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Navigating volunteer shift scheduling, tracking hours, and managing donations is tricky and there are a lot of solutions out there that vary across price, usability, and feature richness. In this article we cover what volunteer management software is, how it’s used by nonprofits, and core features to look for in a solution. We’ve also listed and reviewed the leading volunteer management software solutions to help you make the best choice for your nonprofit.
We of course believe Civic Champs is the most intuitive and best platform for volunteer management and engagement. That being said, we also know it is valuable to compare solutions to pick the best one for your organization. Keep scrolling to find a comprehensive list comparing the best volunteer management software vendors.
Before we cover the best volunteer manager it might be helpful to explain what it’s used for. Put simply, volunteer management software is a tool designed to simplify and streamline the process of managing volunteers. It aids nonprofits in effectively organizing, tracking, and communicating with their volunteers. Its primary goal is to reduce the administrative burden on staff, allowing them to focus more on strategic goals and less on day-to-day management.
Nonprofits use volunteer management software to help manage and automate every step of the volunteer management lifecycle:
The best way to find the right volunteer management software for your nonprofit is to know what you need going into your search. While different solutions offer different combinations of features, the best volunteer management software will excel in these areas:
The best volunteer management software solutions have an intuitive user interface that makes navigation and completing tasks straightforward for both volunteers and staff. A clutter-free dashboard, easy-to-understand menus, and clear guidance help with user satisfaction and reduce the learning curve.
No two nonprofits are exactly alike, and you’ll want to make sure a volunteer management solution can work with your unique needs. Look for the following capabilities:
Volunteer management software should integrate with other tools your nonprofit uses, like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, fundraising and donor management platforms, and social media. Not only does a solid integration save your nonprofit team time and effort, having data synchronization between systems will help you with reporting and strategic planning, where you need data from multiple systems to help guide you.
As organizations grow, their software needs evolve. The best volunteer management tools can scale up, accommodating an increasing number of volunteers and more complex projects without compromising performance or requiring a complete software overhaul.
This one might seem obvious, but with budget a crucial consideration for nonprofits, the ideal software delivers a strong feature set at a reasonable price point, offering good value for money. This includes transparent pricing structures without hidden costs.
Quality software is backed by robust customer support and training. You’ll want to look for online tutorials, live support, training webinars, and a comprehensive knowledge base to help your team effectively use it.
With increasing concerns about data privacy, the software must adhere to the latest security standards and comply with data protection regulations. Handling volunteer information safely and ethically is important to you, and it should be important to the software provider, too.
Effective software offers comprehensive reporting tools that provide insights into volunteer activities, track engagement, and measure the impact of volunteers on the organization. Customizable reports and data analytics help in strategic decision-making.
We ranked all 24 volunteer management solutions on four dimensions. Read on to see our top choices, but at the end of the article we provide a detailed list of all the solutions we reviewed so you can take some time to browse all of the available options.
If your nonprofit organization is looking for the solutions with affordable pricing, based on our analysis the best options for you are:
If your primary consideration is volunteer management software that’s easy for your staff and your volunteers to use, these solutions should be at the top of your list:
If you are looking for volunteer management software that provides top-quality customer support, these are going to be your top options:
If you are looking for volunteer management software that provides top-quality customer support, these are going to be your top options:
If you are looking for volunteer platform that allows multiple nonprofits to post opportunities and helps connect volunteers to opportunities in a community, these are the top choices (note - this is not something Civic Champs supports today):
In our reviews of volunteer management software we found so many differences in fit based on nonprofit size, we wrote an entire article on it. So if finding a solution based on the size of your nonprofit team is important to you, you’ll want to read our helpful guide, The Best Volunteer Management Software for Every Size of Nonprofit.
The categories above are your fast and quick guide to volunteer management solutions that fit your most important criteria. Below we cover all 214 platforms in detail including ratings on pricing, usability and customer support in addition to advantages and special considerations.
SignUp.com helps make volunteer sign up, scheduling, and mobilization simple for nonprofits.
Advantages: This software is intuitive, and it is great for volunteers with any amount of experience using volunteer software.
Considerations: This platform does not offer many features beyond volunteer scheduling and volunteer shift management. It is also not scalable, so it is best for smaller nonprofits only.
