Donor and volunteer management software is an essential part of your organization’s fundraising infrastructure. It allows you to track and manage donor and volunteer activity, allowing you to better understand them, their giving habits, and how they interact with your organization. This information can be used to identify trends in giving behavior or evaluate the effectiveness of specific campaigns or programs.
In this guide, we review the aspects of Donor And Volunteer Management Software, best volunteer management software for nonprofits, and volunteer scheduling software.
Donor And Volunteer Management Software
Donor and volunteer management software is a powerful tool for managing the relationships between organizations and their donors, volunteers, and other supporters. It lets you track interactions with these people through a database that stores information about each contact. The database can then be used to generate reports on those interactions, allowing you to identify trends in donor behavior or evaluate the effectiveness of specific fundraising campaigns or volunteer efforts.
What is donor and volunteer management software?
Donor and volunteer management software is a type of software that helps nonprofits manage their donors and volunteers. This type of software allows you to track donations and volunteer hours, communicate with your donors and volunteers, get insights into your donor database, and more.
How does donor and volunteer management software work?
The first step to installing the software is to run an installation wizard. The wizard will guide you through the process of installing and configuring the software. You’ll be asked to provide some basic information about your organization, such as its name and address, so it can be entered into the system’s database.
Once installed, users can access their donor and volunteer information from anywhere with an internet connection by logging into a web browser or mobile app on a phone or tablet device. Both systems offer several ways for users to log in:
- Username/password method (most secure)
- Two-factor authentication via text message or email (highly recommended)
If you have additional questions about how our donor management software works, please contact us at [email protected]!
Why does my organization need donor and volunteer management software?
You can use this software to manage all of the following:
- Donate and volunteer data. You can collect information about donors, volunteers, and their donations or hours.
- Donation tracking. This includes tracking when donations are made and where they’re received from. It also includes making sure that you receive payment for each donation in full (and on time).
- Relationship management with donors and volunteers. This is important because good relationships with your supporters can increase retention rates for your organization—meaning you’ll have more active donors in the future! And if you have an active volunteer base, that means more people who care about what your organization does will be able to help out as much as possible!
When should my organization use donor and volunteer management software?
Donor and volunteer management software is for organizations who have a large number of donors and volunteers, whether that’s because you’re a large organization or because you have many locations. If your organization has multiple locations, then donor and volunteer management software may be right for you if:
- You want to consolidate data on all of your donors and volunteers in one central location
- You need to track data on each donor or volunteer that has given money or volunteered at past events.
What are the benefits of donor and volunteer management software?
Running a nonprofit or charity doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right tools and organization, you can easily manage your donors and volunteers—and make sure that their contributions are used wisely.
Donor and volunteer management software can help you:
- Manage your donors efficiently to support fundraising initiatives
- Engage with current supporters through effective communication channels
- Recognize donors for their generosity through private recognition tools
Is donor and volunteer management software difficult to use?
Donor and volunteer management software is not difficult to use. In fact, it’s easy to learn and easy to train others in. Any member of your team can use it, including volunteers and board members!
You have the option of using our software via a web browser on any device like a computer or mobile phone (if those are your preferred methods). This means you can access your data anywhere at any time; this also means that if you prefer using an app instead, you could do that too! Donor or donor management software can be used by anyone who needs access to donor records for whatever reason: staff members of large organizations needing information about their donors before making decisions about how best to approach them; volunteers working directly with donors as well as board members looking for more information about their organization’s supporters.
Donor and volunteer management software can make it easier to manage your organization’s interactions with its donors.
Donor and volunteer management software can make it easier to manage your organization’s interactions with its donors. Donors are one of the most important parts of any nonprofit, and having a way to track their information and keep them engaged is crucial to maintaining those relationships in a way that makes sense for everyone.
Donor and volunteer management software can also help you manage your organization’s interactions with volunteers, which are an essential part of keeping your organization running smoothly. Without these volunteers, many nonprofits would be unable to function at all!
best volunteer management software for nonprofits
Volunteer management and engagement tools can be game-changing for nonprofit leaders as they look to supercharge their impact with limited time and resources. Navigating volunteer shift scheduling, tracking hours, and managing donations is tricky and there are a lot of solutions out there that vary across price, usability, and feature richness. Below, we’ve listed and reviewed the leading volunteer management software solutions to help you make the best choice for your nonprofit.
We of course believe Civic Champs is the most intuitive and best platform for seamless volunteer management and engagement. That being said, we also know there are more than a few solutions to consider. Keep scrolling to find a comprehensive list comparing the best volunteer management softwares in the digital universe.
