create Unlimited Events & Post Events Online
● Track Volunteer Interest Areas and Service Hours
● Customizable Event Sign-In Rosters
● Text/email messaging to volunteers

22. How much does it cost? $600 setup, $800 - $3,000 annually
Will it integrate with my CRM? One time setup fee for Blackbaud
integration
Who uses it? Humane Society, PAWS, St. Judes, Shriners
What do you get?
● Event-specific Entry Pages
● Virtual kiosk for volunteer self check-in
● Mobile-ready (ish)
● Text messaging to volunteers

23. How much does it cost? $2,500 - 10,000 annually
Will it integrate with my CRM? Salesforce
Who uses it? Habitat for Humanity, LA Works, Chicago Cares
What do you get?
● Customizable calendaring with jobs and activities
● Tiered privacy for volunteer opportunities and team management
● Social media integration
● Integrated with HandsOn Network

24. How much does it cost? 1st Year: $2,500 - $15,000
● Ongoing: $2,000 - $3,000 annually
● Addt’l $$ for more users and add-on features
Will it integrate with my CRM? API, Custom integrations
Who uses it? USO, Smithsonian Institution, State and Local Gov’ts
What do you get? A LOT: Designed to be an all in one CRM solution
● Front End: Volunteer portal, Surveys, Self-scheduling, Background checks
● Back End: Reporting, Emailing, Scheduling, Automation
● Support: Tiered customer support, Tiered discovery and customization

25. Are they all starting to blur together?

26. START WITH THESE QUESTIONS
REQUIREMENTS/BUDGET/FLEXIBILITY/INTEGRATION?
What are your
requirements?
Are you
flexible and
can you adjust
the way you
do things?
How important is
it that your
system
integrates with
your CRM?
What’s your
budget?
(short-term
and ongoing)

27. Remember!
Ready to go shopping?
● Ask to talk to references
● Watch demos
● Try out the systems
yourself - do a volunteer
stint with an organization
that uses the system
you’re interested in

28. Custom systems

30. Pros
Complete control
Focus on what matters to your organization
The power of integration
With a CRM, member portal, or another system
No ongoing license costs
You built it, you own it
Lower staff costs
Tailoring to your process increases efficiency

31. Cons
Significant up front investment
Custom solutions can be fairly expensive
Mistakes can be expensive
Beware of bad design decisions.
Maintenance costs
A custom system needs to be supported, tweaked, improved as you
learn from using it - BUT continuous improvement of your system,
your processes, your engagement strategy is a good thing

32. When do you need a custom system?
Unusual work

33. When do you need a custom system?
Need for integration

34. When do you need a custom system?
Existing custom system

35. What does expensive mean?
Low end: $0 - $10,000
Midrange: $10,000 - $100,000
High end: $100,000 - $500,000 or more

36. Factors that increase expense

37. Polished visual design

38. Ability to compromise
What
I
want
What
is simple
to build
?
?

39. Multi-team coordination or buy-in
Communications
IT
Board
Director
?
Membership

40. Data migration
Photo by Alan Bauer

41. How to control expenses
Thorough discovery
Flexible implementation
process

42. Remember!
Custom systems have many advantages
Custom systems can be expensive
Control costs with
- Good discovery
- Flexible implementation process

43. Case study

44. Our community

45. In 2016:
+ 4,700 volunteers
+ 150,000 hours
+ 240 trails
= $ 3.9 million
donated labor to
public lands

46. Leadership levels
● Green hat
● Orange hat
● Blue hats

47. Our community

48. What we had (in 1999)
Insert photo or graph (or screenshot)

49. How it grew
Insert photo or graph

50. Why we needed something custom
● We needed to create some efficiencies
(online and off)
● Our data culture matured
● We wanted to improve the volunteer experience
(in really specific ways)
● We wanted to empower our volunteer leadership

51. Budget

52. Pre-Discovery

53. Discovery
10 - 25% of project budget should go to discovery
(WTA spent 16% of their total phase 1 budget on Discovery)
What you should expect to cover during discovery:
● User requirements
● Architecture
● UX and visual design

54. UX Design
Importance of UX design
An expert should define how things work - for this project we worked with Ethical UX
Importance of designer-developer communication
Avoid surprises - have developers review wireframes and designers review user stories.
Flow diagrams
Chart complex functionality that goes from page to page.
Wireframes
Define blocks of content and functionality on a given page, without styling.

58. Platform choices

59. Too complicated, too messy

60. Too lightweight or complicated or expensive

61. Just right

62. One Size Fits All

63. Let’s build it!

64. Implementation
● 12 months, 22 iterations, 177 user stories, 903.5 story
points
● 1 WTA project owner
● 2-5 person WTA testing team
● 1 strategist
● 1 project manager
● 2-4 Salesforce developers
● 3-5 Python developers
● 1 UX designer
● 1 graphic designer

65. Timeline
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
January 13,
2015
January 18,
2016
Launch!
22 Development iterations
UX Design Visual Design & Theming
Data
Migr
TestingDiscovery

73. Your turn

75. Factors that increase expense
Polished visual design
Ability to compromise
Public-facing or internal
Feature variations
Multiple platforms
Multi-team coordination
Traffic
Generalized tool
Data migration
Unmaintained systems
Cross-organization buy-in
Surprise stakeholder

76. Pros
Complete control
The power of integration
No ongoing license costs
Lower staff costs

77. Cons
Significant up front investment
Mistakes can be expensive
Maintenance costs