Breeze is volunteer coordination software geared toward churches that want to mobilize their volunteers to better reach their goals.
Advantages: This software offers free upgrades, free data transfer, and positive customer service experiences for users.
Considerations: This software is designed for churches, so it includes more church management software features than volunteer management features. Some of the features are also a little outdated compared to other software solutions.
Bloomerang Volunteer is donor management software that includes features to help nonprofits more efficiently recruit and manage volunteers as well.
Advantages: This software is scalable, and it is capable of handling over 50,000 users with ease, making it a good solution for quick-growing nonprofits.
Considerations: Many features and support options are only available for an additional cost.
Vome Volunteer is an all-in-one volunteer management platform with recruitment and screening tools, advanced scheduling features, volunteer hour tracking, and a volunteer management database.
Advantages: This software allows for mass assignments, Google Sheet integration, and automated hour tracking, helping streamline the volunteer management process. VoMe is a good fit for nonprofits looking for French language support, as the company is based in Canada and offers French as a primary language in its platform.
Considerations: Some of the software features are not available on the mobile app.
Rosterfy is a volunteer management system that simplifies scheduling, maximizes engagement, and improves volunteer tracking.
Advantages: This is one of the more user-friendly volunteer management platforms available, and Rosterfy consistently releases new features and updates.
Considerations: This app does not allow users to share reports.
Lineup is a volunteer management platform that helps streamline and automate the volunteer management process with volunteer event management tools, volunteer scheduling tools, and volunteer communication software.
Advantages: This app truly automates the volunteer management process, and it offers more features than most of the volunteer management software solutions available on the market.
Considerations: The initial 2-hour onboarding process is not as thorough or intuitive as some users would expect.
Volunteer Match is known for helping match prospective volunteers to relevant volunteer opportunities in their local communities, but it also has an open network software solution for nonprofits.
Advantages: This software is useful for attracting new volunteers, placing existing volunteers with volunteer opportunities, and tracking volunteer hours.
Considerations: Volunteer Match doesn’t have many features outside of ones for volunteer recruitment and placement, so it is not the best value for nonprofits looking for software with volunteer management solutions.
Submittable is software designed for large corporations looking to expand their social impact programs, and it includes an integrated corporate volunteering platform.
Advantages: This software is scalable, and it has the handle corporate sized accounts, making it great for large nonprofit organizations.
Considerations: This software is pricey, especially considering that it doesn’t offer many unique features beyond what other software solutions provide for a fraction of the cost.
Bonterra (formerly Every Action) is software designed to help recruit and retain volunteers, simplify the shift sign up process, and improve volunteer communication.
Advantages: There are many intuitive features that will encourage volunteers to interact with the app, sign up for events, donate money, and accurately report hours.
Considerations: Many of the features of this software are not available on mobile platforms.
Volunteer Scheduler Pro is a software with a companion mobile app that offers flexible scheduling, automatic reminders, tiered access, custom enrollments, and reports. Overall, it serves to schedule, manage, and engage volunteers.
Advantages: there are multiple options for volunteer autonomy, and volunteers can manage their own hours and schedules
Considerations: a lot of the features require a desktop rather than the app, so that creates difficulty when changing schedules or readjusting shifts
CERVIS is a volunteer management software that enables online scheduling, automatic reminders, and helpful training and support. It also offers external customer resource integration and custom data reports.
Advantages: the data features are up-to-date, and opportunities are easy to find while the registration is quick and seamless
Considerations: the customization features and the user interface are lacking, and the reporting is difficult for larger organizations with thousands of volunteers
Volunteer Mark is a mobile application that helps managers run an efficient volunteer program through simplifying communication, recruiting, and managing. They offer a clear and concise class management dashboard for events and volunteers, as well as providing volunteers with specific filters to find volunteer opportunities. Volunteer Mark is very data driven, and provides lots of valuable statistics to the organization.
Advantages: volunteer oriented, as volunteers themselves can sign up for shifts and track their hours reducing the work of managers
Considerations: it is hard to sync if organizations have other softwares implemented, and there is difficulty in reporting functions such as removing multiple sign-ups
SignUp Genius specializes in online sign in forms, serving a wide variety of groups. Included are a simple sign up creation, powerful group messaging, and easy payment and donation tools. While this application is great for forms, it is not as conducive towards tracking hours and managing data.