In this article we have reviewed 25 different software solutions including Better Impact, Volgistics, Volunteer Hub, Volunteer Local, Get Connected by Galaxy Digital, Track It Forward, Wild Apricot, In It Live, Sign Up Genius, Volunteer Mark, Cervis, Mobilize, and Volunteer Scheduler Pro, Every Action, Submittable, Volunteer Match, LineUp, RosterFy, VoMe, Bloomerang, Breeze, SignUp.com, and Giving Way.
Software solution fast facts
With so many great options available, it can be difficult for nonprofits to determine which software solution will work best for their volunteer management needs.
Without including our own software, here’s a quick rundown of the top solutions in the following categories: pricing, usability, and customer support:
Cost-friendly software solutions
If your nonprofit organization is looking for the solutions with affordable pricing, your top three software solutions will include the following:
User-friendly software solutions
If your aim is to utilize software that will provide the most seamless experience for your volunteers, these three apps should be at the top of your list:
Software solutions with excellent customer support
If you are looking for software solutions that provide unparalleled customer support, these are going to be your top three options:
The categories above are your fast and quick guide to volunteer management solutions that might satisfy your most important criteria. Below we detail each platform including ratings on pricing, usability and customer support in addition to advantages and considerations.
Civic Champs is a volunteer management software that allows leaders to seamlessly track, manage, and engage volunteers. One its most unique features is the micro-donations, which make the right ask at the right time to maximize donations. Civic Champs offers a kiosk mode and dashboard, and is ideal to use for volunteer check-ins or events.
Better Impact
Better Impact is a volunteer coordination software that helps with recruitment, onboarding, training, communications, scheduling and reporting. Some of its most unique features are online donations, donation receipts, and targeted emails. It also offers a basic CRM to track member details.
Advantages: All in one system across donations and volunteering highly customizable and easy to incorporate into organizations
Considerations: The set up process is time consuming and it can be challenging for volunteers to navigate the system in the beginning with limited training.
Volgistics
Volgistics is a comprehensive volunteer management application, with its core features including background screening, a volunteer portal and kiosk, group tracking, and document storage. It has served over 5,000 organizations and tracked over 6 million volunteers.
Advantages: Volgistics has an ample amount of features that allows multiple volunteer assignments to be open at once, and the automation minimizes manual control required
Considerations: The software requires continuous upgrading or deletion of archived volunteers, and the program can be taxing to learn at first.
Volunteer Hub
Volunteer Hub highlights customer resource management integration, using Salesforce. It is unique because it is a volunteer management software that integrates all of Blackbaud’s CRMS such as The Raiser’s Edge and eTapestry. Other features include waiver tracking, group management, fundraising, and brand specific pages for event registrations.
Advantages: The points system allows managers to easily have all the things they need in one place, such as waivers, event sign ups, and emails.
Volunteer Local
Volunteer Local offers simple, streamlined scheduling, registration, and communication for managing volunteers for various events. This platform also offers access to volunteer responses for admins on mobile (ex: t-shirts and phone numbers), on-site check in, social sharing, and collecting credit card information.
Advantages: The self service portal is easy to use for volunteers, and organizations can organize large numbers in a short amount of time, customer service is attentive and helpful.
Considerations: The reporting and analytics offered could leave something to be desired depending on need, and the software lacks a good dashboard for managers to receive real time updates. The mobile app accommodate’s volunteer use but not admin use.
Get Connected by Galaxy Digital
Galaxy Digital focuses on four broad categories: management, engagement, reporting, and communication. They started as a software for volunteer centers (where you can sign up for volunteering in different organizations), but has started to offer nonprofit specific tools as well. This software offers skills-based volunteerism and service larning management. It also incorporates email and text messaging, social media integration, and exportable reports.
Advantages: Their volunteer impact pages allow automatic reports to be generated on volunteer leaderboards, and events are able to be shared through social media integrations and mass email very easily. Overall GD is best used as a community management platform for nonprofits.
Considerations: Their mobile admin functions are on the weaker side. The set-up for the system can be confusing with unclear guidance on how to best set up roles and settings for your agency.
Track It Forward
Track it forward is a time tracking software. Its unique features include event RSVPs, milestones, offline mode, conditional logic formatting, advanced verification, and multi organization aggregation.
Advantages: It essentially serves as a timesheet, but is digital so it is easy for the volunteer to track hours.
Considerations: This only focuses on tracking hours, so it is not conducive towards managing shifts, asking for donations, or serving other purposes managers may be looking for. The pricing is ideal for smaller organizations but tends to get expensive around 300 volunteers.
