Understanding Volunteer roles

What is a volunteer role?

Roles help you 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 also assign them secondary roles, but officially they still have only 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, 'Assistant' and 'Transit' (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 'Assistant' (2), only Ally or Zoe can request them from their schedule view. If the open shift was for any volunteer, regardless of their role, create the shift under the Unassigned area (3).

Secondary Roles

This allows you to be more flexible with the roles in a program. If a volunteer can request open shifts across multiple roles, add the others as secondary roles.

In the above example, if Ally had a secondary role of 'Transit' she would be able to request any shift on the schedule.

If a volunteer has a shift outside their primary role, they will have two rows on the schedule, their secondary role line will have their name italicised.

In the example above, Amelia has been assigned a shift as an Event Support volunteer, which isn't her primary role. Her name is italicised and has an asterisk to indicate that this isn't her primary role.

How to Assign Secondary Roles:

1. Select the volunteer to bring up their profile
2. Next to their primary role, there is a link to add secondary roles; select this
3. From the dropdown, select one or more of the other roles

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

Benefits of Secondary Roles:

• Increased flexibility for versatile volunteers
• Better shift coverage across different role categories
• Opportunity for volunteers to expand their involvement

Role-Based Management

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

• Open shifts: You can create role-specific open shifts so the right volunteers can see and request them.
• Targeted communication: Send schedules or updates to only volunteers in specific roles.
• Schedule visibility: Toggle which role groups are visible in the schedule view to help 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.

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