Tracking a Volunteer's Activity from Their Contact Record

Every volunteer in BetterUnite is a contact, and their volunteer activity is accessible right from their contact record. The Volunteer tab on a contact gives you a complete picture of that person's service — hours logged, campaigns participated in, and trends over time.

Finding the Volunteer tab

Navigate to Contacts and search for the volunteer.
Open their contact record.
Click the Volunteer tab.

If the contact has never signed up for a volunteer campaign, the tab will be empty.

Summary stats

At the top of the Volunteer tab, you'll see key stats for this volunteer at a glance:

Total hours — Lifetime approved hours across all campaigns
Total shifts — Number of shifts they've signed up for
Campaigns — Number of distinct volunteer campaigns they've participated in

These stats give you a quick read on how engaged a volunteer is without digging into individual records.

Hours by month chart

Below the summary stats, a monthly bar chart visualizes the volunteer's hours over time. Each bar represents one month's approved hours. The chart makes it easy to spot:

Consistent contributors — Steady bars month over month
Seasonal volunteers — Clusters of activity around certain months
Dropoff — A volunteer who used to be active but has stopped showing up

The chart also displays the volunteer's lifetime total hours, giving you the headline number alongside the trend.

Activity history

Below the chart, you'll see a detailed list of the volunteer's participation across campaigns — which shifts they signed up for, their check-in/checkout times, and hours credited for each.

Downloading a service transcript

From the Volunteer tab, you can click Download Service Transcript to generate a branded PDF of this volunteer's approved hours. This is the same document the volunteer can download from their own portal — but having it accessible here means you can pull it up and share it during a phone call or email without asking the volunteer to do it themselves.

For more on service transcripts, see Generating Service Transcripts and Certificates.

First and last volunteer dates

The contact record also tracks two date fields:

First volunteer date — The date of this person's earliest volunteer participation
Last volunteer date — The date of their most recent participation

These fields are computed automatically from the volunteer's participation records. They're visible on the contact record and can be used to filter and sort your contact lists — for example, finding all contacts who last volunteered more than 6 months ago for a re-engagement campaign.

Using volunteer data for outreach

The volunteer data on a contact record helps you personalize your outreach:

Thank-you messages — "Thank you for contributing 47 hours this year across 3 campaigns."
Re-engagement — Filter contacts by last volunteer date to find lapsed volunteers and invite them back.
Donor cultivation — Identify high-hour volunteers who aren't yet donors and add them to a giving campaign.
Recognition — Sort by total hours to find your top volunteers for awards or special events.