Wild Apricot
Wild Apricot is a powerful cloud software to help you automate and simplify membership tasks. It comes with a member database, website builder, payments, event management, and membership applications and renewals.
Advantages: Allows high level membership management, and which makes it a good solution for organizations that have paid members in addition to volunteers
Considerations: Designed for member management and not volunteer management so it lacks volunteer specific features and may require workarounds to tailor membership features to support volunteers.
In It Live
InitLive offers volunteer management solutions and event staff solutions. It is a global platform used in 25+ countries, with many language settings. It also allows data to be shared with Salesforce to get a complete view of donors and volunteers.
Advantages: Reduces the amount of administrative work by allowing volunteers to schedule their own shifts.
Considerations: This one of the pricier solutions on our list. In order to sign up for shifts, you must utilize a desktop instead of just inputting it through a mobile device.
Sign Up Genius
Sign up Genius specializes in online sign in forms, serving a wide variety of groups. Included are a simple sign up creation, powerful group messaging, and easy payment and donation tools. While this application is great for forms, it is not as conducive towards tracking hours and managing data.
Advantages: extremely easy to set up, and there are an abundance of different designs that can be customized to your personal event
Considerations: this software only focuses on the sign-up process, and volunteer managers that are looking for a more holistic software may need to look elsewhere.
Volunteer Mark
Volunteer Mark is a mobile application that helps managers run an efficient volunteer program through simplifying communication, recruiting, and managing. They offer a clear and concise class management dashboard for events and volunteers, as well as providing volunteers with specific filters to find volunteer opportunities. Volunteer Mark is very data driven, and provides lots of valuable statistics to the organization.
Advantages: volunteer oriented, as volunteers themselves can sign up for shifts and track their hours reducing the work of managers
Considerations: it is hard to sync if organizations have other softwares implemented, and there is difficulty in reporting functions such as removing multiple sign-ups
Cervis
CERVIS is a volunteer management software that enables online scheduling, automatic reminders, and helpful training and support. It also offers external customer resource integration and custom data reports.
Advantages: the data features are up-to-date, and opportunities are easy to find while the registration is quick and seamless
Considerations: the customization features and the user interface are lacking, and the reporting is difficult for larger organizations with thousands of volunteers
Mobilize
Mobilize offers a crash course for volunteer management and top strategies through the extensive blog on its platform. It also recruits volunteers (offers peer to peer recruitment features), helps people discover events, and maximizes donation givings.
Advantages: the platform is very collaborative, and users can easily share resources and ask questions amongst each other
Considerations: it tends to be advocacy focused, and is best for political campaigns rather than general volunteer focused organizations
Volunteer Scheduler Pro
Volunteer Scheduler Pro is a software with a companion mobile app that offers flexible scheduling, automatic reminders, tiered access, custom enrollments, and reports. Overall, it serves to schedule, manage, and engage volunteers.
Advantages: there are multiple options for volunteer autonomy, and volunteers can manage their own hours and schedules
Considerations: a lot of the features require a desktop rather than the app, so that creates difficulty when changing schedules or readjusting shifts
Every Action
Every Action is software designed to help recruit and retain volunteers, simplify the shift sign up process, and improve volunteer communication.
Advantages: There are many intuitive features that will encourage volunteers to interact with the app, sign up for events, donate money, and accurately report hours.
Considerations: Many of the features of this software are not available on mobile platforms.
Submittable
Submittable is software designed for large corporations looking to expand their social impact programs, and it includes an integrated corporate volunteering platform.
Advantages: This software is scalable, and it has the handle corporate sized accounts, making it great for large nonprofit organizations.
Considerations: This software is pricey, especially considering that it doesn’t offer many unique features beyond what other software solutions provide for a fraction of the cost.
Volunteer Match
Volunteer Match is known for helping match prospective volunteers to relevant volunteer opportunities in their local communities, but it also has an open network software solution for nonprofits.
volunteer scheduling software
Volunteers power so much good in our communities, whether supporting students at a local school or a mission trip in another country. These days, there is no reason to spend more time managing volunteers with paper sign up sheets and Excel spreadsheets. There are a host of volunteer management applications and tools that make organizing a breeze.
But, with so many options, where do you begin? There is a range of options and features available with various volunteer management software solutions. We have compiled a list of the ten best volunteer management solutions to help you narrow the field.
Better Impact
If you are looking for an overall volunteer management system, Better Impact is a great choice. The volunteer portal allows volunteers to create profiles and access information about volunteer opportunities and serves as a basic CRM tool. You can even create a page for volunteers to learn about volunteer opportunities and to fill out an application.
