206 – Essential Volunteer Software – The Tech Stack You Can’t Afford to Skip

March 19, 2026

Episode #206: Essential Volunteer Software – The Tech Stack You Can’t Afford to Skip

Volunteer managers often rely on a mix of spreadsheets, emails, and manual processes to keep programs running. But as volunteer programs grow, those systems can quickly become overwhelming and difficult to manage. 

In this episode, Tobi Johnson explores the role technology plays in helping volunteer leaders work more efficiently and strategically. She breaks down the concept of a “tech stack” and explains how the right combination of tools can reduce administrative workload and create more time for relationship-building and program development. 

Rather than recommending specific platforms, Tobi focuses on the core functions volunteer software should support, including recruitment, onboarding, scheduling, communication, and impact tracking. She also discusses how organizations can evaluate which tools are truly necessary and avoid adding software that creates more complexity than value. 

If you are wondering whether your current systems are helping or slowing you down, this episode offers practical guidance on choosing technology that strengthens your volunteer strategy and supports the long-term growth of your program. 

Volunteer Software – Episode Highlights 

• [00:26] – Why Software Matters 
• [06:03] – Core Volunteer Functions 
• [08:26] – Stack Evolves Over Time 
• [09:47] – Website Is Essential 
• [15:34] – Communication Automation 
• [17:48] – Training and Compliance 
• [19:06] – Recognition and Retention 
• [27:35] – Newsletter Break 
• [29:56] – Cost Benefit Framework 
• [37:26] – Integration and UX Tips 
• [41:28] – Red Flags and Support 
• [43:03] – Final Takeaways and Wrap 

Volunteer Software – Quotes from the Episode 

“Volunteer software is an investment in your ability to think strategically, not just do admin faster.” – Tobi Johnson 

“Working without today’s tools will sink even the best laid volunteer strategy because you will get bogged down in administrative tasks and never have the time to focus on what really matters.” – Tobi Johnson 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Blog – Pro Roundup: A Month of Love with Free Nonprofit Tools, Downloads, and Templates  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #205 – My Top Time Management Tips for Overwhelmed Volunteer Managers 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #173 – Is Your Volunteer Website Turning People Away?  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #206 Transcript: Essential Volunteer Software – The Tech Stack You Can’t Afford to Skip

Tobi: I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I’m going to talk about a question that we get so often here at Volunteer Pro and that is what kind of volunteer software should I have to be the most productive and to get the best results? So, I’m going to talk about essential volunteer software, the tech stack you can’t afford to skip.

Now I know many of you are strapped for budget. And you’re strapped for time and you’re wondering, what do I need to have, and can I still get by with just a spreadsheet? Well, I am going to tell you juggling spreadsheets, emails, volunteer calls, and last-minute schedule changes. You’re trying to juggle all this while growing your program.

So, many folks are looking for software to ho help solve some of the chaos and calm down some of the chaos. Last week we talked about time management. This week I want to talk about software, which is also a time management tool, but what kind of software do we need? I do believe that in today’s world, not having software to help you do your job as a leader of volunteers or a leader in an organization that engages volunteers, not having the right software is non-negotiable.

Today, in today’s world, your volunteers don’t want to. Deal with outdated software and even our older volunteers. I think we can often say that our older volunteers don’t like software or can’t use software, but I’ve seen that time and time again be proven wrong. My mom is 82 years old and she is. Facebook every day.

So, she learned how to use that software and she’s using it to the best of its ability for her. So, I know that people can use software if it’s easy to use. When your software is difficult to use, then it’s not helpful, and when it doesn’t solve a problem or make life easier for somebody, then folks are resistant.

So, we’ve got to choose software that is going to help us save time. That’s easy to use and that helps us move our missions forward, and that’s the reason for getting software on board. And so, I want to talk about tech stacks. What’s your tech stack? A tech stack is not just for efficiency, it’s for its own sake, it’s to buy back your strategic capacity.

