Run Volunteering From One Screen

Open one screen in the morning and it tells you who is coming, who has not arrived, which applications are waiting on you, and whether this week’s shifts are filling.

When you’d use this

• It is distribution morning and you want to know how many volunteers to expect.
• Three people applied over the weekend and you need to decide on each one.
• A board member asks how the volunteer program is doing and you have ten minutes.
• You are about to open a new event and want to see which shifts are already short.

Open the console

1. In the sidebar, go to Nonprofit > Volunteering > Overview.

2. The console opens on the Today tab. Four tabs run across the top:

   Tab	What it answers
   Today	Who is coming, who has not checked in, what needs your review
   Volunteers	Everyone on the roster, with activity, availability and interests
   Applications	Who applied and what you decided
   Shifts	The shifts you are running and how full each one is

3. The Applications tab carries a count badge when applications are waiting. If the badge shows a number, somebody is waiting on you.

Add or import volunteers

On the Volunteers tab:

• Add a volunteer creates one person by hand, for the walk-in who shows up and stays.
• The import control takes a list, for the forty names a partner congregation sends you.
• Assign card and Replace card in the Card column give a volunteer a physical check-in card so they can check themselves in at the door. Type the ID printed on the card or plug in a USB card reader; on an Android phone in Chrome you can also tap the card to the phone. A volunteer who already has one shows Card assigned. The Card column is hidden when volunteers check in by QR code only.
• How volunteers check in (Settings → Nonprofit Settings → Volunteers) picks QR code, Card, or Both (the default); an event can override it in its check-in settings. With Card, the volunteer portal asks volunteers to tap their card instead of showing a QR, and Muin Go opens on the card tab. Finding someone by name always works.

Sort the roster by clicking a column header (Volunteer, Approved hrs, Total hrs, Events, Last active); click it again to reverse. Filter with the controls above the list: by activity, by availability, and by interest.

Decide on an application

1. Open the Applications tab.
2. Set Filter by status to Pending review to see only the ones waiting.
3. Click Review & respond on a row to make the decision, or Open full form to read everything the applicant wrote first.

Applications move through Submitted, In Review, Approved, Rejected and Completed. A brand-new one shows as New; one you put away shows as Archived.

The coordinator briefing

The console answers “what is happening today”. The briefing answers “how are we doing”. Click Coordinator briefing in the console header, and you get five sections, each a question:

Section	What it shows
Are we staffed?	Fill rate and no-shows across the last 30 days
Who’s slipping?	Volunteers whose service is falling off
Who deserves thanks?	Your top volunteers by approved hours
What do I tell the board?	Approved hours, required hours and completion
What’s coming?	Where staffing is trending short, projected from your own history

Two things to take away with you:

• Print briefing gives you the whole page on paper for a meeting.
• Set Annual report year and click Annual report (PDF) for the formal document a funder or a school district asks for.

Fill rate is badged green at 100% or better, amber at 70% or better, and red below that. A shift with no cap set shows No cap set rather than a misleading percentage.

Publish one sign-in link for volunteers

Volunteers lose old emails and change phones. Give them one address they can always use to get back into their portal:

https://muin.falaah.ai/go/{your-slug}/sign-in?audience=volunteer

Replace {your-slug} with the slug from your public volunteer page. The link never expires and is safe to post publicly, because it only sends a sign-in link or code to an email or phone the person already controls. Put it in your website header or footer, on flyers and check-in table signs (as a QR code), and in volunteer newsletters. Every public volunteer page also shows a Lost your link? Get a new one link to the same place.

Staffing alerts

Events can be split into shifts and roles, each with its own spots, an optional minimum and its own waitlist. The Shifts tab (/nonprofit/volunteers?tab=shifts) is where you see how each one is filling. You also get an in-app alert when:

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

Freed spots are offered to the waitlist in order, with a time limit to accept. See Waitlist Offers.

What it affects

• Approving an application puts the person on the roster, so they appear on the Volunteers tab and can be assigned to shifts.
• Assigning a card changes how that volunteer checks in: they tap instead of being looked up.
• Hours approved on Volunteering > Hours are what the briefing’s board numbers and the annual report count. Pending hours are not included.
• The briefing’s fill rate reads the same shift data as the Shifts tab, so a capacity change on an event shows up in both.

When it goes wrong

What you see	What it means	What to do
You don’t have access to volunteering.	Your account has no Volunteers permission	Ask an administrator for the Volunteers permission. The console does not grant itself.
We couldn’t check your permissions	The permission lookup failed, not your access	This is not a sign that you lack access. Reload the page.
This tab couldn’t be shown	One tab failed, the rest are fine	Switch to another tab, or reload. Your data is not lost.
No applications yet / No volunteer forms yet	There is no volunteer application form to apply through	Click Create a volunteer form and publish it, then share the link.
A shift row is plain text instead of a link	You can see volunteering but not events	Ask for the Events view permission if you need to open the event itself.
The briefing says No approved hours yet	Hours exist but nobody has approved them	Approve them on Volunteering > Hours; the board numbers follow.

Next step

Hours are the number everything else is built on. Go to Logging and approving volunteer hours.