Create an Optimal Volunteer Application – Ask the Right Questions

With Lineup’s Application feature, you can gather and compile information from your volunteers quickly and easily. An Application is simply a customizable form you can set up to solicit whatever information you need. The information you can gather in Applications has many potential uses, including vetting new volunteer applicants, determining volunteer suitability for specific tasks, maintaining updated contact information for volunteers, and soliciting volunteer information for specific events.

You can create multiple Applications in Lineup, and you can customize them to your specific needs. Here are some suggestions of Applications you might find useful:

·       Initial volunteer Application. Use this for new subject matter experts to apply to become a volunteer for the first time.

·       Biographical information update Application. You’ll want your volunteers to update their information in the system to account for new experiences, additional relevant certifications or licenses, etc.

·       Pre-activity information gathering. You might need to solicit specific information from your volunteers before they start volunteer activities. With Applications, your volunteers can quickly provide this information, and you can easily track it.

These examples only scratch the surface of the potential uses of Applications. The following sections provide more detail about the different purposes of Applications and good practices for keeping volunteer information current.

Application Purposes

1.     Collecting Biographical Information

Lineup’s standard demographic fields are ideal for getting started with your initial volunteer Application. Lineup also offers unlimited custom fields in several different formats so that you can gather information from your volunteers to meet your specific needs.  Here are some suggestions for biographical information fields you might find useful, especially when initially vetting new volunteer applicants:

·       Employment experience

·       Length of time in the field

·       Volunteer experience

·       Employment categories meaningful to your volunteer management needs (e.g., educator or practitioner, role in his/her organization)

·       Specific areas of expertise

·       Relevant certifications, licenses, or other credentials

Lineup can also track documents submitted within an Application, such as resumes and writing samples.

2.     Collecting Task-Specific Information

If you want to use an Application to help determine which volunteers are best for a specific task, you can send an Application to your volunteers asking for:

·       Availability during activity timeframe

·       Interest in the specific activity

·       Previous experience relevant to the specific activity

·       Desired role in the specific activity

You can send your Application to a specific subset of your volunteer pool so that it is received only individuals for whom the questions are relevant receive the Application.

3.     Collecting Event-Specific Information

You can also use a Lineup Application to gather information specific to an event, such as:

·       Travel information (including arrival/departure information)

·       Accommodation requests (room type, location)

·       Accessibility needs

·       Dietary needs

Lineup makes it easy to see who has completed your Application and who hasn’t—and following up is a breeze. Once you send your Application to a group of volunteers, you’ll be able to see who has and who hasn’t completed it. You can send targeted follow-up communications just to those who haven’t yet completed it or send the Application to different volunteers:

To find which volunteers completed your Application, you can filter on the name of that Application, and then easily review each individual’s answers, or export your results to .csv. The information you gathered in your Application will also appear as custom fields that you can then use to sort and filter as you assemble your dream team! 

Keeping Information Current

The information you have gathered and stored in Lineup is only useful if it’s current. Once you have imported information on your volunteers (or once they enter it themselves via an Application), that information will populate in your volunteer’s individual page when you push an Application out for them to update. This means that they can update their information quickly and easily, which will increase the likelihood that they will make time to do so!

Gone are the days of tracking email threads and copy-pasting individual volunteers’ responses into a spreadsheet. Lineup’s Applications will do the work for you!

Alpine Testing Solutions

, Inc.

(Alpine) is a professional services organization that provides program and psychometric consultation, test development and validation services, and technology solutions to certification, certificate, licensure, and education testing programs.