That’s the goal of software, to buy back your strategic capacity. And so today we’re going to break out. Breakdown what volunteer software is truly essential and maybe stuff you don’t necessarily need. We’ll focus on function over brand names because it doesn’t really matter. I mean it does, some software is better than others, but what’s most important to you is to figure out what functionality you want your software to serve and then choose the brand names that you want to work with.

So, I want you also to think about a framework I’m going to give you to evaluate cost versus benefit of your software because there’s always a cost benefit analysis you should be conducting anytime you bring on new software. Our tech stack at Volunteer Pro. It’s huge. We probably use 30 different softwares to get all of our work done, and the only reason we have them on board is because it makes life easier and it makes things better.

In fact, we just switched our podcasting software, our recording software, and now I’m going to be recording on video. How cool is that? And so, there’s many things you can do and you can do better when you have better software. So, if you missed it and are needing more advice on time management tips, I did mention that last week we did my top time management tips for overwhelm volunteer managers.

That was the episode last week, Episode 205 I’ll put a link in the show notes for you, also at volunteering, Episode 173 Is your website turning people away? You might want to check that out when I talk about websites and I will be talking about websites as a tech tool. We’ll talk more later, but let’s get into this.

So why? More tools don’t necessarily equal more impact. So, you thought I was going to say that you need as many tools as possible. No, that’s not what I’m here to do. The common trap we fall into is buying every volunteer software or tool because it looks cool, because someone suggested it. Someone else uses it and likes it, or we invest in a system solely because another organization like ours is using it.

So, this leads to duplication, frustration and lost time. And so, I want you to really think clearly about what kind of software. Want, let’s shift our mindset. Be from moving from brand names and specific types of software to the functions that technology can forward your organization and the, and what are the functions your volunteer strategy actually needs.

So, the question today isn’t, which volunteer software should I buy? The question is what functions I need to. Automate, streamline or centralize. That’s what we’re going to talk about and dive into today. The essential functions for most volunteer programs, regardless of size. This is whether you’re a tiny program with 15 volunteers, or you’re an enterprise level nonprofit with.

3000 volunteers. It doesn’t matter. These are all functions for most volunteer programs, marketing and recruitment, onboarding and document collection, contact and data management, scheduling and shift coordination, training and support, community building reporting and impact tracking, internal task and project management.

These are all core functions that we need to think about making easier, not harder. We want to work smarter, not harder with the right software. So when choosing volunteer software, we want to match our tool to the key functions that it, we want it to perform for us, not the other way around. We don’t want to choose software and then say, okay, we’re going to change everything to align with this software in the way it’s set up.

There’s a little bit of that that must happen sometimes, but you don’t want it to be all of it. You want to think very strategically before you choose platforms. So, but the non-negotiable is this, that you have a volunteer software stack. So remember, working without today’s tools will sink even the best laid.

Volunteer strategy because you will get bogged down in administrative tasks and never have the time to focus on what really matters, which is growing your program and your impact. So what do we mean by tech stack? I keep using this term and you may not know what that is. You may be, you know, I’ve never heard that term before.

What does that mean? When we talk about a quote unquote tech stack? We mean the combination of software. And tools your volunteer program uses to get work done. Everything from scheduling to data tracking, to communication to reporting and more. So that’s your tech stack, it’s the collection of the tools that you’re using.

And like I said here at Volunteer Pro, we probably, our tech stack is 30 plus different softwares, so. It’s not about the brand names. I want to reiterate this. It’s about the function that each tool serves for you. The goal of your tech stack isn’t efficiency for its own sake. It’s to buy back your time and strategic capacity.

I said that as we kicked off so you can focus on growing. So it’s dynamic. It’s not permanent. So your stack can evolve as your program grows, new tools emerge or your priorities shift. You need to regularly audit your tech stack and remove what isn’t delivering and invest in what frees up time and increases impact.

So, there’s been several softwares that we have evolved through in the past 10 plus years. Particularly with our Impact Lab online community, we are now in our fourth, third, or actually third community platform. And the reason is because new platforms and new products come on the market and some of them are better and they do what we need them to do Similarly for our.

