Volunteer Management

The Volunteer Management module lets you organize volunteer activities from start to finish — build activities and shifts, publish a public signup survey, manage day-of attendance from a per-activity Roster, visualize shift coverage on a Schedule calendar, and measure outcomes with built-in reporting.

Table of Contents

Enabling Volunteer Management

The Volunteer Management module is off by default. Contact your Success Manager to enable it for your account. Once enabled, Volunteers appears in the left navigation menu.

Note: The volunteer signup survey also requires the Surveys feature to be active on your account. If the option to publish a signup survey is not available, contact Levitate support to confirm both features are enabled.

Activities

An activity is the top-level record that groups one or more shifts. Access Volunteer Management from the left navigation menu and select Activities to see your activity list.

To create a new activity:

  1. Click Create Activity.
  2. Enter an activity name and, optionally, a description.
  3. Upload a cover photo — this image appears on the public signup page volunteers see.
  4. Add any activity-level tags to help with reporting and filtering.
  5. Save the activity.

Activities can be one-off or recurring. From the activity list you can open, edit, or archive any activity at any time.

Editing an Activity

You can edit an activity after it is created, for example to rename it. Editing an activity keeps its linked event and signup survey in place, so volunteers' submitted shift picks are retained and the signup survey continues to work. Archiving the linked event also archives the activity.

Shifts

Within each activity you define the shifts volunteers sign up for. Open an activity and go to the Shifts tab to add shifts.

When creating a shift you can:

  • Set a date and time for a single shift, or generate multiple shifts at once across a range of weekdays.
  • Set a minimum and maximum headcount so the system tracks whether a shift is under- or over-subscribed.
  • Assign a role to distinguish volunteer responsibilities within the same activity — for example, greeter or setup crew.

Shifts generated from a weekday range are created as independent records. You can edit or delete each one individually after generation.

Volunteer Signup Survey

Each activity has a public-facing signup survey where volunteers can select a shift and complete a registration form — no Levitate account required.

To publish the signup survey for an activity:

  1. Open the activity and go to the Signup Survey tab.
  2. Configure the registration form fields you want to collect from volunteers.
  3. Publish the survey to make it accessible via a shareable URL.

On the public signup page, volunteers see the available shifts and choose one before completing the form. Submitted registrations appear automatically in the Roster for that shift.

Note: Publishing a signup survey requires the Surveys feature to be active on your account. If the option is unavailable, contact Levitate support.

Activities Created from an Event

An event you build in Surveys can have a volunteer activity linked to it. In the event's editor, open the Volunteers tab and select Enable volunteers for this event. The tab also includes the volunteer tag for the event.

Shifts and the signup survey for an event's volunteers are not set up in the event editor. They are set up on the linked activity, the same way as for any other activity (see Shifts and the steps above).

To open the linked activity from the event:

  1. Save the event. Until the event is saved, the Volunteers tab tells you the volunteer activity doesn't exist yet.
  2. Return to the Volunteers tab. A Volunteer activity panel shows the status of the linked activity: ready, still being set up, or unable to load.
  3. When the activity is ready, click Open volunteer activity. The activity opens within Levitate. If the event has unsaved changes, you are warned before you leave the editor.

Activities linked to an event show the same signup survey controls as standalone activities, including the signup link and Copy link, so you can share the volunteer signup page.

Note: The Volunteers tab in the event editor appears only on accounts that have Volunteer Management enabled.

Shift Confirmation and Response Changes

After a volunteer submits the signup survey, they receive a confirmation email listing the shifts they booked, including the role, location, and time for each shift. Shift times in the confirmation email are shown in the activity's local timezone.

If a volunteer's signup response is edited after submission, their shift roster updates to match the new response: shifts removed from the response free up the slot for other volunteers to claim, shifts added to the response are booked against that shift's available capacity, and shifts left unchanged stay as they were.

Shift details in the confirmation email appear as readable role, location, and time information rather than internal reference values.

Roster

The Roster is the day-of operations view for an activity. Open an activity and select the Roster tab to see all registered volunteers organized by shift.

From the Roster you can:

  • Check in a volunteer — mark them as present when they arrive.
  • Mark no-show — flag a registered volunteer who did not appear.
  • Edit hours — adjust the hours recorded for a volunteer.
  • Add an unregistered volunteer — manually add someone who was not registered in advance.
  • Send a bulk follow-up email — after the activity, select one or more volunteers and send a follow-up message.

Schedule

The Schedule provides a calendar view of shifts across all your activities. Navigate to Volunteers → Schedule to see shifts displayed by day, week, or month.

Each shift tile is color-coded to indicate its fill status at a glance. Clicking a shift tile opens a flyout panel with shift details and direct access to roster actions without leaving the calendar.

Reporting

Navigate to Volunteers → Reporting to access reporting tiles and the account-wide volunteer list. Reporting includes summary tiles covering metrics such as total volunteers, total volunteer hours, and overall attendance rate. Below the tiles, the volunteer list shows every person who has participated in a volunteer activity on your account.

FAQs

Q: Who can enable the Volunteer Management module?

A: The module is off by default. Contact your Success Manager to enable it for your account.

Q: Can I add a volunteer to a shift on the day of the activity if they didn't register in advance?

A: Yes. From the Roster tab on the activity, you can manually add an unregistered volunteer to any shift at any time.

Q: What is the difference between checking in a volunteer and marking them as a no-show?

A: Checking in records that the volunteer attended. Marking no-show flags that the volunteer was registered but did not appear. Both statuses are reflected in reporting.

Q: Can I send a follow-up email to only some volunteers after an activity?

A: Yes. From the Roster, you can select individual volunteers or use bulk selection before sending a follow-up email.

Q: Why don't I see the option to publish a signup survey?

A: Publishing a signup survey requires both the Volunteer Management module and the Surveys feature to be active on your account. Contact Levitate support to confirm both are enabled.

Q: Can I use recurring activities for activities that happen on a regular schedule?

A: Yes. When creating an activity you can set it as recurring. You can also generate shifts across a weekday range in a single step.

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