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Mandatory Email Addresses

Email is often a great way to communicate. So much so that some volunteer leaders use email as the primary method of formal communication with volunteers and Coordinators.

Some volunteer leaders may wish to require that every volunteer, or Coordinator, provide an email address, and receive email messages from their organization. With the growing popularity of email, it may not be unusual for all of the volunteers in some organizations to have email addresses. However, this is not always the case in all organizations. If your organization is one where it is reasonable to assume that every person will have an email address, you can make some email address features a requirement.

  1. You can make the Email address field on the Core Tab of volunteer records and the Coordinator tab of Coordinator records required fields. When you add new volunteer or Coordinator records in Volgistics, an email address would be required to complete the entries on the page. The Field Customization and Configuration help topic has information on how to do this.

  2. You can make the Email address field on on-line volunteer application forms a required field. The Customize Application Form Content help topic has information on how to do this.

If you use the VicNet portal, volunteers use their email address as their VicNet login name.

While organizations may make an email address a requirement, keep in mind that it is not technically possible to force an individual to receive email from your organization (or anyone, for that matter).

Volgistics provides important volunteer and Coordinator message preference features through which volunteers and Coordinators may set their own message preferences, and even discontinue receiving messages from you altogether. Even if these features were not available in Volgistics, recipients can block email and text messages from certain senders in their own email program or on their own cell phone.

If your ability to send email to every volunteer is important to you, you can always monitor volunteer message preference settings on the Profile tab, and Coordinator message preferences on the Coordinator tab. When a volunteer or Coordinator has chosen to opt-out of receiving all types of messages from your organization, the email validity and text number validity icons on their record will be changed to red. While a System Operator can reset the email options, please keep in mind that recipient's preferences should be respected. The capability to change volunteer or Coordinator email preferences should only be used in the rare occasion when a volunteer or Coordinator inadvertently opts-out of all email types and you can confirm that this selection was made by mistake.

You can setup Volgistics to send an alert to the In Box tab of your Volgistics mailbox whenever a volunteer or Coordinator chooses not to receive any messages from your organization. The Add Volunteer Message Descriptions help topic shows how to do this for volunteers. The Add Coordinator Message Descriptions help topic shows how to do this for Coordinators.