Tracking Volunteer Hours using HandsOn Connect

There are two ways to track volunteer hours through HandsOn Connect.

Through your organization by verifying service hours for volunteers associated with a posted volunteer opportunity.

Through your volunteers via a newly enabled feature called Self-Reporting!

So what?

This new feature is an easy way to capture miscellaneous volunteer hours.

You and your volunteers can now capture and track all volunteer hours provided to your organization. You’ll have more documented service hours received; they’ll have more service noted in their volunteer history.

Existing volunteers can easily use the Self-Reported Volunteer Hours feature to report their own hours. o Volunteers can self-report hours from any computer with internet access. o You can provide access to a computer to allow your volunteers to report their hours before they leave so capture the hours without having to input anything.

What is this new feature?

Volunteers can now self-report their service hours for volunteer opportunities listed in the system and for those not listed in the system.

Self-reported volunteer hours for opportunities listed in the system will be recorded within those opportunities. Self-reported volunteer hours for opportunities NOT listed in the system will be recorded in the Self-Reported Volunteer Hours opportunity that has been created for each organization.

You may have been wondering where that Self-Reported Volunteer Hours opportunity came from and what it is for. This is a special opportunity set up specifically to administer this function; it cannot be edited or changed.

How you might utilize this new feature You and your volunteers can now capture and track all volunteer hours provided to your organization.

For example, you may have someone who comes in on an ongoing basis to volunteer in your organization’s office or perhaps you have virtual volunteers (completing tasks at home or via the

internet). Instead of having to create a new opportunity to track their hours (or use some other system), you can simply ask your volunteer to self-report their hours in the HandsOn Connect system. Once they do, the service hours are now recorded in the system and reports can be run on this data. Please note that volunteers will need to self-report their hours EACH TIME they volunteer since the process is set up to record a particular date and does not span dates.

Please see below to learn the specifics for utilizing this new feature.

How do volunteers self-report their hours?

Self-Reported Volunteer Opportunities & Occurrences Verifying service for self-reported connections

Some additional information For listed volunteer opportunities, volunteers will only be able to report a number of hours up to the amount of hours scheduled for the occurrence. o In order to report extra hours, the opportunity coordinator can add more hours when verifying hours in the occurrence or the volunteer can self-report the additional time.

Please note that the additional self-reported hours will only show in the Self-Reported Volunteer Hours volunteer opportunity.

Self-reported hours are tracked as earned hours until they are verified. Partner staff will still need to verify hours, but this is much easier than entering a volunteer opportunity when you already have your volunteer.

The system will now track total hours served and verified hours for volunteers.

Self-Reporting Volunteer Hours Volunteers Can Self-Report service hours for Volunteer Opportunities not found on the public site. This enables them to keep a complete volunteer history on the site.

Volunteers should go www.volunteerhoward.org and login. Click on the "My Account" tab and then click the link for "Self-Report Your Volunteer Service".

1. Volunteers can select from a picklist of all existing active partners.

2. If the organization is NOT an active partner, the volunteer can self-report the organization information 3. Volunteers fill out this section to describe the name, date, start and end time of the opportunity and its primary impact area.

Clicking submit creates an opportunity and adds it to the Self-Reported Hours part of the My Account overview, in status "Awaiting Verification" An email is sent to the organization asking them to verify the hours.

The Self-Reported Opportunity shows up in the "Self-Reported Hours" section of the Overview page:

It remains there while awaiting verification, and when it gets verified it will be moved into the regular "Volunteer History" grid.

Self-Reported Volunteer Opportunities & Occurrences When a volunteer self-reports a new opportunity with an existing partner, a new connection record is created in the Self-Reported Volunteer Hours volunteer opportunity that has been created for each organization.

The Primary Contact for the partner organization receives an email alerting them that a volunteer has 'submitted hours for verification'.

This email is sent to the partner organization's Primary Contact.

Partners logged in to their portal, will find this link takes them directly to the connection record.

But let's look at the bigger picture of how this connection is created and its related records.

A Volunteer Opportunity Record called "Self-Reported Volunteer Hours" has been automatically created for each Organization.

They are all distinguished by: Status = inactive Schedule Type = To Be Scheduled It's used for the purposes of the connection record created by volunteers when they self-report on the public site, and they specify your organization as the organization served.

This record cannot be edited or deleted.

The "Self-Reported Volunteer Hours" Volunteer Opportunity has one unique occurrence associated with it.

This occurrence record has a connections grid, which lists all the selfreported connections

In this case - all self-reported connections where Troutco was the organization served, can be found here, and a partner staff for Troutco, can verify attendance in the usual way!

Partner staff can mark the self-reported connection as attended (verifying it), or not attended.

We can see here that Troutco has already marked the March 1st self-reported Volunteer Opportunity as attended, but has not yet verified her March 2nd opportunity.

Self-Reported Connection Record View

In the connection record you can see the info the volunteer entered: Volunteer Opportunity Name Impact Area Existing Organization & Organization Served (as entered by the Volunteer from the picklist).

Start and End Date and Time and hours served.

The status of these connections appears as Self-Reported and remains so.

If you choose to report attendance at the Connection Level (rather than using the occurrence grid), Just mark the attendance status as Attended (and Hours Verified).

Best Practices for Verifying Self-Reported Volunteer Hours 1) Go to the Volunteer Opportunity tab and select the "Self-Reported Volunteer Hours" view.

2) Go to the Occurrence related to the "Self-Reported Volunteer Hours" opportunity.

3) If desired, use the Connection Grid to mark the attendance accordingly.

4) If desired, use the connection grid or related list to reach the desired self-reported connection record and update the attendance status accordingly.

Verifying service for self-reported connections Volunteers are able to report their hours of service to you in one of two ways: They may self-report hours for one of your listed opportunities and trigger an email requesting that you verify their hours of service They can also report they volunteered with your organization for a Volunteer Opportunity that you have not specifically listed or made available for sign-up. If they report they have done service with you, an email will be sent asking you to verify hours of service for this Self-Reported Volunteer Opportunity.

The email you'll receive when a volunteer asked for you to verify service for one of your listed opportunities

Log into your partner portal account and click on the link provided in the email. It will take you to the occurrence record for the opportunity, where you can verify

You'll notice that in this case, Valerie Volunteer's self-reported hours are already filled in for you. Just click on her record checkbox, and use the Mass Action pick-list and select verify Service. You've now confirmed the hours she's reported.

The email you'll receive when a volunteer reports that they've volunteered with your organization for an opportunity that you have not posted;

Even though you didn't list this as a volunteer opportunity, Valerie stuffed envelopes for your organization on March 1 and wants you to verify her volunteer service.

Log into your partner portal account and click on the link in the email to go directly to her self-reported connection record.

Click on Edit in the connection record, and update Attendance Status and Hours Served fields to verify the service.

1. You can see the name of the opportunity that the volunteer reported 2. Change Attendance Status from "Please Verify" to "Attended (and hours Verified)

It's easy to find all the self-reported connections by looking at the Volunteer Opportunity called "Self-Reported Volunteer Hours"

Select the view "Self-Reported Volunteer Hours" in either the Volunteer Opportunity, Occurrences or connections tabs to quickly these connections.

In the occurrence record, you'll find a special version of the Connections Grid - which lists all your self-reported volunteer connections.

You can verify connections one by one here... or check ALL your outstanding self-reported connections and use the "Mass Action" button to mark as "Attended (and hours verified).

If you want to see more detail about any of the connections (the self-reported name of the opportunity or the impact area), you can click on the connection ID record directly.