Tracking volunteer impact and activities

Hours tell you how long volunteers served. Impact tracking tells you what they accomplished — meals served, dogs walked, trees planted, boxes packed, calls made, or any other activity your program measures. This article explains how to set up impact fields for a sign-up page and how volunteers report against them.

How it works, at a glance

You define the activities you want to measure on a specific volunteer sign-up page (for example, "Meals served").
When a volunteer logs their hours from their volunteer portal, they see a field for each activity and enter a number.
Those numbers are submitted along with the hours and appear next to the entry when you review and approve hours.

Impact fields are optional. If you don't define any, volunteers simply log hours as before.

Setting up impact fields for a sign-up page

Impact fields are defined per volunteer sign-up page, so each program can measure the activities that matter to it.

Open the volunteer sign-up page you want to edit.
Go to the page's settings and find the Volunteer Impact Tracking card.
Click Add field and type the activity label you want volunteers to report — for example, Meals served, Dogs walked, or Bags packed.
Add as many fields as you need. Use clear, countable labels, since volunteers will enter a number for each one.
Click Save impact fields.

To remove a field, click the trash icon next to it and save again. To rename one, edit the label and save.

What volunteers see

When a volunteer logs hours from their volunteer portal, the "Log Volunteer Hours" window shows an Activity section with one box per field you defined for that opportunity. The volunteer enters the number they completed (for example, 40 next to "Meals served"), along with the date, hours, and an optional note, then submits for approval.

Reporting activity numbers is optional for the volunteer — they can leave a field blank if it doesn't apply to that session. The fields shown always match the opportunity the volunteer selects, so a volunteer signed up for two different programs sees the right fields for each.

Reviewing reported activity

Submitted hours go to your Hours Review queue for approval, just as they do today. Any activity numbers the volunteer reported appear as tags on the entry — for example, "Meals served: 40" — right next to the hours, so you can see the reported impact while you approve or reject the entry.

Good to know

Impact fields belong to the page, activity numbers belong to the entry. If you rename or remove a field later, previously logged entries keep the labels and values they were submitted with, so your historical records stay accurate.
Definitions are per sign-up page. Setting up "Meals served" on one page does not add it to another — configure each page for the activities it tracks.
Only your defined fields are accepted. A volunteer can only report against the fields you set up for that page.

Availability

Volunteer Impact Tracking is part of the volunteer hours tools. If the card is locked in your sign-up page settings, your current plan doesn't include it yet — contact us to learn about upgrading.