Customer relationship management software or email automation software. I’ve used four different platforms over the years. We’ve migrated large databases and often it’s nice because the software companies will help you do that. But the reason is at one point we got into a software that was. More than we needed and we were spending a lot of money on a lot of bells and whistles that we were not using, and so we, we backed up reassessed and chose another software.

So remember that your tech stack will evolve over time. Now let’s talk about what at, I said this is non-negotiable, that you have a tech stack of some kind, and you probably already do, right? But let’s talk about the required tech because I promised you in this episode to talk about the tech stack that you can’t afford to skip.

These are the things that are essential that you want to prioritize investing in. First off, and this may surprise everybody, but. I am majorly committed to this fact that most people, and this is what I believe most people are going to find you, are going to assess you and are going to interact with you.

Online And where are they going to do that? Mostly on your website. And so the first important essential ingredient in your tech stack is your website platform. So you want to make sure that it has fast access, that it’s working well, that you have some access to, particularly the volunteer recruitment pages and.

There is a button to your volunteer recruitment pages on your homepage. So again, volunteer Nation, Episode 173, I talk about your volunteer website turning people away, and I go into depth about this, having a link or a button on your homepage that goes to your volunteer pages. It’s amazing how many in how many organizations.

This is buried in a dropdown, and I ask folks. How high of it is a priority at your organization that you have volunteers to help you meet your mission? How high of a priority is that? Could you get along without them? Well, absolutely not. We need our volunteers. Well then how come you don’t have a button for volunteering?

Now, I know you have a donate button on your homepage. Do you have one for volunteers or a link and not buried in a dropdown? That dropdowns not going to work well on somebody’s mobile device often. So we need a button. So let’s talk about, so that’s your website platform, and really check out that episode if we’ll link to it in the show notes if you really want to dig into what needs to be in your website when it comes to engaging volunteers.

But let’s get down to some other functions. Every volunteer program software could, should cover. At this point, you’re probably thinking, you know what? I need to get out a pen and paper and start taking notes maybe so, but don’t worry. This will, we’ll have show notes, a transcript in the bottom of our show notes, so you can just download or copy and paste a print out the show notes and it will list all these things for you so you don’t have to take notes.

So if you’re driving, do not be taking notes right now. All right. All right, let’s get going. So we talked about the website platform volunteer management functions. Recruitment and onboarding. Really important. Application background check. Intake forms. Important to have some software that does that.

Volunteer profiles with skills, available ability and preferences. So is there a place for you to go and. Get individual information for each volunteer. The ability to tag, sort, and filter your volunteers so that you can communicate to them in segments, in groups, not always all at once, and not one off, one-on-one all the time.

And then role position matching based on qualifications. Is there a way for people to indicate what they’re interested in and can we match it? Here’s another function that software should include scheduling and coordination. So shift creation, signups and wait lists, allowing volunteers to schedule themselves from their portals is so much easier than having you do it.

I worked with an organization where the volunteer manager spent, I would say at least 50% of her time every week, getting people scheduled into this giant spreadsheet instead. Of going around and saying hi to volunteers and doing the relational side of volunteering and doing the program development side instead, she was in this glorified admin role and it was really awful.

And so we talked about that, like, Hey, there’s an easier way to do this a much easier way. Let the software do it for you and free up your time to build your capacity for strategic capacity. All right. So automated. Also, that scheduling and coordination function around automated reminders and no notifications.

If people sign up for a shift, can they download it to their personal calendar? My calendar rules my life. If it’s not in my calendar, it’s not happening, and so even my personal stuff has to be on my calendar. My volunteer shifts are on my calendar, so I can check it out on my phone anytime I want Calendar integrations.

If people sign up for something, for example, I love Calendly because people can book a call with me. It goes directly into my calendar. I have a link and I see it come through. I’m like, all right, I know what I’m doing today. So integrations are good. So another function area is our tracking and reporting.

Tracking of volunteer hours and reporting time, logging, checking in and checking out some way to do manual entry, but also I think it’s interesting to think about geolocation as well, but it’s not always as simple as easy as I say it is. So we’re going to, we’re going to go with simple check-in checkout. Are there hours summaries by volunteer program or date range?

