I had done some work on volunteer management last year but put it aside to focus on other features. I have picked it back up and found that one of the assumptions I had made last fall was completely wrong.
I concluded over the weekend that volunteers is three phases:
- Definition of volunteer roles which are referred to as “Jobs” within wp-SwimTeam. The definition of a job includes the title, description, type of job, duration, where it is needed (home, away, both), and a few other details.
- Assignment of jobs to a season or meet. Some jobs span a season, some are only for a meet. The number of people needed to fill the jobs will differ from team to team and from pool to pool. You might need 3 timers for a 6 lane pool but 4 for a 8 lane pool (assuming each team provides half the timers).
- Assignment of people to the jobs. Once all of the jobs are defined and allocated for each meet and season, people need to sign up (or be assigned) to the jobs. Initially I expect to only implement assignment and will add sign up later.
I’d be curious to know if anyone can think of a scenario that this won’t work for. I’ve got phase 1 completed already and will start on phase 2 this week.
The only thing I can think of is some of our jobs are split per meet. But I think this would still work by creating a job description for each split.
We do the same, particularly for timers. Right now I have them entered as “First Half Timer” and “Second Half Timer” in my job list. I couldn’t come up with a better way to do it without making the system overly complicated. The other idea I have is to define the duration to be “Partial Meet” or something like that.