Volunteer Management

Muin’s Volunteer Management module coordinates your volunteer workforce from recruitment through recognition. It covers event creation and sign-up, program management with hour tracking, expense reimbursement with approval workflows, waiver collection with e-signature, mobile check-in via QR and NFC, shift scheduling, and IRS compliance for volunteer expense reporting.

Where everything lives

Every screen in this doc sits under one sidebar group: Nonprofit > Volunteering. Its entries are Overview, Volunteer Events, Volunteer Programs, Waivers, Applications, Hours, Reimbursements, Waiver Compliance, Volunteer Impact and Hour Heroes.

Four of those screens now have a dedicated guide of their own, and they go deeper than this page:

The words Muin uses

Concept	The term you will see
Committing to a volunteer event	Sign up
Arriving and recording attendance	Check in
A volunteer event	Event
A time slot inside an event	Shift
Recording time served	Log hours
A signed agreement to participate	Waiver
The one-time form to become a volunteer	Volunteer application

“RSVP” means attendance at a non-volunteer event, and “Join” means a waitlist or a series. Neither is a synonym for signing up.

Volunteer Events

What are Volunteer Events?

Volunteer Events are scheduled opportunities for volunteers to contribute their time. Each event belongs to a program, has a date and location, supports capacity limits, and tracks sign-ups and attendance.

How to Create a Volunteer Event

Go to Nonprofit > Volunteering > Volunteer Events
Click Create Event
Fill in the event details:
- Name (e.g., “Community Cleanup Day”)
- Program (link to a volunteer program)
- Event Date, Start Time, and End Time
- Location and Address
- Maximum Volunteers (capacity limit)
- Registration Deadline
- Waiver Required (toggle if volunteers must sign a waiver)
- Description with instructions for volunteers
Save the event as a draft

Event Lifecycle

Status	Description
Draft	Event created, not yet open for registration
Published	Open for volunteer registration
Cancelled	Event cancelled; registrations voided
Completed	Event finished; hours can be logged

To manage the lifecycle:

Click Publish to open registration
Click Cancel if the event cannot proceed
Click Complete after the event ends to finalize attendance records

If some dates of a volunteer event are still drafts, the event page warns, for example “2 of 8 dates are not published”, and says nobody can sign up for them. Choose Publish every date to publish them all. Publishing a series publishes every date, including dates already created.

Volunteer signups, hours and expenses also appear on the volunteer’s Timeline tab under People. A public signup from someone who was not signed in is marked (unauthenticated).

Shifts and Roles

A volunteer event is a grid of shifts (when) and roles (what the person does). Each shift and role pair has its own number of spots and its own waitlist. For example, a Saturday pantry might run Morning and Afternoon shifts, each with Packers and Drivers.

Both are optional. An event with no shifts and no roles has one set of spots for the whole event, and volunteers see no pickers when they sign up. Removing an event’s only shift turns it back into that one set of spots: everyone in it stays signed up and their check-ins are kept. On a recurring series, removing a shift from the series removes it from every upcoming date.

Open the event’s manage page and go to its staffing grid
Add shifts with a start time, end time and label
Add roles to each shift and set the number of spots for each one
Optionally set a minimum for a shift and role. If fewer people are signed up 48 hours before the shift starts, you get an alert
Spots are counted per shift and role. When one is full, new volunteers join its waitlist

When an event has shifts, volunteers must pick one. There is no “Any shift” choice. When a shift has more than one role, they pick a role too. A person can hold more than one shift on the same day as long as the times do not overlap.

Volunteer Roles

Roles come from one list for your organization, kept in Settings > Nonprofit > Volunteer roles. Each role has a name, a description, an optional minimum age and optional required certifications.

Age is checked against the date of the shift. If Drivers must be 21, a volunteer who turns 21 the week before the shift can sign up as a Driver.
A required certification must be valid and unexpired on the shift date.
A volunteer who does not qualify is told why and which roles they can pick instead.

Group Holds

You can hold spots in one shift and role for a named group, such as a youth group or a company team, until a release date. Held spots count as taken, and members of that group can use them. When the release date passes (or you release the hold early), any unused spots go to that role’s waitlist first, then to the public. A hold must release before the shift starts.

Waitlist Offers

When a spot opens (someone cancels, you add spots, or a group hold is released), Muin offers it to the next person on that shift’s waitlist instead of signing them up automatically.

The volunteer gets an email and an in-app notice saying a spot is theirs if they accept by a deadline. They accept or decline from their volunteer portal.
The deadline is the waitlist offer window set in Settings > Nonprofit > Volunteers (24 hours by default), but every offer closes 2 hours before the shift starts.
If a spot opens less than 2 hours before the shift, no offer is made. You get an alert instead, so you can call someone.
If the offer runs out, the volunteer stays on the waitlist and moves to the back of the queue. The spot is offered to the next person.
If the volunteer declines, they leave the waitlist and the spot goes to the next person.
If a volunteer holds two offers for shifts that overlap, accepting one declines the other.
If the next person signed up a group too big for the open spots, their place is kept, the spot goes to the next person who fits, and you are told.
When a shift ends, its waitlist and any open offers are closed. Nobody is emailed.

