Hello, and welcome to Volunteer Center! Do you have an agency that utilizes volunteers in any capacity? Then you have come to the right place!
Registering Your Agency
The first step is to fill out the agency profile: https://unitedwaynwmi.galaxydigital.com/agency/signup/ There are only select required fields, and you can always complete more of it later- such as linking your social media accounts if you so choose. Once your agency page is activated, you can start posting your volunteer needs.
Your dashboard as an agency manager will look similar to mine above (with your agency name, of course!). Within the toolbox, you can edit your agency profile, create volunteer needs, post events, etc. You can see from the picture above, you can have more than one agency manager. They will just need to sign up as volunteers in the system and then they can be assigned.
Posting Volunteer Needs
Posting a volunteer need is pretty simple. You want to make sure your title is snappy and includes what volunteers will be doing. Within the description of the volunteer need, you can outline what they will be doing, what they need to bring or wear (Do they wear something that can get dirty? Do they bring their own food for a longer shift?), and any directions (Should they seek out Bill or Alice when they arrive?).
When creating your volunteer need, you can select to attach it to an initiative. Is your need for our Safer Together partnership? Make sure to select Safer Together from the dropdown so volunteers see your need under that initiative.
When scheduling your need, you can select duration. Do you have a simple open call for volunteers that you will always have up on your agency page? Then you may want to select "Is Ongoing". Multi-date is only if your volunteer will have to sign up for more than one day- such as a Saturday and a Sunday. We use "Custom Shifts" frequently if we are planning on having an event that needs a certain number of volunteers over a certain number of days. Volunteers select their shifts, and it makes the scheduling piece a lot easier on you and your staff.
You can select qualifiers for your volunteers. Mostly you would use this category if you want background checks required for your volunteer need. Volunteers will not be able to see the need to sign up if they haven't passed a background check.
Finally, you can select which county (or counties) your need would cover, so when volunteer click the side bars that say "X County Needs" they will see your volunteer opportunity.
And the most important step, hit "Create Need" when you are done!
This is very much a crash course in utilizing Volunteer Center. The great people at Galaxy Digital are wonderful to reach out to with questions, and they do a weekly agency manager open zoom that anyone can drop in on every week to learn more, ask questions- offered on Mondays. The link below lets you sign up for their live Monday zoom. https://learn.getconnectedvolunteer.com/en/articles/10179117-training-for-agency-managers-training-for-agency-and-program-managers
