Volunteer coordinators at museums, zoos, and gardens tend to want the same thing: a page where a volunteer can see open shifts, pick one, and have that commitment land in Altru without anyone retyping it. Getting there takes some honest sorting of what Altru handles well, what it handles awkwardly online, and where a small amount of process does more good than another tool.
Start by separating the three volunteer jobs
“Manage volunteers online” usually bundles three different tasks, and they don’t all have the same answer:
- Recruiting. A prospective volunteer fills out an interest or application form.
- Scheduling. An approved volunteer chooses specific shifts or jobs.
- Tracking. Hours worked, attendance, and history get recorded on the constituent.
Altru’s strength is the third one. Volunteer information, constituent records, and the rest of a person’s relationship with you (member, donor, ticket buyer) live together, which is the main reason to keep volunteer data in Altru at all. The first two are where coordinators run into friction, because they happen on the public website, and Altru’s public-facing web forms were built mainly around sales, memberships, and giving.
Know what your Altru setup can do before you design anything
Altru includes volunteer management on the back-office side, but how much of it can be exposed to volunteers through a public web form is something to confirm for your own database rather than assume. Features, licensing, and form types vary, and we’d rather not guess on your behalf. Before building a process, check:
- Which web form types are available in your Altru instance, and whether any of them can collect general information beyond a purchase or gift.
- Whether volunteer jobs and shifts in your database can be offered for self-signup online, or only assigned by staff.
- How new web submissions match to existing constituents, so a returning volunteer doesn’t become a duplicate record.
The fastest way to get a reliable answer is to test in a sandbox or training environment if you have one, and to ask Blackbaud support directly with your specific scenario (“Can a volunteer select a shift from our website and have it recorded as an assignment?”). Write down the answer. It decides which of the approaches below makes sense.
Three workable approaches
1. Online application, staff-managed scheduling
This is the most common and lowest-risk setup. Volunteers apply online (through whatever Altru form option fits, or a simple form on your website), and the coordinator reviews, approves, and assigns jobs inside Altru. Scheduling stays manual, but every assignment is entered once, by someone who knows the rules about training, background checks, and minimum ages.
It works well for programs with a modest roster or roles that need screening, such as docents, animal care, or anyone working with children.
2. Shift signup outside Altru, regular import back in
If you have many volunteers picking from many shifts, a dedicated scheduling tool can give volunteers the self-service experience they expect. The tradeoff is that you now have two places holding volunteer data. Make that manageable by deciding which system owns what: the scheduling tool owns upcoming shifts, Altru owns the person and their completed hours. Then set a fixed rhythm (weekly or monthly) for bringing attendance and hours into Altru, and assign one person to do it.
Without that rhythm, Altru’s volunteer history quietly stops being accurate, and year-end hour totals turn into a scramble.
3. Recurring roles with minimal online interaction
Some programs barely need online scheduling. A Tuesday-morning garden crew or a standing weekend docent rotation changes rarely. For these, keep a simple online interest form for newcomers and manage the regulars directly in Altru. Don’t build a self-service process for a schedule that only changes twice a year.
Keep the data clean either way
Whichever approach you choose, a few habits keep volunteer records useful:
- Search before you create. Volunteers are very often also members or donors. Check for an existing constituent record before adding a new one, especially for submissions that arrive with a different email address than the one on file.
- Use consistent attributes or codes for volunteer status (applicant, active, inactive) and for the departments people serve, so a query can pull “all active education volunteers” without guesswork.
- Record hours on a schedule, not when someone remembers. Hours feed recognition events, grant reports, and in-kind valuation, and they are hard to reconstruct later.
- Build a few standing queries: active volunteers with no recorded hours in 90 days, applicants not yet contacted, and volunteers whose required training is due. These replace a lot of spreadsheets.
Communicating with volunteers
Once volunteer status lives on the constituent record, your normal Altru marketing and communications tools can segment by it. That means volunteer newsletters, shift reminders built from a query, and thank-you messages can come from the same database as everything else. It also lets you avoid sending a volunteer a “we miss you, rejoin today” membership appeal the week after they logged forty hours, so check how volunteers are included or excluded before each appeal goes out.
Quick answers
Should volunteer data live in Altru or in a separate volunteer tool?
The person and their history belong in Altru so you see the whole relationship. Day-to-day shift scheduling can live elsewhere if your volume calls for it, as long as hours come back into Altru on a schedule.
Can a volunteer application create a constituent record automatically?
That depends on the form type you use and your configuration. Test it in a sandbox and confirm with Blackbaud support, and watch closely for duplicates once it’s live.
