Below is a Question & Answer session with Kasey Murphy, Marketing Manager at Track It Forward. Kasey has written content for Track It Forward, as well as bonded with clients to learn more about their customer experience and how volunteer time tracking is beneficial to different volunteer programs.
Starting strictly as a tool to help nonprofits track volunteer time and run instant reports, Track It Forward has morphed into a volunteer time tracking tool and a light volunteer management software. With additional features that are optional to add to your site, Track It Forward can now track more than just hours and can help organize your program.
Track It Forward’s highest priority is customer ease and allowing organizations to feel like our tool can easily fit into their daily volunteer program workflow. Because of this, Track It Forward has five different options for how volunteers and organizations can track time: volunteer hour logs, event RSVPs, event sign-in sheets, check-in kiosk, or mobile app! These different time tracking methods can help volunteer programs easily incorporate time tracking without feeling like it is entirely too complex or throwing off other processes.
What Is Track It Forward’s main mission?
Track It Forward’s main mission is to help volunteer coordinators and managers with their volunteer programs by providing a tool that can help automate volunteer time tracking and running reports. All the employees at Track It Forward have been Volunteer Managers before, so we are easy to take on the perspective of the Volunteer Coordinator.
On top of this, Track It Forward hopes to provide EASY software or tools for organizations to use. This will always be a priority over adding additional features!
Why is it important to track volunteer hours?
Each organization is different, but tracking volunteer time can be beneficial for numerous reasons. Volunteer time tracking is only going to be important if you are going to pull reports and have accurate numbers.
Volunteer time tracking and volunteer hour totals are important for tax forms, for nonprofit categorization, and even for grant applications. Not only for legal and professional purposes, but volunteer time tracking can also be great for volunteer program evaluation, volunteer motivation, and volunteer appreciation.
When you track volunteers, you can track which activities are bringing in the most volunteers, which volunteers deserve recognition, and test new ways to motivate volunteers. Those who are in charge of volunteer programs know how important these factors are!
What type of organizations does Track It Forward fit with best?
Track It Forward was invented for nonprofit organizations, but it can be used for any organization that is interested in tracking time! Track It Forward currently has clientele in schools, national parks, adult sororities, nonprofit organizations, and more! Track It Forward is so versatile that organizations can use it for different purposes, beyond tracking hours! If they want!
How does Track It Forward work with different organizational setups?
Track It Forward does not integrate with other software or other processes within your organization if you do not want it to! Customers can choose how to use Track It Forward, which makes it customizable to whatever workflow or organizational setup is currently in place within your organization, and whatever data you currently ask of your volunteers.
For example, Track It Forward provides different options for how volunteers track their time, so an organization is not asking any extra of volunteers while using Track It Forward. In addition, organizations can use conditional logic to make sure they ask volunteers only relevant questions based on their previous answers, so it does not take too much time to fill in an hour log.
So, depending on how organizations are set up and normally operate, you can choose a time tracking method that works best, and a set-up process that is easy to follow. And, the reports are completely customizable, allowing organizations to pull whatever data they need!
What is the general layout of How Track It Forward works?
Track It Forward starts with an organization starting a site. The organization should set up how they want to organize their volunteers, and volunteer hours! Choose if you would like volunteer hours to be approved, or if they can automatically submit into the software database. Also choose if volunteer registration needs to be approved, and what you need from the volunteers to sign up. This could be age, phone number, organization committee, or anything your organization might want to know about to categorize volunteers.
Next, select how volunteers should fill out hour logs. You can also add categories to submit volunteer hours into different categories. This is important no matter how you are planning to track volunteer time, for reports! You can also add any additional questions or fields you would like volunteers to fill out in this part.
Next, add milestones – if you want! An organization can add a milestone of a certain number of hours they want or need volunteers to reach. Then, volunteers and administrators can easily track who is in progress to reach the goal or target requirement.
Then, organizers can add additional settings to customize their site like name, how they want their charts and reports to look, etc.
Lastly, after their site is up and running, volunteers can be added via email, or manually! Volunteers have access to their own dashboard, which shows how many volunteer hours they have submitted, and their progress towards a goal – if this is set up by the organization!