Can you do aggregate? Can you do reports that give you averages? Can you see if your volunteer hours are trending up or down? Exportable reports for grant compliance and impact measurement are really important. Of course, volunteer hours aren’t the only impact metric. There’s plenty of others, but this is an important one.

Another area for your tech stack for functioning of the software that you choose is communication bulk messaging, email, and maybe text bulk to segments of volunteers or all your volunteers. Maybe it’s event volunteers and you’re sending out a kudos or an attaboy to everybody on their phones while they’re working their shift.

You want to send and track both one-on-one messages in a central location as well as automated. Or broadcast messages to all volunteers. Now, the reason to have a software where you communicate from the software one-on-one with volunteers is if there’s a team that’s communicating with volunteers, it’s much easier to track what’s uh, uh, happen between the organization and that volunteer through a central inbox.

And so it makes things a lot easier if you think about customer service. Software, lots of customer service software does this. So if a team is helping a customer, they can seamlessly transfer from one team to the other because the team coming on can say that, see that there’s an open support ticket and work on it.

Automated workflows. Big one. When someone completes a form, can they be put in a nurture sequence where you can send multiple a series of welcome emails? By the way, if you sign up for our pro news email, our weekly pro news newsletter. You can actually see what our welcome sequence is. You can see we send a few freebies out.

We welcome you. We talk about who we are and what we do, and you can start to get an idea of what a welcome sequence might look like. Automated shift reminder emails, those kinds of things are super helpful. Also, opt-in forms. So are there things volunteers can opt in for? Like specific, particularly volunteer prospective volunteers?

Can they opt in for a guide or a fact sheet or a tip sheet on a form on your website where they give you their first name in their email and you send it to them automatically and then you send them some additional emails. So these are all really helpful for communication. Training and compliance also must have volunteers need a place to upload their documents in an easy way.

So when you’re onboarding folks, onboarding training, and, and getting them up to speed, their waivers or certifications, their id, ver verification, make sure there’s an easy place for them to upload these things rather than emailing back and forth. You can track the completion of forms E-signatures and background checks with software rather than doing it manually.

And you can do online orientation and training modules that you can deliver as simply as. Linking to videos in a nurture sequence of emails, it, you don’t need necessarily a learning management system, although I really am a fan of learning management systems. We use two, one for our courses and one for our online community.

And I’ve been using learning management systems for decades and I love them, and especially nowadays because they’re more affordable and there is. Easier to use than they ever have been. So I think they’re great. Also, expiration tracking for renewals for CPR certifications, for example, this is, these are the types of tracking you want your software to do for you.

Another area is recognition and retention, so milestone tracking. So are there thresholds for that volunteers are reaching that are important, that you want to reach out to them around and celebrate? Are there anniversaries for their start date? Those kinds of things. Really helpful. Are there badges, leaderboards?

Are there birthdays, anniversaries, or reward program integrations? I was working with, uh, a client recently who is setting up a, I was doing a coaching with a coaching group and they’re setting up a rewards program for their volunteers and so they need to track that. And I would say don’t do that by hand and.

If you have a, an online volunteer community, you can also award badges to different volunteers, and all of that is automated. So volunteer satisfaction surveys also essential to be able to ask volunteers about their experience, to pull them and to be able to analyze that data and make decisions based on that informed data.

Another area. So essential to volunteer engagement event and program management, event creation with volunteer needs teams, shifts, table captains, et cetera. How are you organizing folks with software? Sometimes you need multi-location or multi-program support. Sometimes you need something very simple for one program or one event capacity and attendance tracking, and a lot of those scheduling tools again.

That we talked about earlier. Those are really good for. Event track or for event management to ask volunteers to sign up for their own shifts. Now some software will, or you can just make sure you’re sending out the links to sign up earlier to volunteers who are continuously come back. You can actually phase in availability of specific links for specific volunteers based on their seniority, for example.

Integration and administration is another area that is so helpful, especially this is something that is so helpful, is to have your volunteer database and your donor database sync with one another. Now, sometimes the software has a built-in integration with another software. Sometimes the software does it itself.

