Reminders are such a huge help to me -- I literally can't get anything done without setting up reminders for myself in my calendar. But where I end up falling short is when I volunteer to do something for someone else and I'm on their calendar (but forget to put it in my own). Suddenly, without my reminders, I look like a total flake. And I hate it!
What's saved me is that more and more of the groups I participate with are using VolunteerSpot to schedule all our activities. So when my child's teacher creates her parent teacher calendar schedule in VolunteerSpot, then sends an email to all the parents that has a link to VolunteerSpot, I choose the slot I want and I'm on the calendar (and the teacher gets no double bookings!). Even if I forget to pop that one in my calendar, VolunteerSpot always reminds me 2 days before the appointment.
We also use it for many of the parent and sports activities we work with. So I click the three days I can work at the swimming pool snack bar and VolunteerSpot reminds me before each one. As the parent leader of our first grade garden, I inherited a clipboard full of names and times people want to work. I entered those assignments into VolunteerSpot, and the tool handles all the reminders - my job is easy!
This type of reminder service for volunteers can go a long way toward cutting the "flake rate" -- people that fail to show and make volunteering harder than it should be. It's just one of the many ways VolunteerSpot makes scheduling and coordinating volunteers so much less time consuming and so much more rewarding. And the free reminder service saves volunteer coordinators a lot of time on the phone too!!
Check out the video for more information:
