Programs are the way activities are bucketed in Volaby. Programs are essentially a labelling system for your operations that need to align with your operations to smoothly transition from your current operations technology into Volaby.

For example, your programs could be broken down depending on location, activity type or a combination of both. This breakdown will largely depend on your BAU operations and your current organisational structure. If the way you break down your operations and volunteering opportunities is location based, then the best way to break down your programs is also location based. If you operate in a single location, then breaking down the volunteering opportunities into more activity specific programs will work best.

Program distinctions do not need to be complex, if you are a small organisation operating in the one area and have similar activities for your volunteers, then a single program operation is going to work best for you. Programs are important if you are going to have different managers looking after programs. Allocating program specific operations to program managers may be helpful if you are a large organisation and need to resource allocate accordingly.

When naming programs, be specific so managers and volunteers both understand what they represent as they will both see the same label. For example, one of our Volaby partners of 800+ volunteers currently has 22 location based programs who are run by 2 to 3 Program Managers for each location. Their program names are directly linked to the location of their operations as this is what they were already using in their pre-Volaby days and it is how their volunteer opportunities are broken down. On the flip side of this, another one of our Volaby partners with 30 volunteers uses programs to break down their activities that are clustered together according to sporting events. This is important for them as sporting events are seasonal and being able to suspend programs to keep volunteers engaged contributes to their high volunteer retention.

Programs are editable in name and description so if you feel they way you have set them up originally doesn't align with your operations now, you can change them up!

Ready to get programming? Read our step by step guide here.