The sun is shining, school is out, and the smells of sunblock and barbecue can only mean one thing–summer is here! Summer is always an exciting season for our customers as it usually means more fun in the sun with friends and family. It’s also peak travel season around the world, which can also be a bit more difficult to navigate when scheduling your volunteers. But just as quickly as it came, summer will come to a close and everyone will be transitioning into fall. The transition from season to season often calls for volunteer schedulers to make special adjustments in their volunteer schedules. Luckily, Volunteer Scheduler Pro has a few built-in features that can make the transition easier for everyone and keep your volunteer roster full.
Here are a couple of key features schedulers can use this summer to help you make the most out of Volunteer Scheduler Pro software:
Remind volunteers to input vacation dates
According to a survey by AAA, more than one-third of Americans will take a family vacation over the summer. Some of your regular volunteers might be out of town, but you can still keep your rosters full with Volunteer Scheduler Pro. VSP has built-in email templates that make it easy to send important information to volunteers.
Use the “Request for updates to availability” template to remind volunteers to input their vacation dates, which allows volunteers to update their summer availability, so you can keep shifts filled before creating summer volunteer schedules. In this email template you can include a little blurb to remind people to input their summer vacation dates.
Collecting all of this information before the schedule is created saves valuable time and reduces the amount of swaps that need to be made later on.
If you’re unfamiliar with emailer, check out the short video we created to help you learn how to use VSP’s Emailer feature.
Emailer in Volunteer Scheduler Pro
Display special summer activities in VSP
Do you have volunteer outings or events planned this summer? The Web Terminal is a great place to display any summer events or special announcements. The terminal functions as an online bulletin board for your volunteers, helping volunteers stay up to date with special summer events. You can easily customize your organization’s Web Terminal to make it unique to the season with different headers, font styles, sizes, and colors.
Need step-by step instructions? Check out our detailed guide on how to make Web Terminal content changes in VSP.
Beyond using VSP to stay up to date on seasonal scheduling, there are plenty of other ways to keep your volunteers informed about any changes. Using the Emailer feature you can send an email to volunteers inviting them to follow your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. Social media accounts not only keep them engaged with the organization, but can also serve as additional modes of communication with your workforce.
Are you still on the fence about Volunteer Scheduler Pro but want to see these features in action? Start a 15-Day Free Trial now.
