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Two settings pages decide how volunteering works at your rescue. Both are under Settings → Team & volunteers:
  • Volunteer roles: the jobs volunteers sign up for, and whether each needs approval.
  • Volunteer rules: limits on how far ahead, how often and how late volunteers can sign up, and when giving a shift up needs a coordinator’s agreement.
Only an Organization admin can use these pages. Anybody else who opens one sees You don’t have access to organization settings with your current role.

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Volunteer roles

Open Settings → Team & volunteers → Volunteer roles. A role is a job a volunteer does, such as Dog walker or Transport driver. A role has to exist here before a shift can ask for it (see Shifts).

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Adding a role

Press Add role.
Approved separately at each location cannot be changed once the role exists, because every approval the role holds either names a place or does not. To change it, add a new role.
A role’s name and description cannot be changed on this page once it is added.

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The list of roles

Each role shows its name, its description, and:
  • Needs approval, when it needs approval;
  • Approved per location or Approved once, anywhere;
  • Not scheduled, when it has been stopped (the row is also faded);
  • in gray, the role’s key, which is made from its name when it is added and never changes.
Beside each role: A role can only be deleted when nothing uses it: no shift asks for it, nobody has ever been approved for it (expired and withdrawn approvals count), and no volunteer rule names it. Shifts that were deleted still count. Otherwise deleting is refused and the page says how many of each use it, for example This role is on 2 shifts and 3 approvals. Retire it instead, or take it off them first. Under the message are links to The shifts asking for it (the Shifts list, filtered to this role) and The rules scoped to it. Approvals are on each volunteer’s own record (see Volunteers). In most cases Stop scheduling is what you want.

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Volunteer rules

Open Settings → Team & volunteers → Volunteer rules. A rule is a limit on how volunteers sign themselves up. Leave a rule unset and it does not apply: with no rules at all, volunteers can sign up for anything they are approved for, as far ahead as they like, and give shifts up whenever they like.

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The six rules

The first five are checked when somebody presses Sign up on Sign up, after every other check, and a refusal is shown to them in the rule’s own words. The Sign up button shows either way, so a volunteer finds out about a rule only when they try. The last rule is checked when somebody gives a shift up. The rules apply to everybody who signs up there, staff included.

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Setting a rule

Before you save, the form says how the rule will read. Press Set rule. Setting a rule that already exists for the same role, location or organization changes its number (and turns it back on if it was off), rather than adding a second one.

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Which rule applies

Only one rule of each kind applies to a sign-up, and it is the most specific one: a rule for the shift’s role beats a rule for the shift’s location, which beats a rule for Everywhere. The most specific rule wins even when it is looser. So you can say “two hours a day everywhere, but four on a transport run” by setting Most hours in one day to 2 for Everywhere and to 4 Only for the transport role.

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The list of rules

Each rule shows its name, its number in words (2 hours in one day, 14 days ahead, 24 hours before it starts), and where it applies: Everywhere, Only for a role, or Only at a location.

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What actually applies

The What actually applies box answers which rules are in force for a role once several overlap. Choose a role under Show rules for. Each rule that applies is listed with where it came from: from the organization-wide rule or from the role rule. A role with none says Nothing limits this role. The box takes a role only, so a rule set Only at one location does not show in it, even though it applies to shifts at that location.