Understanding Volunteer roles

What is a volunteer role?

Roles are a way to organise and group volunteers within your program's schedule. Think of roles as categories that help you manage different types of volunteer positions and their associated responsibilities.

Each volunteer has only one primary role in each program. You can assign them to shifts belonging to other roles; this would then become a secondary role, but officially, they would still have just one primary role.

Primary Role Assignment

The primary role determines which group the volunteer belongs to on the schedule and, in turn, which open shifts they can see and sign up for.

In the above example, there are two roles, 'Guide' and 'Booking Officer' (1), with two volunteers assigned to each. When creating an open shift, only volunteers with that role can request it. So, for the open shifts under 'Guide' (2), only Ally or Issy can request the open shift from their schedule view. If the open shift was for any volunteer, regardless of their role, create the shift under the Unassigned area (3).

Role-Based Management

When managing your schedule, roles give you some great organisational tools:

• Open shifts: You can create open shifts that are specific to each role, ensuring the right volunteers see and request them.

• Targeted communication: Send schedules or updates to only volunteers in specific roles.

• Schedule visibility: Toggle which role groups are visible on the schedule view, helping you focus on what's relevant.

Shift Titles vs. Roles

While roles provide a broad grouping of volunteers, using shift titles can offer a more specific designation for each shift. For example:

• Role: Event Support

• Shift Title: Registration Desk Coordinator

Shift titles are visible on each shift on the schedule.

Secondary Roles

Volunteers can have secondary roles in addition to their primary role, though this functionality isn't immediately apparent.

In the above example, Fredrick has been assigned a shift as a Guide, which isn't his primary role. His name is italicised and also has an asterisk to indicate this isn't his primary role.

How to Assign Secondary Roles:

1. Assign a shift to a volunteer who belongs to a different role

2. Once assigned, the volunteer is automatically "pulled into" that secondary role and will appear twice on the schedule, once in each role.

From that point forward, the volunteer can see and sign up for open shifts in both their primary role and their new secondary role.

Benefits of Secondary Roles:

• Increased flexibility for versatile volunteers

• Better shift coverage across different role categories

• Opportunity for volunteers to expand their involvement

Best Practices

• Appropriate Grouping: Use roles to group volunteers logically to make schedule management easier

• Clear Role Names: Use clear, descriptive role names that are relevant to your program

• Strategic Secondary Roles: Use secondary role assignments thoughtfully to expand opportunities for select volunteers