They offer a variety of pricing depending on an organization’s needs. However, they don’t offer a free basic version for volunteer sign ups.
Fundly Connect
Looking for a feature-rich volunteer platform that works for small organizations with only a few volunteers, all the way to large organizations with thousands of volunteers? Fundly Connect is a great option. The site allows volunteers to easily check for opportunities in their area and helps nonprofits manage relationships with those people.
Although some of the more advanced features require initial training, administrators then have the ability to assign volunteer coordinators to manage opportunities, track attendance and volunteer hours submission and approval. You can manage donors and volunteers with their helpful CRM platform. You can set up e-notifications to schedule reminders, plus there’s a communication module that makes it easy to send out email newsletters.
Galaxy Digital (Get Connected)
Galaxy Digital offers two products: Get Connected, a volunteer management software, and ReDI, a disaster management software. Both products have a variety of useful features for organizing and managing volunteers. They have an expansive list of features ranging from event landing pages to event management.
The real benefit of this system is the tools around volunteer event management. Whether the group needs a landing page, to collect donations, manage e-sign on waivers or run volunteer reports, this tool is geared to help. We also found the site to be visually appealing and easy to use.
Giveffect
If you are looking for a software to manage your online presence for events, volunteers and fundraising, Giveffect is a great option. With a variety of tools for nonprofits ranging from website design to volunteer management to online giving, Giveffect offers a one stop shop for organizations looking to reach a volunteer base.
Although there is value to having all features provided with a single software program, it may also result in paying for features that are not needed. That said, the ease of use of their product along with a host of tools makes this a desirable option for many volunteer organizations.
InItLive
InItLive is a volunteer scheduling app predominately focused on event management. If you are a nonprofit scheduling regular shifts, this might not be an ideal tool for you.
That said, for event management, InItLive offers an array of helpful features and a nice interface to give a professional look to your event and organization. From a volunteer perspective, we found the tool easy to use and visually appealing. It serves well as an event registration tool.
SignUp.com
SignUp.com is a popular site that offers quite a bit of flexibility in the ways that you can use the online sign up tool. It does not have the additional products such as CRM or volunteer database management that you find with some volunteer management tools. It does come at an affordable cost and even has a free option.
If you are looking for more advanced functionality or need to design and brand the tool on a single volunteer organizing landing page, you may need another tool. However, SignUp.com provides a nice flexible and affordable option to those looking to organize a group of volunteers.
SignUpGenius
When it comes to online sign up features, SignUpGenius leads the way in features and options. Whether you need to open or close a sign up, automatically hide dates or collect responses to custom questions, SignUpGenius has the features.
Online sign ups can be linked to a website and even customized to match an organization’s branding. If you are looking for a flexible and powerful sign up tool for organizing volunteers, this is a great option.
Volgistics
Volgistics is a robust software that has developed a nice set of features for organizing and managing volunteers. The application has some beneficial features such as integrating with an application for volunteer background screening. This, along with other add-on features, has created value for nonprofits or any organization that is managing volunteers.
That also means there is a learning curve to understand the various features — particularly the database management system — but with the benefit of a robust application. They offer pricing based on the number of volunteers you manage as well as some a la carte features at an additional cost.
The real strength of this system is the ability to manage volunteer information and reporting. That said, we found the system a bit dated from a design standpoint. Because it operates much like a database, it also takes a fair amount of time to learn how the system operates.
VolunteerHub
VolunteerHub is an application that covers volunteer recruiting and management. It’s packed with features that you may or may not find useful, such as integrating with Google Analytics.
Because of its complexity, there is a significant learning curve for the database and other platforms. That said, the software provides a comprehensive solution from recruiting volunteers to building a database and tracking volunteers through reporting features. Their features provide an array of tools from volunteer recruitment to reporting.
Volunteer Local
Volunteer Local is an event scheduling platform. This software ideally serves those who are looking at scheduling volunteers for events. They do not offer some of the features that you may find with other volunteer management apps. However, Volunteer Local is very effective at streamlining volunteer management for events.
With Volunteer Local, you can schedule volunteers, collect data, provide volunteer check-in and even collect money for registration. That said, we did find a fair learning curve for the software and the pages were not visually appealing — making the software appear dated. Pros:
Summary
Keep in mind that some of these volunteer software solutions will have more options than you need while others may have fewer.
To get started, you’ll want to make a list of the tools or features that you need to help simplify your volunteer organizing and management. Then, use this list to help narrow the field and find the solutions that best meet your needs.
With the right software at your fingertips, you can focus on growing your volunteer community and advancing your mission.