Volunteer Hours: How to Keep Track and Record Volunteer Hours

Is Your Nonprofit Keeping Track and Recording Volunteer Hours?

You’ve just finished up a great volunteer event. Everything was a big success. After the clean-up is done, though, don’t forget to circle back and record volunteer hours. Keeping tabs on and accurately recording volunteer hours is crucial, especially since the value of a volunteer hour is over $30! This information is also important for strategic planning, compelling in board reports, and, of course, usually required with grants of any kind.

Here’s the good news: you have more options than using spreadsheets to keep track of volunteer hours. Volunteer management software like VolunteerHub keeps all the information securely in one place. This takes the hassle out of manually recording volunteer hours, saving your organization precious time. (Want to become even more efficient? VolunteerHub’s OnSite App includes a Virtual Kiosk feature that completely automates the process. Learn more here.)

Tracking Volunteer Hours

VolunteerHub’s all-in-one, cloud-based application allows administrators to post an event, get online registrations, and then go back when the event is finished to easily record volunteer hours.

Here’s how (as documented on our support page):

1. Under the Events tab, click the drop-down menu near the top of the page labeled Dates and choose Previous 0-36 months.
2. Click on the appropriate event.
3. Click on the Hours subtab.
4. Enter the hours worked for your volunteers.
5. Click the Save Hours button.

Once your hours are entered, VolunteerHub’s reporting feature can help you crunch those all-important numbers. In addition to tracking hours by event, VolunteerHub can also report on hours per volunteer. You can also customize a report to find hours donated in a specific timeframe.

Tips for Automating the Process of Tracking Volunteer Hours

Always searching for ways to streamline processes for nonprofits, VolunteerHub has added two powerful elements to automate the volunteer hour tracking process:

• OnSite (and Out of Mind) – Our OnSite App not only allows you to take VolunteerHub on the road via your mobile device but it also automatically tracks volunteers’ time donated based on the length of the event (learn more by reading about our Virtual Kiosk). Stop worrying about whether your team remembered to manually enter hour information. In addition, if the volunteer gives extra time that day, an administrator can easily edit the information.
• Blackbaud Integration – What if you could sync your volunteer data with your fundraising software? Now you can. As a Blackbaud Technology Partner, VolunteerHub integrates with Blackbaud’s entire suite of constituent relationship management systems (The Raiser’s Edge, Blackbaud CRM, and eTapestry). Data is automatically synchronized between your donor and volunteer software, increasing your efficiency. The best part is that there’s nothing to download, upload, import, or export. Now you can get a global view of your donor and volunteer contributions – and find ways to bring together these two dynamic groups of supporters.

Recording volunteer hours doesn’t have to be a headache. VolunteerHub makes it easy to log, track, and report. So if you’re still using spreadsheets and lists, make the move to an online volunteer management system. After all, isn’t it about time?