Summary
- $15,000 in grant funds are available to take CiviVolunteer to the next level, but only if the community matches it.
- Decide which proposed volunteer management features your org needs most, or propose a new one.
- Contact Ginkgo Street Labs at roshani@ginkgostreet.com or 1-888-223-6609 to discuss your project idea and implementation cost.
- The matching grant deadline is March 31st, so we need pledges confirmed by March 23rd.
Working as a community, we can create something more powerful and benefit more people than we can working in silos. CiviVolunteer was born from the needs and generosity of a few. Today we invite you to become a CiviVolunteer Champion by funding the new features and improvements that you care about the most. A gracious and anonymous donor is providing a matching grant to the CiviCRM project, and Ginkgo Street Labs has been entrusted to use that grant to continue our development of CiviVolunteer. However, we need your help to take advantage of this. Help us raise $15,000 by March 31st, so the community doesn't miss this opportunity.
Why Invest in CiviVolunteer?
It’s simple! We understand what a critical role volunteers play in nonprofit organizations. We started by allowing organizations to manage volunteers for events. Now it’s time to expand. We have gotten feedback from many of you, and some of your ideas are listed below. Help us bring these ideas to fruition. Investing in open source gives you a voice in determining the direction of the tools you rely on. Improving CiviVolunteer will enable many organizations to bring their volunteer management operations in-house, adding another facet to the 360-degree view of constituent engagement that CiviCRM provides.
Help Shape CiviVolunteer 2.0
As a CiviVolunteer Champion, you can shape the evolution of CiviVolunteer by telling us which features are most important to you. Here is a list of ten features we’ve heard a lot of buzz about. Which ones would you like to see implemented? If there are features your organization needs, but you don’t see them on the list, we invite you to share a description of other features you need.
Top Ten Most Requested Features
1. Create a Volunteer Dashboard
Organizations use volunteers in many different capacities. The first releases of CiviVolunteer have focused on managing volunteers within the context of events. The Volunteer dashboard will make it easier to manage volunteers in different scenarios (e.g., office volunteers or ongoing projects). The volunteer dashboard will give CiviVolunteer a home outside of CiviEvent, providing an overview of all volunteer projects and facilitating reporting and overall program management.
2. Enable Volunteers to Self-Report Hours
This feature will provide volunteers an interface for logging their own hours and, depending on an organization’s configuration, submit them to a volunteer manager for approval.
3. Associate Prerequisites with a Volunteer Need
Need to make sure the person filling the 3 pm to 5 pm lifeguard shift has a current CPR certification? With this feature you will be able to specify which prerequisites or qualifications a volunteer needs to meet before she can sign up for a shift.
4. Recurring Volunteer Shifts and Support for volunteer settings in Event Templates
Organizations that use volunteers for longer-term projects will be interested in setting up recurring volunteer shifts. Organizations that host similar events frequently will be interested in having the ability to save CiviVolunteer settings along with their event templates.
5. Public-Facing Display of all Volunteer Opportunities In Your Organization
You have people who are ready to volunteer, but how do you make it easy for them to find out how they can get involved? With this feature, you can list all your volunteer opportunities on one page, so people can easily browse open positions.
6. Improve the Volunteer Sign Up Page
Enable your volunteers to easily sign up for multiple shifts. This feature will allow volunteers see all the shifts at once and to choose as many as they wish.
7. Provide Descriptions for Specific Volunteer Roles
This feature will make it easy for people to understand how different volunteer roles vary, and decide on which role fits them the best.
8. Reward Volunteers & Offer Incentives
Allow volunteer coordinators to incentivize their teams with rewards. In some organizations, volunteer hours can be used as a sort of currency. For example, in community media groups, sometimes there is a direct link between hours volunteered and access to resources (e.g., 4 hours of volunteer time earns 1 hour equipment rental).
9. Adding Locations to Shift Designations
Have multiple locations where you need volunteers? With this feature, you will be able to create schedules and shifts for specific locations.
10. General Project Resources to Improve CiviVolunteer
In order to improve CiviVolunteer, we need to write unit tests, provide documentation, and upgrade the architecture along with other tasks.
Ready to Pitch In? What’s Next?
It’s easy! First, select the features that you would like to see in the next release. We have a list of suggested features, but you can also suggest additional features. There is more discussion of potential features on the wiki. Second, decide how much you can invest in the next release. We will help you determine how far your investment will go. We encourage you to contact us by emailing roshani@ginkgostreet.com or calling 1-888-223-6609. We need for you to confirm your pledge by March 23rd since the matching grant deadline is March 31st.
Plan Your Investment in CiviVolunteer
Ask yourself, how much will these feature further your mission? While the CiviCRM community at large will benefit from your generous contribution, we don't encourage you to view this as a donation. We will create a contract for you with itemized deliverables so that your board knows exactly what they are getting. This is collective purchasing, not a donation. To show our appreciation for the upstanding members of the nonprofit tech community who contribute this to this campaign, we will offering the following benefits:
Gold CiviVolunteer Champion
Greater than $5,000 Contribution
1. Shape CiviVolunteer 2.0
Designate how we should put your funds to work.
2. Recognition
For contributors who do not wish to stay anonymous, we will:
- include your logo and link to your site on the CiviVolunteer Extension page on CiviCRM.org, as well as on our website
- recognize you in blog posts
- recognize you on social media.
3. CiviVolunteer Setup
We will help you to set up CiviVolunteer in order to fit your organization’s needs.
4. CiviVolunteer Support
Having trouble with CiviVolunteer, or have a question about how to configure things just so? Get exclusive access to our support team.
Silver CiviVolunteer Champion
$3,000-$4,999 Contribution
1. Shape CiviVolunteer 2.0
Designate how we should put your funds to work.
2. Recognition
For contributors who do not wish to stay anonymous, we will:
- include your logo and link to your site on the CiviVolunteer Extension page on CiviCRM.org, as well as on our website
- recognize you in blog posts.
3. CiviVolunteer Setup
We will help you to set up CiviVolunteer in order to fit your organization’s needs.
Bronze CiviVolunteer Champion
$1,000-$2,999 Contribution
1. Shape CiviVolunteer 2.0
Designate how we should put your funds to work.
2. Recognition
For contributors who do not wish to stay anonymous, we will:
- include your logo and link to your site on the CiviVolunteer Extension page on CiviCRM.org, as well as on our website.