It is volunteer and donor. Very rare to find a software that does it well on both sides. But there are tools you can use to export and import data. So one tool is called Zapier. And you can have different databases talk to one another. So important in today’s world, I think for us to understand the multitude of ways that volunteers and donors overlap.

I’ve always said it and the data shows it. Volunteers are donors, and donors are volunteers. And volunteers are often giving more and giving more often to the places where they contribute their time and talent. And so we’ve got to have that data and understand the kinds of investments and the depth of investments that volunteers are making in our organizations.

Sometimes we don’t know. I remember talking to a friend of mine who had found out that one of his volunteers had. Donated and as a bequest. So in his estate, he had set aside $200,000 for the organization and he had no idea, just a guy helping out in the, in their organization. And he said, I couldn’t believe it.

I said, it’s probably a good idea that you know, some of these things, not that you’re going to talk about them publicly, but it is good to know what our volunteers are really doing for our organizations and really to understand it with greater depth often. When these systems don’t talk to one another, we’re communicating at cross purposes with volunteers.

I remember my aunt, she was volunteering for hospice and she was doing flowers on Wednesdays, the Wednesday Flower Ladies, and they would take flowers and recycle them and put them in the rooms, and she loved it. And they were sent out an invitation for an annual luncheon, a celebratory volunteer recognition luncheon.

She was very excited about attending, and then two days later she got an email with a solicitation to donate to the hospice, and she was hopping mad. She was very upset. She said, they invite us to a lunch and then they want to ask us for money. It’s so, she was just offended. It was so offensive and I, I had.

Educator. I said, you know what? I have a feeling there’s two different departments at that hospice and they probably haven’t communicated very well, and their databases probably aren’t talking to one another. So, so important, just so essential. Also important for in the admin side of volunteer management.

Is there an easy way to process reimbursements, to request and process reimbursements, to give volunteers some reimbursement for any out of pocket expenses? Now, I’m not talking about stipends here. I’m just talking about simple reimbursement for out of pocket expenses. And then one of the things when it talk, when it comes to administration and software, it’s very helpful to have levels it, whatever platforms you’re buying that you have levels of privacy and admin access.

So maybe volunteers get a specific level of access, volunteer leaders get a specific level of access, program managers, et cetera. So you have levels of access. So everybody isn’t seeing everything. Having the ability to change everything that is important for all software. Most software platforms have that kind of level, but it’s important to make sure you’re checking.

And then finally, an area that’s really essential for a volunteer organization or volunteer program is to have a reporting dashboard of some kind that. Reports, volunteer impact, hours growth and churn stats. Now, there are platforms that can aggregate this. Some platforms that you’ll buy will give you some of these data.

There’s also ways to integrate and pull that data into a single reporting tool. And so you want to think about what kind of reports do you want to create on a regular basis, and how can you automate those to the best of your ability to save time. The most critical of these that I’ve mentioned. ’cause you’re probably feeling at this point.

Wow. We have a long way to go to get our tech stack in order. I will say the most critical of these are scheduling hour tracking communications and perhaps. The paperwork side, although I’m really big on communications and really finding software that is building community, is this platform going to help you build community scheduling, of course, and those kinds of things without those three.

You’re buried in manual work, and so yes, you can collect people’s applications and things, but scheduling hour tracking and communication, if you get those nailed, those are the most manual of all things aside from application. But you think about the application paperwork and the onboarding, that’s a one time thing, and then it’s done.

But ongoing, you have scheduling hour tracking and communication ongoing with all of your volunteers, and so anything that builds on that found. Depending on your program, complexity is important, so I would focus on those areas first. There’s other really optional, nice to have tools that learning management systems, project management software, graphic design software, text messaging tools, setting up an online community.

These are all things that are nice to have, but you really want to think about. Your volunteer software as an investment. It’s an investment in your ability to think strategically, not just do admin faster. And so let’s take a quick break from my list of essential volunteer software features for building capacity at your organization.

