<aside> ℹ️ Feel free to research and add to this list! The type of tool we're looking for is called "volunteer management software." There are many lists of these kind of tools available, i.e. this one from GetApp or this one from Capterra.
There is no obvious first choice as each have significant pros/cons, so we should consider our priorities in order of importance:
Caveats: Many features we might want will have associated monthly costs. If we go this path, none of these will be able to automatically feed shift sign ups back into Airtable, so we will inherently start to bifurcate our "volunteer management" between on-demand tasks (deliveries, etc.) and scheduled shifts (pantry, loading/unloading, etc.). I (@Karly W.) have not found a platform that can support both needs nor have I found much in the way of integrations.
It is also a possibility we find a solution besides any of these platforms (some sort of system of Slack channels, a calendar in Notion, or Google Cal), but these solutions will likely be more burdensome in terms of maintenance and support so would require a dedicated team willing to commit to working on them on a weekly basis to keep them running.
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<aside> ✏️ Jens' Notes on Priorities:
In choosing a tool, I believe we should give strong priority to the following three features:
1. Support for multiple Admin.s – If we as a group believe in shared managerial responsibilities and something other than top-down management, this is a must. 2. Admin.s can manually assign someone to a slot – While we would want to strongly encourage all volunteers to use the tool to sign up for a work 'shift', presumably we would not want to exclude volunteers who tell us they want to work face-to-face or through Slack or by other means. Right now, we are putting volunteer sign-up info into the shared documents from anywhere we find it, and that's as it should be. 3. Can limit sign-ups for specific slots – Unless, that is, there is another way to establish that job x requires 2 volunteers and job z requires 7...
Regarding e-mail notification: I'll just note that SMS seems to be heavily favored among our members.
Regarding a Zapier integration: this seems to me vital as well, surely it would be time-draining otherwise? Then again, I know little about this technology...
If anything is worth spending funds on, a tool with the above features is; In my view a tool without the above features would be little better than what we have now.
Thanks for listening.
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