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After you complete your site setup, you can start adding volunteers. There are three options for adding volunteers to your site, depending on what works best for your organization! In general, organizations prefer to start with a few volunteers for testing purposes before inviting everyone.

Option 1: Direct volunteers to self-register on Track It Forward using the direct link from the Promote page of your Organizer Dashboard. 

Advantages: 

• Saves you time as the coordinator since each volunteer will be responsible for their own registration process. 

• Easier to gather personal details that you wouldn’t know, such as t-shirt size, emergency contact, or volunteer interest.

• Limits accounts to those who are actively logging hours and ready to use Track It Forward.

Disadvantages: 

• May take longer to onboard everyone since volunteers will register on their own time.

• Difficult to enforce any outside requirements, such as training, since volunteers may register before they should.

Recommended Scenarios:

• Sites with detailed profile questions that can only be answered by the volunteer 

• Sites without an exact list of current volunteers who need a user account

• Sites that don’t need to track pre-registration requirements such as training or orientation

Option 2: Add volunteers individually by using the Add Volunteer section of your Volunteers page

Advantages: 

• The fastest way to create an account for a new user
  
  
• Easy to skip any profile fields that don't apply to someone

Disadvantages: 

• Time-consuming for a large group of volunteers 

• May not know certain profile details for someone

Recommended Scenarios:

• Adding site administrators who don’t need to complete all the profile fields

• Adding a small pilot group to test the software

Option 3: Import a list of volunteers using a spreadsheet

Advantages:

• Everyone is onboarded right away and set up with an account

• The organization controls site access by choosing who to import

Disadvantages: 

• Time-consuming to compile and organize user data

• May not know certain profile details 

• Potential to create unnecessary accounts by importing volunteers who aren’t actively logging hours

Recommended Scenarios:

• Sites with an existing list of volunteers that’s easy to organize

• Sites with basic profile questions that the organization knows

• A site that wants to oversee user access 

For more information on adding volunteers, this article demonstrates each method so you can decide what’s best for you!

If you need to upgrade someone to an administrative role after they register, you can click on their name from your volunteer list and then go to the Permissions tab. Here, you can assign them various roles depending on what you want them to have access to on the site. This article shows a breakdown of each role and what they can do!