And when we get back, I want to talk about doing a simple cost benefit analysis because no one’s going to invest in software unless you make the case in the right way. So I want to talk to you about how you can do that. So I’ll be right back. Hey everybody. Have you subscribed to our Pro News Weekly resource email yet?

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Visit val pro.net/newsletter subscription. That’s vol pro net slash newsletter subscription, and I hope to see you on the inside. Hey everybody. We’re back with my essential volunteer software for building capacity at your organization. We’re talking about Tech Stack. I’ve given you a lot of ideas for functionality.

Now, I’ll say that there are software platforms and brands that will cover a lot of these bases, but there is no one size fits all. There’s no one and done platform. I remember years and years. Three years now, I’ve tried to figure out which of my tools, my community tool and my course tool, which tool I would use, and if I could merge my Impact lab community with my fundamentals course platform, and also has other courses we deliver on it.

I struggled for years, and at some point I just said to myself, Nope, you’re going to have to have two platforms, because one does community really well and one does courses really well, and they just haven’t improved on either. None of them. Neither of them does both well, and sometimes that’s just what you going to do.

And so there is no one size fits all. So when you hear about volunteer management software systems, you may think that it’s going to do everything for you. It is not. The other thing you want to think about is you may already have access to software tools at your organization that your development department uses, that your marketing communications department uses, that your IT department uses that you could get access to.

And so it’s not always the fact of buying brand new software. I want you to think about that, but I also want you to think about your cost benefit analysis for volunteer software free tools. And I know everybody loves a free tool, especially in the non-profit space. They can sometimes cost more in staff time than a paid solution.

So let’s get that outta the way first. When we’re doing cost benefit analysis, it means we’re figuring out what is the most productive use of time and money, right? We’re going to look at time and money. Time is money and cognitive load matters as well. So sometimes, yes, we can get it done without using software.

We can do it manually, but the time and the money it takes for of that time. Makes it not make sense and also the cognitive load it takes to do some of these things manually. Also, I remember a couple days ago I was going through, I was doing some auditing of our volunteer Pro impact lab community. I was making sure everybody was getting access to all of the different benefits and making sure they’re on different lists of the different softwares.

And I realized, you know what? Why do I not have these things automated? Why are people not. Already getting signed up for these things when they join. Why am I going in and doing this by hand? And so I’m, I’m taking my own medicine here, right? So let’s, let me give you a step by step for a cost benefit framework.

So first of all. Identify the tasks that software will replace, the manual tasks that software will replace. That’s step one. Step two is to calculate the hours that you spend weekly or monthly on those tasks. So once you’ve identified those tasks, so it might be writing individual emails to volunteers, maybe that’s what it is, and you’re thinking about getting a software that will automatically send, once volunteers are tagged in the system, it will automatically send a a number of emails.

Over a period of time, or when they take specific action, maybe they click on a link in an email and that stops the email or starts another email. So there’s ways to set these up, but you want to, okay, if we’re going to try to automate our volunteer emails, or at least some of them, let’s calculate how much time we spend and you need to track how much time do you spend writing individual emails and figuring out who you need to.

Then which emails to, on a weekly or hourly, or, I’m sorry, weekly or monthly basis. Okay, so that’s step two. Step three is multiply by your fully loaded hourly staff rate. So what do I mean by fully loaded? I mean hours and benefits. Hours and benefits. So if you have health insurance, those kinds of things.

A 401k, whatever it is, any hours and benefits, time off, whatever it is. What is the hourly rate? That’s not only hourly, but also or salaried. Figure it out as an hourly, estimated as an hourly rate, and multiply all the hours you’ve spent on those tasks by that rate. Now then you can compare the annual staff time saved to the cost of the software.

So you’re comparing, okay, what will the software, how much time will it take to set this up in the software and have it do it? And how much time are we saving or how much money are we saving as well if the software is doing it for us? If we look at the cost of the software, most software software systems are not as expensive as they used to be.

Software can be. $29 a month. Some software’s a little more. $99 a month depends on the software and what it does, but you’d be surprised. And yes, there are free versions of software, but, and there free versions are great for small tasks. You’re using it only a small amount and you are testing it out. That really free software is great for trial testing.