Advantages: extremely easy to set up, and there are an abundance of different designs that can be customized to your personal event
Considerations: this software only focuses on the sign-up process, and volunteer managers that are looking for a more holistic software may need to look elsewhere.
Wild Apricot is a powerful cloud software to help you automate and simplify membership tasks. It comes with a member database, website builder, payments, event management, and membership applications and renewals.
Advantages: Allows high level membership management, and which makes it a good solution for organizations that have paid members in addition to volunteers
Considerations: Designed for member management and not volunteer management so it lacks volunteer specific features and may require workarounds to tailor membership features to support volunteers.
Track it forward is a time tracking software. Its unique features include event RSVPs, milestones, offline mode, conditional logic formatting, advanced verification, and multi organization aggregation.
Advantages: It essentially serves as a timesheet, but is digital so it is easy for the volunteer to track hours.
Considerations: This only focuses on tracking hours, so it is not conducive towards managing shifts, asking for donations, or serving other purposes managers may be looking for. The pricing is ideal for smaller organizations but tends to get expensive around 300 volunteers.
Galaxy Digital focuses on four broad categories: management, engagement, reporting, and communication. They started as a software for volunteer centers (where you can sign up for volunteering in different organizations), but have started to offer nonprofit specific tools as well. This software offers skills-based volunteerism and service learning management. It also incorporates email and text messaging, social media integration, and exportable reports.
Advantages: Their volunteer impact pages allow automatic reports to be generated on volunteer leaderboards, and events are able to be shared through social media integrations and mass email very easily. Overall GD is best used as a community management platform for nonprofits.
Considerations: Their mobile admin functions are on the weaker side. The set-up for the system can be confusing with unclear guidance on how to best set up roles and settings for your agency.
Volunteer Local offers simple, streamlined scheduling, registration, and communication for managing volunteers for various events. This platform also offers access to volunteer responses for admins on mobile (ex: t-shirts and phone numbers), on-site check in, social sharing, and collecting credit card information.
Advantages: The self service portal is easy to use for volunteers, and organizations can organize large numbers in a short amount of time, customer service is attentive and helpful.
Considerations: The reporting and analytics offered could leave something to be desired depending on need, and the software lacks a good dashboard for managers to receive real time updates. The mobile app accommodates volunteer use but not admin use.
Volunteer Hub highlights customer resource management integration, using Salesforce. It is unique because it is a volunteer management software that integrates all of Blackbaud’s CRMS such as The Raiser’s Edge and eTapestry. Other features include waiver tracking, group management, fundraising, and brand specific pages for event registrations.
Advantages: The points system allows managers to easily have all the things they need in one place, such as waivers, event sign ups, and emails.
Volgistics is a comprehensive volunteer management application, with its core features including background screening, a volunteer portal and kiosk, group tracking, and document storage. It has served over 5,000 organizations and tracked over 6 million volunteers.
Advantages: Volgistics has an ample amount of features that allows multiple volunteer assignments to be open at once, and the automation minimizes manual control required
Considerations: The software requires continuous upgrading or deletion of archived volunteers, and the program can be taxing to learn at first.
Better Impact is a volunteer coordination software that helps with recruitment, onboarding, training, communications, scheduling and reporting. Some of its most unique features are online donations, donation receipts, and targeted emails. It also offers a basic CRM to track member details.
Advantages: All in one system across donations and volunteering highly customizable and easy to incorporate into organizations
Considerations: The setup process is time consuming and it can be challenging for volunteers to navigate the system in the beginning with limited training.
Civic Champs is a volunteer management software that allows leaders to seamlessly track, manage, and engage volunteers. One of its most unique features is micro-donations, which make the right ask at the right time to maximize donations. Civic Champs offers a kiosk mode and dashboard, and is ideal to use for volunteer check-ins or events.
The vendors above represent most of your available options, but we know there are a lot of factors that can (and should!) influence your final volunteer management software decision. You will want to consider more than just price when choosing a software solution.
Browse these software solutions and see which ones offer the features you need at a price point your nonprofit can afford, and schedule a demo to see if that solution will be right for your organization.
