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Knowledge Base / Volunteer Management

Volunteers

Updated October 5, 2026

Volunteers are the people who fill your activities and shifts. Families can sign themselves up for anything you've published, and you can assign people directly — then track who confirmed, showed up, or canceled on the Attendance page.

Note: Volunteer management is included in every plan. See Plans & Pricing.

Assign a volunteer

For an activity without shifts:

  1. Go to Volunteers → Schedule and open the activity.
  2. In the Volunteers table, click Assign volunteer.
  3. Search for the person in Contact to assign.
  4. Check Notify person to email them that they've been added.
  5. Check RSVP required (appears after Notify person) to ask them to accept or decline.
  6. Click Assign.

For a shift, open the shift instead — from the activity's shift list or Volunteers → Shifts — and follow the same steps.

Note: If you require an RSVP, the volunteer starts as Scheduled and the email asks them to Accept or Decline; their status updates to Confirmed or Declined based on their answer. Without an RSVP, they're marked Confirmed right away.

How families sign up

Once an activity (and its term and shifts) is published, families can sign up themselves:

In the parent portal, families go to Volunteer → Sign up. The tab lists your published activities, each with an opening count. Families:

  1. Expand an activity to see its open shifts.
  2. Click Sign up next to the shift they want. An activity without shifts has a single Sign up button for the whole opportunity.
  3. Choose a family member under "Choose someone to sign up".
  4. Click Sign up. They see "You're signed up".

Families can click About this opportunity to read the activity's description. Only show openings is on by default, and a date range menu limits the list to the next 30 days, 90 days, or all upcoming shifts. Full shifts and closed shifts can't be joined. Self sign-ups are marked Confirmed automatically.

Note: The old Service Hours page (/hours) no longer exists. Links to it now open the Sign up tab in the parent portal.

Attendance statuses

Every volunteer on an activity or shift has a status:

Status Meaning
Scheduled Assigned by an admin; hasn't responded to the RSVP yet.
Confirmed Will be attending (signed up themselves, or accepted the RSVP).
Declined Responded to the RSVP and declined.
Canceled Canceled after being confirmed.
Present Showed up on time.
Tardy Showed up late.
Excused Didn't attend, but was excused.
Absent Never showed up.

Statuses drive timesheet hours: time counts as completed once the volunteer is marked Present, Tardy, or Excused, and it stops counting as scheduled if they're marked Absent or Canceled.

Track and update attendance

Go to Volunteers → Attendance to see every shift sign-up in one place. Use the All, Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, This Week, and This Month tabs to jump to a date range, and filter by Status or Term.

To update someone's status — for example after taking roll:

  1. Click Edit on the row.
  2. Pick the new Status in the Change Status window.
  3. Click Update.

To update several people at once, open the activity or shift, select the volunteers, and use the Change status bulk action, then click Update status.

Export volunteers

On the Attendance page, click Export volunteers to download the full list, or select specific rows and use Export selected.