Volgistics

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Help topic: Volunteer & Assignment Matching

What is assignment matching?

Assignment matching compares the availability, characteristics, and preferences of each volunteer to the availability, characteristics, and preferences of a selected assignment. Volgistics gives each volunteer a ranking of Good, Fair, or Marginal, based on how well the volunteer matches the assignment.

Setup assignment matching

Before Volgistics can start matching volunteers and assignments you must configure the assignment matching setup options:

1. Select Setup from the Volgistics menu.

2. Select “Assignment tracking.”

3. Click the "Volunteer & assignment matching" link.

4. Check "Use volunteer & assignment matching".

5. Set the Weight for each of the three match criteria.

6. Click Save.

What are the different weight settings?

For each match criteria, availability, characteristics, and preference, you can select a weight of None, Low, Average, or High. The weights assign the degree of importance for each of the different criteria. The High weight setting gives the most importance, Low gives the lowest importance, and None gives no importance to the criteria.

For example: If it is very important that a volunteer's availability match the assignment's availability, if it is moderately important that their characteristics match the assignment's characteristics, and if it is of no importance that their preferences match your assignment's preferences, you would set Availability weight to High, Characteristics weight to Average, and Preference weight to None.

If there are any of the match criteria that you do not currently track in either your volunteer or assignment records, you should set the weight of that criteria to None.

Where do you enter data for matching?

You enter a volunteer’s availability, characteristics, and preferences on the Profile tab in the volunteer record. You enter the times volunteer are needed, characteristics, and preferences for an assignment on the Profile tab in the assignment record.

You can find more information on these fields here:

Availability
Characteristics
Preferences

Find volunteers that match your assignment

Now that you have assignment matching setup, you can find volunteers that match an assignment based on their assignment match ranking. To do so:

1. Select Assignments from the Volgistics menu.

2. Click on the Assignment for which you want to match volunteers.

3. Select the Volunteers tab for the assignment.

4. Under Include, select "These volunteers".

5. Under Status, check all volunteer status you wish to include in this match.

6. Under Role, if you wish to see volunteers that already have a role in this assignment check all the roles you want to include. If you do not want to see their current roles, you can leave all of the roles unchecked.

7. Under Matches, check the different match rankings you wish to include in this list.

8. Finally, click Refresh to see the new list of volunteers based on the option you selected.

The Role column will show either the volunteer’s current role in the assignment (if you choose to see these in step 6) or their match ranking. You can set a role for an individual volunteer by choosing a role from the New role drop-down list that appears on the same line as their name. When you are finished selecting New roles, click the Save button at the top of the Volunteers tab to save your changes.

In addition to selecting roles for volunteers that match your assignment, you can also tag all the volunteers on the list by clicking the Tag these button at the bottom of the Volunteers tab or send all the volunteers on the list an Email by clicking the Email link near the al the top of the volunteer list.

What determines the ranking of each matched volunteer?

Volgistics determines a volunteer's match ranking (Good, Fair, or Marginal) by considering how many of each match criteria (availability, characteristics, and preferences) the volunteer has in common with the selected assignment. The ranking is also affected by the weight you have assigned to each criteria. For example: If you set the weight of availability to High and the Weight of characteristics to Low, a volunteer that matches all the characteristics but only a few of the availability options for the assignment will have a lower ranking than a volunteer that matches all of the availability and only a few of the characteristics for the same assignment. This happens even though both volunteers have the same number of overall criteria that match, because the availability weight is higher than the characteristics weight.

What if I have an assignment that can only be performed by volunteers over 18?

You can set the minimum age for any assignment in the Detail box on the Assignment tab in the Assignment record. If a volunteer does not match the Minimum age for the assignment, they will not appear as a match no matter how many of the other criteria they meet. The Minimum age is compared to the Age field on the volunteer's Profile tab.

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Help topic 2249
Added or revised 07-22-2009