But in the end, most of the time you’re going to need additional functionality in the free plans. They don’t offer all the functionality and often they will limit the number of things, times that software will do that thing for you. So. Cost benefit analysis. Step one, identify the tasks that the software will replace.

Step two, calculate the hours spent monthly or weekly on those tasks. Multiply those weekly or monthly By your hourly rate, you’ve going to figure out what those hours are. And then compare the annual staff time to the cost of the software. So you’ve going to make sure you’re, when you’re figuring on the time that you’ve spent, that you translate it into an annual rate and then factor last thing.

And as important really is factor in the strategic impact of having this software. What if you have more accurate or better onboarding? What if you have higher satisfaction and retention rates with your volunteers? What if you have fewer errors? What if you have more engagement from your volunteers?

What if you can recruit more volunteers more quickly with the right software? These are as important as that cost benefit analysis when we’re thinking just of staff replacement time. Okay, so. Here’s a practical example as you think about this spreadsheet based scheduling five hours a week for a manager, a volunteer manager, that’s $30 an hour.

This is just numbers we’re making up, right? $150 a week, a paid scheduling tool. That volunteers can schedule their themselves is a hundred dollars a month. The net. Now I’m just making these numbers up. That’s not necessarily what it costs. So the net gain is $500 a month and saves staff time, plus reduce stress, plus a better volunteer experience.

I’m going to say software really does it better is a better choice than manual scheduling in this case. When you use a cost benefit analysis, the framework ensures that every dollar spent on volunteer software buys strategic capacity back. That is the, that’s the goal. The goal is to buy your strategic capacity back, not just efficiency, but your strategic capacity.

So when you think about buying your software. The last thing I want to talk about really quickly is tips for choosing the right volunteer software for your tech stack. We’ve talked a lot about the functionality. Obviously the first tip is to make sure you know exactly the functionality you need, so make sure you know what are the, all of the things so you can assess the software you want.

Also, do a cost benefit analysis. How much are you? Bending, doing these things manually of your time. And what areas of the volunteer engagement cycle could you improve with software? So let’s talk about tips for choosing the right software once you’ve decided We’ve done the cost benefit analysis and it’s.

Nuts that we don’t have a software tool for this yet. Okay? Here are my key points. Don’t buy software to match your peers. Buy it for your unique program needs. I see this all the time, people. What kind of software do you use? What software? What software do you like? What. People ask me all the time, what software do you recommend?

I said, it depends. What are you trying to get done with your software? Focus on integration software that integrates. Can it sync with your CRM email and reporting tools? Can you use a tool like Zapier, which is a type of software that. Allows software to talk to one another. The more integration the better, so that you’re not having to move data from one database to another.

It’s done automatically. Trial versions are your friend. Test with real volunteers and staff. Another tip, a really important one is to assess the UI and the UX carefully. Today’s volunteers expect easy to use tools, and they like things that are easy on the eye. If people are struggling through your system, it’s because.

Most likely the UI and UX aren’t working. So UI is the user interface. So does it look nice? Is there white space or does it look like it was built in 1990? I mean, come on now. Today’s world, we should have good looking software. Software should be easy to use. It should have simple steps. UX is the user’s experience.

Do people get frustrated with this software? If they do, what’s the point? Right, so UI and ux, really important, lean towards allowing volunteers to manage their own contact information and input their own data, so their own profile data. For example, if you can find software that has a user interface, that has a login potential for volunteers, but doesn’t require them.

To log in order to learn about your opportunities. That’s a mis. When software does that, you are leaving volunteers on the table because so many people are still kind of checking you out and don’t want to give you their email until they see what you have available. So if you’re requiring them to log in to learn about your opportunities.

You are losing so many people. People are clicking away because they’re like, well, I don’t want to create a profile yet. I’m not sure I want to volunteer for you yet. It’s sort of like asking for a prenup on your first date. It’s just wrong. Right. Okay. I. Seek cloud friendly and mobile friendly versions. So software nowadays, you should not have to get some thing mailed to you and download it into your, I don’t know if people have this anymore, but it should, it’s not happening.

