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The Volunteers page in RescueConsole is your single view of every person moving through your volunteer pipeline. It shows who applied and when, who has been approved but not yet started, and who is actively taking shifts — so you can act on the right people at the right moment without combing through individual records.

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The Volunteers page

The Volunteers page groups people into three states:
  • Waiting for approval — volunteers who have applied but not yet been reviewed. The page shows how long each person has been waiting, in plain terms.
  • Approved, not started — volunteers who have been approved for at least one role or location but have not yet booked a shift.
  • Taking shifts — volunteers who are active and have upcoming or recent bookings.
The waiting time shown next to each applicant means no application goes unnoticed. If someone applied two weeks ago and nothing has happened, the page tells you that clearly — you do not need to remember to follow up or sort by date.

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How a volunteer application becomes a person record

When someone fills in your public volunteer application form, their submission lands in the forms inbox. From there, you can create a new person record from the submission in one click, or link it to an existing record if the person is already on file. Either way, the submission is attached to the record and the person’s volunteer role is added automatically. Once the person record exists with the volunteer role, they appear on the Volunteers page in the waiting-for-approval state. This is what triggers the approval workflow — the record exists, the role is set, and now it is up to a coordinator to review and approve.

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Approving a volunteer for roles and locations

To approve a volunteer, open their person record and go to the Volunteer tab. From there you can:
  • Add role approvals — select each role the volunteer is approved to perform, such as dog walker, kennel assistant, or event helper.
  • Add location approvals — if your organization uses location-restricted shifts, select which sites or locations the volunteer may work at.
  • Set an expiry date on any approval — useful for qualifications, training certificates, or agreements that need periodic renewal.
Once an approval is in place, the volunteer will see eligible shift windows in their own calendar view. Approvals they do not hold simply do not appear as options for them.

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Expiring qualifications

Any approval can carry an expiry date. When that date passes, the approval lapses and the volunteer loses access to the roles or locations that depended on it. RescueConsole enforces this automatically — the volunteer will not be able to book shifts requiring that qualification until you re-approve them. Lapsed qualifications surface the volunteer back on the Volunteers page so you have a prompt to follow up, whether that means sending a renewal form, scheduling a refresher, or simply re-approving once you have confirmed the requirement is still met.

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The volunteer’s own view

Volunteers who sign in to RescueConsole see a focused, limited view of the product:
  • Their shifts — every shift they are booked for, past and upcoming.
  • Available shifts to book — open windows they are eligible for, based on their approved roles and locations. They do not see windows they cannot book.
  • Events — upcoming events that have been published.
They do not see animal records, people records, fundraising data, or any other workspace. Their view is limited to what a volunteer needs to manage their own schedule, and nothing more.

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Volunteer onboarding checklists

Workflows in RescueConsole let you build a checklist that runs on a record and tracks each step to completion. For volunteer onboarding, this means you can create a workflow that starts when a person record gets the volunteer role and walks your team through every required step — collecting documents, completing orientation, granting system access, and issuing the first approval. Each step in the checklist can create a task, change a status, or send a templated message when it completes. The checklist stays on the volunteer’s record so anyone on the team can see where the onboarding stands without asking.