Account Recommendations for Multi-Site Organizations¶

Organizations that have multiple sites with volunteer programs at each site (such as health care organizations, state and national organizations, city or county governments, etc.) may be able to use a single Volgistics account which is shared by all of their sites; or they may prefer separate Volgistics accounts for each different location.

This help topic explains the pros and cons of each approach.

From a cost perspective, having separate accounts for each facility would probably be just slightly more expensive than having just one account shared by all sites. So what drives your decision should not be cost alone. You can use the price calculator on our website to compare what you'd pay with each approach. To do this, get the cost of using one account by adding the number of volunteers at each location you would likely track and the total number of System Operators you would need. Enter this total in the calculator along with which of the optional modules you need. Then, enter the information for each account separately and note the monthly service fees. Add the fees together to see what the total cost would be for separate accounts.

With a Single Account for All Sites¶

With a single account you can establish volunteer database standards for all of the sites in your organization from a headquarters location. For instance, a headquarters site (or an overall supervisor) would customize the system and their customizations would apply to every site that uses the shared account. This includes customized field names, dropdown list items, the items that appear in the Checklists, award items, and more.

With a single account you can use the Volgistics Site Level Access feature to create individual System Operators who only see the volunteers who are associated with their site. These operators can be Site-Level Operators who are restricted to seeing just the volunteers from one Site. Or, they can be Multi-Site Level Operators who can switch their view of the account between up to ten Sites. In either case, the operators can only see volunteers and Assignments from the Site currently associated with their record. Any reports run by a Site-Level or Multi-Site Level Operators will only include information for the Site they are currently associated with.

At the same time, other System Operators can be Headquarters Operators. These operators can see all volunteer records from all Sites at the same time so they can produce consolidated reports that include all volunteers or volunteer service information for all of the Sites in the account at once.

A single account for all sites is probably best if...

• All of the sites have (or should have) the same volunteer Checklists (e.g. Health Screening, Confidentiality Statement, Orientation, etc).
• All of the sites use (or should use) the same award criteria for awards (e.g. 100 hour award, 500 hour award, etc).
• There is one person who has overall management responsibility for all of the volunteer programs at each site (in other words, someone with authority for setting volunteer database standards for all of the sites).
• There is substantial volunteer overlap (many volunteers serve at multiple sites)

With a Separate Account for Each Site¶

Each site could tailor the system specifically for their location. For example, individual sites could create custom fields and field dropdown lists that are specific to their site only. Also, each site can setup its own Checklist items and awards lists.

With this approach, there is not a way for a Headquarters level operator to view all of the records for all of the Sites at the same time. However, a Headquarters Operator could have a login name for each of the separate site accounts and login to these accounts individually.

There is not a way for a Headquarters level operator to produce a single report that would include volunteer names or service statistics for all sites. However, reports with the same formatting could be created by each site and forwarded to headquarters for manual consolidation into a single report).

This approach is probably best if...

• There is some variation in the way each site performs new volunteer processing (e.g. Tb Test, Confidentiality Statement, Orientation, etc).
• There is some variation in the way the sites give volunteer recognition (for example, if different sites use different award criteria).
• There is not one person who has overall management responsibility for all of the volunteer programs at each site.
• There is not much volunteer overlap (volunteers tend to serve at just one site)
• System Operators from one site or location should never see volunteer or service information related to a different site or location.

Related Help¶

• Archived Versus Non-Archived Records
• Price List
• Service Levels
• Site Level Access Overview
• Enable Site Level Access
• Assign Volunteers to Site
• Site-Level and Multi-Site Level Operators
• Example of Using Multi-Site Level Access
• Billing Tips for Large Organizations