Volunteer Management & Volunteer Engagement, there are two different solutions that are a part of MC4N (Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofits).
Volunteer Management: It's built on Microsoft Power Apps which is used to manage and engage volunteers in a more efficient and effective way.
Volunteer Engagement: It's built on Microsoft Power Portal. So, Volunteer Engagement complements Volunteer Management. That allows for volunteers to interface with the nonprofit.
The Volunteer Engagement portal is a pre-built Power Apps Portals solution, which makes it easy for organizations to get started quickly.
The portal is connected to Volunteer Management, which means that all applications made through the portal are automatically received as participation records in Volunteer Management.
Deployment Overview
You deploy these solutions in Microsoft Cloud Solution Center. Solution Center provides a central place to deploy industry cloud solutions from Microsoft, including solutions that are part of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit.
Volunteer Management Features/capabilities
The Volunteer Management is a powerful application for users who manage volunteers for their nonprofit organization. key features of Volunteer Management are:
- the ability to publish engagement and design an opportunity and define the qualifications, skills, and shifts needed.
- the ability that Volunteers Manager can approve and review volunteer profiles and qualifications, and then approve individuals to participate in engagement opportunities.
- the ability that you can Quickly and easily understand what stage of the onboarding process the volunteer is in.
- You can manage all activities when an activity is happening.
- Communicate and define automated messaging to ensure your volunteers receive timely logistics, training, and gratitude for their time.
- Understand who is registering for, failing to show up to, and repeatedly contributing time to your organization.
Volunteer Engagement Features/capabilities
Volunteer Engagement complements Volunteer Management. With the key features of VE:
- volunteers can use the Volunteer Engagement portal to search for and view upcoming engagement opportunities.
- Volunteers can sign up for engagement opportunities directly from the portal, which sends the request to Volunteer Management application.
- Volunteers can find out their hours that they volunteered and their previous and upcoming engagement opportunities.
- Volunteers can update their profile information, which includes contact information, availability, preferences, and qualifications.
- Volunteer managers can easily post engagement opportunities and track volunteer applications with seamless integration between Volunteer Management and Volunteer Engagement.
Integration
Volunteer Management provides important integrations:
Email integration and Power Automate: nonprofits that would like to use email for messaging volunteers, Power Platform has out-of-the-box integrations with several email services. In addition, a Power Automate flow could be built so that each time a message activity is created in the system, an email is sent via your email service.
SharePoint: Volunteer managers deal with several documents associated with volunteers or coordinating engagement opportunities. Power Platform has an out-of-the-box integration with SharePoint that can be configured to allow volunteer managers to store files and easily access files from the Volunteer Management application.
