You might have times when you want to pump the brakes with a volunteer - to make sure they meet a certain qualification before they get involved with a need. For example, you might want to see a driver’s license or a CPR certification.
We find that our United Way sites do not use qualifications a lot. The important thing is for you to think through whether qualifications are right for you, and, if so, how will you plan to manage them.
I'm not sure I need Qualifications
Because United Ways often have so many agencies with a broad range of causes that they serve or focus on, you might shy away from using our Qualifications feature. That might be the right choice for you if managing or monitoring qualifications is not that important to you.
However, you might want to consider how the two most common qualifications might be useful to you. Those two are:
Basic liability waiver or photo waiver
Agreement to a background check
Both of these qualifications can be addressed with our click-wrap waivers or our eSign waivers. You can learn about those types of waivers in this article about electronic waivers.
We’re suggesting those as the common ones you’ll likely use as a United Way. But you might want to give thought to the broad categories of qualifications and waivers:
Terms and Conditions are a common type of waiver that you might use site-wide.
Agencies can add qualifications and waivers to their specific needs when that’s appropriate. (More on that in the next tab.)
A qualification can stand alone as a qualification, or it can include a waiver. The links in the final tab below will help you work through when to use each.
What if I don't want an agency to use a qualification
For any specific qualification, you can exclude specific (or all) agencies from using that qualification.
To exclude an agency or program manager using a qualification:
- From your site manager panel, go to Volunteerism > Qualifications.
- Under the Manage Qualifications heading, click on the qualification that you want to work with.
- Within the details for that qualification, click the Excluded Agencies tab.
- To exclude a single agency or program, select from the Add dropdown and click Add. To exclude all agencies or programs on your site, click the Add All button, and then click Yes to confirm.
All excluded agencies or programs now appear in the table.
I will need Qualifications for my own Internal Programs
Your local United Way might do a lot of volunteer work with your own internal programs, rather than only using external agencies. If that’s you, you might need to be familiar with the various aspects of this feature.
You probably should start with the basic article on Managing Qualifications, as we mentioned in the previous tab.
For training,
See this basic video on creating qualifications.
You might also want to learn about setting up a waiver.
And this video will show you how to approve a volunteer’s submitted qualification.