They also have access to the event calendar to sign up for events!
What are the different ways to track volunteer time?
Track It Forward allows volunteers to track time by submitting an hour log on their desktop version or on their mobile app version of Track It Forward. They answer all the questions that are set up by the organizer, and the hours are submitted into the database under the volunteer’s profile!
Another way is through the event calendar. If an organizer sets up events, volunteers can RSVP to the events. Within the event, all of the categories of an hour log will be noted in the software. So, volunteers will have the opportunity to submit out a pre-filled hour log from the RSVP event, all they have to do is submit it! The other option is to have a digital sign-in sheet connected to the event calendar at the event. Volunteers’ names will appear in the event sign-in sheet since they RSVP’d and the sign-in sheet will track their time from when they signed in and when they signed out. Then, the volunteer time will be submitted to the database!
Lastly, there can be a check-in kiosk app. This option allows volunteers to be the least involved as possible with their volunteer time tracking. All that is done is volunteers check-in and out, and they never have to log into their volunteer account.
However the organization decides to use Track It Forward, there is a way that can fit within existing workflows and tasks that volunteers are currently doing!
What else can Track It Forward do?
Track It Forward can function simply as a volunteer time tracking app, or as something completely different. Our tool works in a customizable way with features to fit your organization. For example, use Track It Forward as a volunteer scheduling app or an event calendar with an option to RSVP and max out volunteers. Track It Forward has additional features that work well with volunteer time tracking but also can be used independently.
- Approve Volunteer Hours – when volunteers track hours or when an hour is logged, it will be sent to an approval queue instead of to the data backend. Then, an admin can approve or decline the hour log, and let the volunteer know!
- Advanced Verification – if organizations want to approve hours, they can add the option to score additional proof within the hour log. Photos, signatures, and GPS pins can all be added to a volunteer hour log with the mobile app to help admins verify volunteer hours.
- Milestones – these are a report that can be pulled, but also an ongoing metric that is monitored in both organizer and volunteer dashboards. If there is a requirement or goal for the number of volunteer hours or the number of tracked items a volunteer has to get, it can be placed as a visual tool in the dashboard. And, it will be a constant tracking and progress showcasing of volunteer work.
- Reports – there are six different types of reports that can be downloaded from Track It Forward, instantly. Any information that volunteers input at any time can be placed into a report. And, reports can be saved to pull the same report at a different time over and over again!
- Mass Communication – choose volunteers from a list and send an email out to them from Track It Forward. If you see volunteers submitted a lot of hours over the weekend, email them quickly to say good job. Or even, use this as a marketing tool to email volunteers!
- Conditional Logic – in both volunteer sign-up and volunteer hour logs, allow questions to be asked to gain more information to use for reports or additional detail. But, with conditional logic, you will be able to ask only the relevant questions. So if someone answers no to a question, Track It Forward won’t ask them a follow-up. This makes volunteer hour logging easy, and volunteers don’t have to take a lot of time to fill in the information.
How much does Track It Forward cost?
To start, all of Track It Forward’s plans have a 30-day free trial, which is completely commitment-free, no credit card is needed to start the trial! This is a great way to really explore the software and feel if it is the right tool for your organization.
Next, any program with less than 25 volunteers can use Track It Forward for free.
And lastly, Track It Forward has pricing plans based on how many volunteers are active and which features a program will be using. The pricing ranges from $12/month and up – depending on the volunteer amount.
The best way to see how much pricing would be for an organization is to interact with our pricing tool page, or even more directly, chat with sales!
How easy is it to use Track It Forward?
Short answer: super easy! Longer answer: Track It Forward was envisioned as an easy time tracking and report pulling solution for both volunteer admins and volunteers! Once everyone gets a feel for it, we imagine it will be natural to use!
But, just in case it isn’t, we have a full help library that covers every possible issue someone could have or just delivers step-by-step guides to certain features or styles of setup.
Our support team is also available very regularly and would be happy to talk through any issues that arise!
Track It Forward is a tool for volunteer programs or other organizations that want to track hours or items. Track It Forward is flexible and can work with many needs in many different ways. Our case studies and success stories showcase just how many different organizations can use Track It Forward.
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