[PROPOSAL] - Volunteer Management System (VMS) software

[GingerKiwi]

Describe your proposal

• volunteer management software (VMS)
  We need a volunteer management system, that is one of the cornerstones for having more volunteers, help with retention and succession.
  This will enable the existence of a volunteer management team to do recruiting and management for the whole org.

Why is this proposal important?

• A VMS is key to preventing volunteer churn and enhancing engagement
• Vital to implement volunteer management best practices. I'm (Liz) the new Volunteer Management team organizer. (I need a good tool!)
• Will automate a ton of work!

Who will benefit from this proposal?

All volunteers:

• awards,
• certificates to share on LinkedIn.
• Birthday thank yous (automated)
• Signup for volunteer only events - like the new annual May the Fourth volunteer party!

All organizers:

• Have a searchable pool of volunteers that have already been though orientation and are ready to start team specific training and volunteer work
• A way to keep current volunteers engaged
• Can request the volunteer management team recruit new volunteers with specific skills
• Decrease the workload of managing volunteers and prevent organizer burnout

When will this happen?

• Already started with the team organization and have a channel in Slack.
• Deadline for working mvp (minimum viable product) is Labour Day Weekend (Sept 02, 2024).
• Deadline for core team signup is Saturday, June 29th.

What platform/location will the proposal need?

Exact platform TBD.
Backend likely will be MySQL.

How much will it cost?

Free

Describe the technical details of the proposal

Requirements (from Organizers meeting Sat June 22nd).

• Input from volunteer applications
• handle volunteers - name, date joined, contact info, etc
• have birthdates
• have job descriptions
• log volunteer hours and activities
• be updated by volunteer (volunteer hours)
• report back birthdays
• report back time people are volunteering (6 months, x years, etc)
• Surveys (satisfaction, exit, etc)
• Has to be accessible
• Possible place for RSVP to internal, volunteer only events
• Has to be accessible to contributing (preferably no or low "frameworks")
• Need to be accessible for non-devs (because we need some designers, a11y, and UX volunteers !!), and students that don't know GitHub.

Auth and Accounts

Also need login/accounts for all volunteers, another level of login for organizers, and admin level logins.

I keep thinking of the Moodle I ran for sys admin course.

• Volunteers ~= students
• Organizers ~= teachers (can add things to their teams/“classes”)
• Admin = sys admin

Team:

Small group of volunteers Jamil Sinno ( @jamilsinno) is the lead, Monica Li is also on the team. Jamil is the touch person for who we need for what. (delegation!) He'll need maintainer access.

Agile

We need to prioritize those requirements and do an agile thing: work in cycles, and incrementally develop this platform (yes, we are doing agile).

Anything else?

We will need other organizers to share their pain points both with their current workload and with the volunteers that would help.

We need an org chart.
A list of critically needed volunteer skills would be helpful.

Question: Do all the organizers have Google accounts? That's the lowest hanging fruit for auth.

Note: I'm writing this while dealing with a very naughty cat. I've proof read but there might be typos

Tag the organizers

@torontojs/organizers

[Zen-cronic]

Hey, this is a great initiative, and I'd love to share some thoughts. Even though I'm pretty new to Tjs as a volunteer, I've noticed a pattern in how we handle volunteer sign-ups:

1. The organizers post the event name and details.
2. Including the volunteer roles and how many spots are open.
3. Folks comment on the thread, claiming their roles.
4. A few days before the event, the organizers update the thread or reply with a list of who's doing what.

The organizer has to go through the thread, count up who's signed up for which role, and then post an updated list before each event. Every event post in the volunteer channel follows this structure. Which means we could automate the whole process!

PS. I believe the JSON schema from #2 will be integrated into this for the events

[madcampos]

@Zen-cronic yes, that is a great idea!

I believe if this case is not covered yet by @GingerKiwi's idea, it is a super valuable addition.

Some things to consider are:

• It depends on a way to register and track event + people roles to those events
• It depends on registering volunteers and keeping track of who is a volunteer

For a first iteration, maybe a bot or app on slack would solve the problem (have to check the bot limit on a free plan though).

On a future iteration, this is very handy feature to have!