Manually managing a group of volunteers is the fastest way to a very slow process! Perhaps someone in your volunteer crew is less apt to enjoy taking orders, and others may wilt if they are not kept busy enough with challenging work. Take as much ego and human error out of the volunteer management processes as possible - automate, automate, automate!
Using computers for the boring stuff gives you a volunteer crew that is free to enjoy the more creative aspects of your project. Here are a few of the common tasks that you can easily (and should) automate.
Creating Your Event
Creating marketing materials for your event is one of the more time consuming tasks that you will take on, and it comes at the beginning of the planning process. Talk about a morale killer! However, there are always similar elements in the flyers and emails that we must create to send, and software can take care of it, especially when it is fed through a great template.
Find out how to manage your events with MobileServe
Inviting Members
After you have created your events, you can also automate distribution to volunteers. At most, you may need a slightly tech savvy volunteer to set the schedule for automated release, but after that, you can use automation to easily space out an entire campaign, sending materials to whomever you want at any time. You can also set an automated flow for people who do not RSVP within a certain amount of time with no extra manpower involved.
Digital Check In
Once your guests have arrived, they need to be accounted for. You do not need three people at the door to get this done. As a matter of fact, you can completely eschew those annoying clipboards and all the duplication that you will likely get on those conflicting lists! Using a product like MobileServe helps to keep records organized. When check-in reports are digital, you can automatically keep track of your most active volunteers to reward your top performers!
Learn about rewarding volunteers here
Automated Reporting
The best part about automating all externally facing processes? Amazing impact reports and infographics that are created for you! Instead of spending time translating paper into excel reports, you can use automatically generated reports to send to your donors, partners and volunteer base!
Follow Up
In order to create an ongoing relationship with your attendees, you must automate your follow up as well. The same automated email client that you use for the dissemination of your initial marketing can be used for your follow up as well. You can also send other materials in the same way, ensuring the same pathway for your secondary communications as you have for your initial communications.
