Tracking volunteer hours refers to the activities centered around managing, recording, and monitoring the time and effort volunteers put into projects. It entails keeping an accurate record of how many hours a volunteer works and what activities they take part in.
As a volunteer manager, it is important to track your volunteer’s work hours to better understand the efforts they are making, the impacts of such efforts, as well as how to adjust the schedules for future commitments.
Importance of Volunteer Hour tracking?
There are lots of reasons to track volunteer hours. First, it helps to make sure that volunteers are appreciated appropriately for their efforts. It also helps the organisation to plan and plan their volunteer schedules and workforce.
Volunteer hour tracking also helps the organisation to ensure that volunteers are as effective as possible, and projects are completed when they should. Information from the volunteer hours tracking sheet can also be used to create reports that specify volunteer impact and organisational volunteer program value.
Tracking volunteer hours as an individualÂ
Whether you are a volunteer manager or an individual saddled with the responsibility, there are two ways by which you can track volunteer hours, which are the volunteer management app, and the volunteer hours tracking sheet.
- Volunteer Management App
One way to track volunteer hours is to use a Volunteer Management App. These apps help to way streamline processes and boost efficiency.
Although there are many apps with different features and functions out there, the best app is the one that delivers both basic and advanced features such as location and expense tracking. You also need to consider app costs, such as one-off fees and subscription fees.
- Volunteer Hours Tracking Sheet
Online spreadsheets are an alternative to volunteer tracking apps, and you have a range of them, including Excel or Google Sheets that can help you to track volunteer hours. You can use tracking sheets to store information about work hours. You can also use a paper register to store basic information such as work hours and activities.
However, these tracking sheets and paper registers might not be detailed enough for comprehensive tracking as you get from technological equipment.
Best Practices for tracking volunteer hours as an Organisation
A volunteer organisation should adopt a tracking system that is easy to use, to ensure that volunteers can log in their work hours and activities easier, and also for organisations to manage the data easily.
The volunteer tracking system also needs to have top-notch security features to keep data safe. Organisations also need to use analytics to get proper insights into the data captured. These analytics help to measure the impact of volunteer efforts and ensure that volunteer programs are efficiently and effectively managed.
Conclusion
To carry out successful volunteer programs, volunteer hour tracking is important. You can use tracking apps, manual tracking, as well as specialised volunteer management solutions such as Vome Volunteer.
Vome Volunteer is a time and attendance tracking software that can help you track volunteer hours and efforts more efficiently.
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