Volunteer management

[adam-p]

Spec

In the words of the primary stakeholder:

This was a new position for DECA and I was new to try to manage this sort of thing. So nothing was working. I would get an email from someone, I would determine what they were interested in and direct them to that committee. I don't know if the committee even followed up with them.
I like that they can tick off what they are interested in when they pay or join and if each year they need to go into the membership email and pay their membership fee they could re-evaluate what volunteer positions they would like.
I am not sure then what would happen to this information. It would be useful for each committee to get an update of new volunteers, but also the Volunteer co-ordinator (me), to be able to email each group of volunteers when something is needed or to do a mass call out for volunteers.
I would like a easy, simple (because I am simple minded!) to be able to get in touch and follow up with all the volunteers. DECA Diaries and our Facebook page does a call out when something is needed, but I would like to be able to make it a bit more personable and for the co-ordinators of each group to be able to see who is on the list and then either email them directly or come to me to do it.

(Note that currently functionality includes sending an email to each "Volunteer Interest Area Rep" when a new member joins telling them that the member has expressed a desire to volunteer in their interest area. But that's insufficient.)

Outstanding questions

• Is it okay if mass emails come from an individual's email account/address? Or do they need to come from the organization email address?
• Does mass-mail mean we need unsubscribe? (Would need another field in user record and a GAE email receiver. Or support from MailChimp or whatever.)
• "Skills" probably needs to be included in this. Like, filtering/emailing. But maybe that's feature creep. Should check with the Volunteer Coordinator.

Implementation ideas/plan

New volunteer notifications

It would be useful for each committee to get an update of new volunteers

The current volunteer-rep-email-on-new-user functionality might be sufficient. Or it might need to be expanded to also get triggered in renewals (or just renewals where the indicated volunteer interest areas change).

Another enhancement to this might be to include in the email a list of pre-existing potential-volunteers in the interest area, to refresh the manager's memory. Like:

You are currently listed as a DECA representative for the volunteer interest area of "{{ interest }}". A new member has joined who has expressed interest in volunteering in that area:

Jane Smith
jane@example.com

The full list of members who have expressed an interest in volunteering in that area is:

Aaaa Aaaa <aaa@example.com>
Bbbb Bbbb <bbb@example.com>
...

...Or maybe that's overkill. Should check with the Volunteer Coordinator.

Volunteer filtering and emailing

to be able to email each group of volunteers when something is needed or to do a mass call out for volunteers.

It seems to me the simplest way to do this is:

• Create a page in the management site where the user can filter members by volunteer interest area to get a list of names and email addresses (or even just email address).
• Provide the list in such a form that it's easy to copy and paste that into the BCC field of an email.
• The user then writes the email by hand and sends it to the volunteer-members.

If the direct mail approach isn't sufficient, then we might have to get into MailChimp, etc. And unsubscribe stuff (tracked by MailChimp? tracked by us?). And maybe using MailChimp's API directly or having users work with it manually.