Staffing Alerts

Coordinators get an in-app alert when:

A shift with a minimum is still short within 48 hours of its start
A spot opens less than 2 hours before a shift, too late to offer
A waitlisted volunteer accepts an offer and takes a spot
The next person on a waitlist is a group too big for the open spots

Volunteers, coordinators and emails use the same words for where someone stands: Signed up, Waitlisted #N, Offer: accept by (a date and time), Offer expired, Declined, Cancelled, Cancelled (late), Checked in, Checked out and No-show.

Mobile Check-In

On event day, check in volunteers using one of three methods:

QR Code Check-In:

Open the event check-in screen
Scan the volunteer’s registration QR code (available from their confirmation)
The system validates the registration and records check-in time

NFC Card Check-In:

Tap the volunteer’s NFC card
The card resolves to the volunteer and their registration on this event
Check-in is recorded instantly

Manual Check-In:

Select the registration from the list
Click Check In

Attendance Statistics

View real-time attendance for any event:

Total registered volunteers
Number checked in
Check-in percentage
Per-slot breakdown (if time slots are configured)

Registration QR Codes

Generate a QR code for any registration:

Open the event and navigate to the registrations list
Click the QR icon next to a registration
Download or display the QR code PNG
Volunteers can present this code on their phone or printed

Volunteer Programs

What are Volunteer Programs?

Volunteer Programs are ongoing initiatives that group related events and track cumulative volunteer engagement. Each program has target hours, target volunteer count, a coordinator, and aggregate statistics.

How to Create a Volunteer Program

Go to Nonprofit > Volunteering > Volunteer Programs
Click Create Program
Enter the program details:
- Name and Code (e.g., “Meals on Wheels”, “MOW-2026”)
- Description of the program’s purpose
- Coordinator (assign a staff member)
- Target Hours for the year
- Target Volunteers to recruit
Save the program

Program Statistics

Each program tracks:

Total events held
Total volunteers who participated
Total hours contributed
Progress toward target hours and volunteer count
Active vs. completed events

Managing Programs

Edit program details, targets, or coordinator at any time
Delete (soft delete) to archive a program that has ended
Filter by status (active, completed, cancelled) to manage your portfolio

Volunteer Expenses

What are Volunteer Expenses?

When volunteers incur out-of-pocket costs (mileage, supplies, meals, etc.) while serving, they can submit expense reports for reimbursement. Muin manages the full lifecycle from submission through approval to payment, with built-in IRS compliance guardrails.

How to Submit an Expense

Volunteers file their own, from the member portal. A volunteer or parent signs in at the organization’s portal (/go/{your-org}/me), opens Money back, and:

Taps New request (or starts from the event they signed up for, which links the request to it automatically)
Takes a photo of the receipt on their phone, which pre-fills the store, total and date
Checks what was read off the photo, corrects anything wrong, and sends it

Mileage needs no receipt, only the miles.

Staff file their own the same way from My expenses on the web or the Expenses module in the Muin Go mobile app, against a class, program or event.

Coordinators and finance staff review everything sent on Nonprofit > Volunteering > Reimbursements, where they can approve, ask the person a question, decline with a reason, or record the payment they sent.

Approval Workflow

Status	Description
Draft	Expense created, not yet submitted
Submitted	Awaiting reviewer action
Pending Approval	Escalated to higher approver
Approved	Approved for reimbursement (optionally with adjusted amount)
Rejected	Not approved (reason required)
Cancelled	Withdrawn by submitter
Paid	Reimbursement processed

Reviewers can:

Approve with the full or an adjusted amount and notes
Reject with a required reason
Request Info to ask the volunteer for additional documentation
Escalate to a higher authority for large or unusual expenses
Waive Receipt if the receipt is unavailable but the expense is legitimate

Who Approves What

Approvals are configurable per organization in Settings > Approvals, and the same setting governs every kind of request, not just reimbursements. Three questions decide it: who approves, whether an owner or admin may approve something they sent themselves (with a note that stays on the record), and the amount above which a second signature is required.

A small organization can choose Just me: nothing is queued for a second person, and the owner approves their own reimbursement by writing down why. Larger organizations can set an amount below which requests are approved automatically and recorded, one approver above it, and two above a second amount. Until the questions are answered, nothing is approved automatically and nobody approves their own request.

Batch Reimbursement

Process several approved expenses in one run. The batch panel sits at the bottom of the Analytics tab on Nonprofit > Volunteering > Reimbursements:

Give the batch a purpose
Create it. Muin collects the approved, unpaid expenses that are not already in a batch
Pay them outside Muin and record the payment on each expense

What the board shows you

The reimbursements board has four tabs: Dashboard, Pending Review, Budgets and Analytics: and one strip of tiles above them that stays on every tab. Each tile deep-links into the filtered list, and the Pending Review tab adds three filter chips: Awaiting me, Awaiting payment and Unreceipted.

Two links in the header take you to the settings that govern it: Approvals (who may approve what) and Expense settings (categories, mileage rate, receipt rules).

AI-Powered Features

Duplicate detection: before an expense is sent, Muin checks for a likely duplicate on amount, merchant, date and volunteer. If it finds one, the filer sees the matching expense rather than a silent second claim.

Receipt reading: a photo of the receipt pre-fills merchant, total and date, and suggests a category. The filer confirms or corrects it.

Insights: an insight strip on the Dashboard and Analytics tabs surfaces anomalies and trends. It renders nothing when there is nothing worth saying.

Analytics Dashboard

The Analytics tab provides:

Total expenses by status, category and time period
Breakdowns by event, program and individual volunteer
Monthly trend charts
Budget utilization percentages

Compliance exports

Three compliance extracts are available through the Muin API rather than as screens: the overdue list for the IRS 60-day accountable-plan deadline, the Form 990 functional allocation by fiscal year, and a per-volunteer tax-year summary. Your accountant or your integration can pull them from /api/v1/nonprofit/volunteer/expenses/compliance/overdue, /compliance/990-allocation and /export/tax-summary. See API authentication for how to call them.

Volunteer Waivers

What are Volunteer Waivers?

Waivers are liability release forms that volunteers sign before participating in events. Muin manages waiver templates, collects e-signatures, and tracks compliance for every registration.

Setting Up Waiver Templates

Go to Nonprofit > Volunteering > Waivers
Click New template
Fill in Template name, Disclosure body and Version, and attach a Waiver document (optional) if you have the signed PDF your lawyer wrote
Click Create
Pick the one every event should use by default in the Tenant default selector at the top

The Event Templates tab on the same screen is where you attach a specific waiver to a specific event instead of using the tenant default.

Full walkthrough, including what archiving a template does to signatures already collected: Volunteer waivers, compliance and disclosures.

Collecting Signatures

When a volunteer registers for an event that requires a waiver:

The system creates a signature request linked to the registration
The volunteer is presented with the waiver text
They sign electronically (with signature data, IP address, and user agent recorded)
If a minor, a guardian also signs
The signed waiver is stored with the registration

Viewing Waiver Status

For any registration, view all associated waivers:

Waiver template name
Signature status (pending, signed)
Signed date and signer details
Guardian signature (if applicable)

Tips & Best Practices

Require waivers for physical activities: Set the waiver-required flag on events involving physical labor, outdoor work, or potential risk
Use shifts and roles for larger events: Set spots and a minimum for each shift and role so you see early which ones are short
Set registration deadlines: Close registration a day or two before the event to finalize headcounts and assignments
Encourage QR check-in: It is faster than manual lookup and reduces check-in lines
Submit expenses within 60 days: The IRS accountable plan requires timely submission; Muin flags overdue expenses automatically
Review duplicate alerts: The duplicate detection saves money by catching accidental double-submissions
Export 990 data before filing: Pull the functional allocation report as part of your annual tax preparation

Common Issues

Problem	Solution
Volunteer cannot register for an event	Check if the event is Published and the registration deadline has not passed. If the shift and role they picked is full, they can join its waitlist.
Volunteer is refused a role	The role has a minimum age or a required certification they do not meet on the shift date. The message names the reason; they can pick another role.
A spot opened but nobody was offered it	It opened less than 2 hours before the shift, so no offer was made and you were alerted. Contact someone on the waitlist directly.
QR check-in shows “Registration not found”	The QR may encode an incorrect or expired registration ID. Regenerate the QR code from the registration detail.
Expense stuck in Submitted status	A reviewer needs to take action. Open Volunteering > Reimbursements > Pending Review and use the Awaiting me chip.
Batch reimbursement not including all approved expenses	Only approved expenses that have not been previously included in a batch are eligible. Check the expense status and batch history.
Waiver not appearing for sign-up	Verify the waiver template is not archived and is either the tenant default or attached to the event on Volunteering > Waivers > Event Templates.
Voice parse returning wrong category	Voice parsing is AI-assisted and may need manual correction. Adjust the category before saving.
Analytics dashboard showing zero data	Ensure the fiscal year or date range filter matches the period when expenses were submitted.

Fundraising – Events that include both fundraising and volunteer components
Distributions – Volunteers who staff distribution events
Facility Management – Book venues for volunteer events
Case Management – Volunteers who provide case management services
Aid requests from intake to decision – The assistance side of the same community work

Need Help?

If you have questions about volunteer management, contact your organization administrator or reach out to Muin support. For questions about IRS compliance for volunteer expenses, consult your organization’s accountant or tax advisor.