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Logging and Approving Volunteer Hours

Review self-logged hours, approve or reject them one at a time or in bulk, export hours by program or volunteer, and recognize your most dedicated volunteers.

A volunteer logs the time they served, you confirm it, and from then on it counts toward their badges, your grant reports and the board’s numbers.

When you’d use this

  • Monday morning, and six volunteers logged hours for Saturday’s event.
  • A student needs a signed letter saying how many service hours they completed.
  • A grant report asks how many volunteer hours went to one program last quarter.
  • You want to name an Hour Hero at the annual dinner.

Approve the hours

  1. Go to Nonprofit > Volunteering > Hours.
  2. The first section, Pending hours awaiting review, is the queue. Use the Event filter to narrow it to one event; a banner then says which event you are looking at, and Clear filter takes you back to everything. The filter lists volunteer events only, each with its date, so the weeks of a repeating shift are easy to tell apart; type in the search box beside it to find an older event.
  3. On a row, click:
    • Approve to accept the hours as logged.
    • Edit to correct the number first, then approve.
    • Reject to send them back. A reason is required, and the volunteer reads it, so write it for them: say what was wrong and whether they should log it again.
  4. For a whole event’s worth, tick the rows you want. A toolbar appears showing how many are selected, with Approve selected.

Log hours, at the top of the page, lets you enter hours on a volunteer’s behalf: pick the volunteer, then the date, the hours and a reason. Use it for the person who served but does not use the portal, or when volunteer self-logging is turned off. These hours count as approved right away. The same form opens from Log hours on a volunteer’s row in the volunteer list and on a person’s Volunteer tab, with that volunteer already chosen, and from Log hours on a pending row.

Write actions appear only if you hold the Volunteers manage permission. With view-only access you can read the queue and run the reports, but the buttons are not there.

Pull the numbers out

Four reporting sections sit under the queue:

Section Filters What you get
Hours by program Program, From, To Hours split by the program they went to, with a CSV download
Hours by volunteer Date range Volunteer, email, approved hours, number of entries, with a CSV download
Approved hours by month Trailing 12 months The monthly trend
Year-end summary (CSV) Calendar year The per-volunteer year total, as CSV or PDF

Download annual report PDF produces the formal document for a funder or a school district. It is the same report the coordinator briefing offers.

Recognize the regulars

Nonprofit > Volunteering > Hour Heroes has two parts.

YTD leaderboard ranks volunteers by approved hours this year, showing year-to-date next to lifetime hours and a streak badge for each.

Evaluate Hour Hero award gives the award to your top volunteers for a calendar year:

  1. Set Year (it defaults to last year, because you usually award in January for the year just finished).
  2. Set Top N: how many volunteers get it. The default is 10.
  3. Click Award Hour Hero.

Re-running it for the same year is safe. Awards are idempotent, so a second run does not create duplicates.

What it affects

  • Only approved hours count. They feed badge progress in the member portal, the board numbers on the coordinator briefing, the volunteer impact charts, and every export on this page.
  • Approving hours can push a volunteer past a background-check threshold, which puts them on Volunteering > Waiver Compliance.
  • Rejecting hours sends the volunteer a notification carrying your reason.
  • The leaderboard and Hour Hero award read approved hours only, so an unapproved queue produces an empty leaderboard.

When it goes wrong

What you see What it means What to do
Please provide a rejection reason The reason box is empty Write what was wrong. The volunteer reads it, so make it useful.
Could not approve hours / Could not reject hours The save did not land Try again. If it repeats, check whether you hold the Volunteers manage permission.
Could not bulk-approve hours The batch failed Re-select the rows and try again, or approve them one at a time to find the row that is refusing.
No approved hours match these filters The report ran, and the answer is genuinely none Widen the date range or clear the program filter. A date range that predates your first event returns nothing.
Could not download year-end summary CSV (or PDF, or either hours report) The export failed Try again. Narrow the date range if the period is very large.
No volunteers with approved hours yet on the leaderboard Hours are logged but not approved Approve some hours; the leaderboard populates from approved hours only.
Could not evaluate Hour Hero award The award run failed Check that Year is a real year and Top N is between 1 and 100, then run it again.
Hours a volunteer swears they logged are missing They logged them against a different organization, or the entry is still a draft in the portal Ask them to open My Hours in the member portal and confirm the entry was sent.

Next step

Hours drive background-check thresholds. See Volunteer waivers, compliance and disclosures for who needs clearing and when.