You can import volunteers and all related demographic information from excel into Volunteer Builder. We actually do it for you! Happy to discuss how Volunteer Builder can help your group - call us during the week at 800-557-2670.
- Mike
Our problem is that our excel files are by student (we get them from the school) and the database is by volunteer.
It would be really nice if we could do the importing ourselves, too.
You can import volunteers and all related demographic information from excel into Volunteer Builder. We actually do it for you! Happy to discuss how Volunteer Builder can help your group - call us during the week at 800-557-2670.
The Volunteer Builder portion of the software has several fields that can be customized by volunteer, but not enough to do what you are talking about. Plus, it tracks everything by volunteer, not by child, and it sounds like tracking by child might be more appropriate for what you are talking about. So, you could easily track the fact that the family bought one golden ticket, for example, and you might be able to track one round of t-shirt sales, but much beyond that you'll have a problem. It's just not designed for that kind of stuff.
It might help you in setting up your Excel database at the front end, because you can export all the info in Volunteer Builder to Excel very easily, and if you put all your family contact information in VB (or have the families do it)--like address, email, phone number, teacher/grade level of each student, etc.--it will save you from entering it manually in your other database.
I'm looking into this in advance of bringing to the attention of the PTO. Our hope as a PTO is to create a database of parent and student information, including, but not minited to, purchase of spiritwear, classroom donations made, school supply purchases, etc. etc. Basically, we offer the parent body a "golden ticket" at the begining of the school year, which covers a multitude of things, some listed above. This saves the parent from receiving letters throughout the year asking for funds for this and that. Everything is covered in one check. What we need is a reliable database which will hold all this information, that we can pull lists from at any time. Such as, who bought spiritwear t-shirts, so we can place our order, and distribute them easily when they come in. Also, I think a lot of private information is distributed to various people on the board that doesn't necessarily need to be, since photocopies of the orders forms are handed out to the various committee leaders.
I've started working on an Excel database, which is working, but I was wondering if this software would eliminate a lot of preparation work and also wondering if it will limit our reporting capabilities.