There’s nothing wrong with putting things in the cloud. In fact, you, it’s nice to have things in the cloud because there’s. Back up there and you don’t have to worry about losing things. Also, make test things out on mobile devices, especially if there’s a volunteer side of things where they can log in and log hours.

Consider your team’s tech comfort level in terms of volunteers and staff, but do not allow it to make decisions for you. So we’ve got to get everybody up to speed and often it, it’s volunteers mentoring, other volunteers, and we can set up programs like that to help people learn how to use software. But again, if the software is easy to use, people are much more likely to lean in and try and use it.

When you’re choosing software, do avoid. I talked a lot about the must have features in your software for today’s volunteer programs, whether they’re small or large. We’ve gone over a full huge list. But once you’ve decided these are the things that we’re going to invest in, the features we’re going to exist that invest in avoid feature creep, because the more features equal, the more.

Complexity. And like I said, we bought a CRM email software, the software before, the software we have now, and it had so many features that we just didn’t need. At some point I realized, you know what, first of all, this is super complicated and second of all, we’re spending too much money here. And so we downgraded to a, a more simple software and we’re happy with our decision.

So, there you go. Red flags, uh, when you’re looking for software is look through your tech stack and make sure you don’t have multiple tools doing the same thing. That is not efficient and it’s probably costing you money. Software that requires manual exports. Is there a way to, or that that requires a lot of administrative to get the data out of it?

Yes. You can manually export. I manually export out of our survey tool. Yes. But if your software needs your IT department to get involved all the time to keep it running, there’s a problem. Then any. Another red flag is software that has a steep learning curve, but no support. Look at their documentation, look at their training, test out their AI widget.

Our software, I will say our CRM software. I’m not that happy with the support widget right now because you know what? I’ll type in a question into that support widget. I was trying to do something with the software the other day. I typed it in, it’s supposed to be supported by ai. It took forever to give me an answer and the answer was nothing.

Nothing around what I needed, and then I went over to chat. PT typed in the same question and got an answer. In less than a minute, when learning LLM software is chat you, chat PTs, your quads, et cetera, are finding the answer faster than the software’s own AI widget. We got problems. We got problems. So check out their support.

Are you going to be able to get support? Are the users like volunteers going to be able to get support? So that’s important. So I hope this has been really helpful for you today to think about the software you need. I think we think that if we buy one volunteer management software system, we’re one and done.

It’s just not the case. Not for the kinds of sophisticated communication we need with our volunteers. At least right now. It’s not the case. Maybe it’ll be the case in the future, but it isn’t now. So, we’re going to think about what are all the different functions we need? How can we buy back strategic capacity with.

The systems that we have chosen to invest in volunteer software are essential. It’s non-negotiable. In today’s world, you do not want to spend your time doing manual data entry, manual calculations, manual spreadsheet management. It just takes too much time. There’s too many errors and. If your volunteers are suffering because the time you’re spending on that, you could be spending on designing better experiences for them, having social time with your volunteers.

Giving them pats on the back and making them feel good about their experience. Let’s not spend all of our time behind a computer when we’re running volunteer programs. Let’s get software on board that is needed. Let’s make these investments, and if we need to get funding for this, let’s find a way. It’s just too important to put on the back burner right now.

So that’s my tips for today. I hope that this has helped you. I’ve been in digital marketing and digital communications game for a long time. Our Impact Lab membership started in 2015, so I had to learn. Every single software we used, I, no one trained me. No one told me what we needed to have, but I can tell you that my life is so much better for some of the software that we have and we keep bringing on new software and new functionality.

You’ll see some new stuff. I’ll be talking about it in the next month or two. We have some really exciting things we’re going to do with some really cool software platforms, and I can’t wait to share them with you. So, thank you for joining us with this week’s Volunteer Nation podcast. I hope you found it helpful in terms of figuring out what volunteer software is absolutely essential for your nonprofit and what you’re going to invest in going forward.

If it’s been helpful to you, I hope you’ll share it with a friend, and I hope you join us next week. Same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody.