Getting started with VolunteerCal
Six steps take a new organization from signing up to a published schedule.
Create your organization
After registering, the setup wizard walks you through naming your organization, choosing your type (church, nonprofit, or other), and selecting a scheduling workflow. You can always change these later in Organization Settings.
Add your volunteers
Go to the People page to add volunteers one by one, or use CSV Import to upload your entire roster at once. Each volunteer can have a name, email, phone, preferred frequency, and availability notes.
Create teams and roles
In Services & Events, create your recurring services (e.g., Sunday Morning) and define roles within each team (e.g., Lead Vocalist, Sound Tech). Assign volunteers to teams based on their skills and interests.
Generate a schedule
From the Scheduling Dashboard, create a new schedule covering 4–8 weeks. The auto-draft algorithm generates a fair rotation respecting availability, household connections, and preferred frequency limits.
Review and approve
The draft schedule appears in the Schedule Matrix where you can review assignments, make manual swaps, and resolve any conflicts. Once satisfied, approve and publish the schedule.
How approval works depends on your plan:
- Free & Starter: the owner approves and publishes in one step — no per-team gates.
- Growth and Pro: multi-stage approval is unlocked. Each ministry lead approves their team's section first; the admin can then publish. The Approve button stays disabled until every team signs off, and hovering it shows which teams are still pending.
Notify volunteers
Once you publish a schedule, each volunteer receives one grouped email with all of their serving dates. SMS is used only when email is unavailable and SMS is enabled. They can confirm or decline from the notification or their My Schedule page.