--- schema_version: "1" id: b78c37814d7acf843a29e06a3712f4befeda4859a91883e46ee6794f7a785e2d title: Track and Identify Your Volunteers collection: admin version: current locale: en-us portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/sfdo/264-0-0/v4s_user_track.md canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_track.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 source_site: help.salesforce.com content_type: documentation content_hash: e8e6a9e39102d9db6190bc1bace2ccaea5afa8a58d0413e58ea21aa3307241a2 description: In Volunteers for Salesforce, Contact records are highly important because they are used to track all of your volunteers—active, inactive, and prospective. Each Contact record contains a volunteer's phone, email, and address, their special skills, the days and times they're available to volunteer, their volunteer status, and a Volunteer Hours related list where you can see how many hours they've committed to your organization. products: - Nonprofit release: "264" --- # Track and Identify Your Volunteers In Volunteers for Salesforce, Contact records are highly important because they are used to track all of your volunteers—active, inactive, and prospective. Each Contact record contains a volunteer's phone, email, and address, their special skills, the days and times they're available to volunteer, their volunteer status, and a Volunteer Hours related list where you can see how many hours they've committed to your organization. - **[Create a Contact](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_track.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5)** Create new Contacts to track potential and current Volunteers in Volunteers for Salesforce. - **[Capture Volunteer Skills and Availability](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_track.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5)** Often when planning an event, you know that you need volunteers with special skills. For example, the local kitchen where Sarah volunteers needs people with food preparation skills. And when the kitchen's web developer recently revamped the website, she recruited volunteers with computer skills. - **[Find Volunteers](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_track.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5)** If you've entered skills and availability information for some of your volunteers, you can use the Find Volunteers feature to locate volunteers you need for a specific type of job. ## Create a Contact Create new Contacts to track potential and current Volunteers in Volunteers for Salesforce. 1. Click the Contacts tab. If you don't see the Contacts tab, click the App Launcher (![App Launcher icon](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sfdo-volunteers_for_salesforce-264-0-0-production-enus/1854165a-1e96-498b-9cfb-c6516fed9d92/resources-product/images/app_launcher_icon.png)), then click **All Items**. 2. Click **New**. 3. Enter the person's name, email, address, and any other information you have. 4. Click **Save**. ## Capture Volunteer Skills and Availability Often when planning an event, you know that you need volunteers with special skills. For example, the local kitchen where Sarah volunteers needs people with food preparation skills. And when the kitchen's web developer recently revamped the website, she recruited volunteers with computer skills. Volunteers for Salesforce provides fields on the Contact to track a volunteer's skills, status (whether the volunteer is active or not), and availability (days and times during the week). These fields are conveniently located in a Volunteer Information section on the Contact record. ![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sfdo-volunteers_for_salesforce-264-0-0-production-enus/1854165a-1e96-498b-9cfb-c6516fed9d92/images/icon_note.png) Note If you don't see these fields, you might need to edit your Contact page layout to include them. Administrators can also customize the values in each field to match the needs of your organization. See [Capture Volunteer Skills and Availability](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_track.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "In Volunteers for Salesforce, Contact records are highly important because they are used to track all of your volunteers—active, inactive, and prospective. Each Contact record contains a volunteer's phone, email, and address, their special skills, the days and times they're available to volunteer, their volunteer status, and a Volunteer Hours related list where you can see how many hours they've committed to your organization.") for more information. 1. Navigate to the volunteer's Contact record. 2. In the Volunteer Information section, double-click on one of the fields to edit. 3. Enter information as needed. Pay special attention to these fields, as they are useful when trying to find specific volunteers: - **Volunteer Status**—the status of the volunteer. Values include Active, Inactive, New Sign Up, and Prospective. ![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sfdo-volunteers_for_salesforce-264-0-0-production-enus/1854165a-1e96-498b-9cfb-c6516fed9d92/images/icon_note.png) Note When you assign a Volunteer to a job or shift and select a Status of Confirmed or Completed, the Volunteer Status field is automatically updated to Active. - **Volunteer Skills**—the special skills the volunteer possesses. Ctrl+click to select multiple values. - **Volunteer Availability**—the days and times of day that the Contact is available to volunteer. Ctrl+click to select multiple values. ![Entering volunteer skills and availability](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sfdo-volunteers_for_salesforce-264-0-0-production-enus/1854165a-1e96-498b-9cfb-c6516fed9d92/volunteers_for_salesforce/images/volunteer_skills_availability.png) 4. Click **Save**. Now you can use this information to [find volunteers](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_track.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "In Volunteers for Salesforce, Contact records are highly important because they are used to track all of your volunteers—active, inactive, and prospective. Each Contact record contains a volunteer's phone, email, and address, their special skills, the days and times they're available to volunteer, their volunteer status, and a Volunteer Hours related list where you can see how many hours they've committed to your organization."). ## Find Volunteers If you've entered skills and availability information for some of your volunteers, you can use the Find Volunteers feature to locate volunteers you need for a specific type of job. 1. Click the Find Volunteers tab. 2. Choose your criteria. By default, you can search using the volunteer-specific fields: Volunteer Status, Volunteer Availability, and Volunteer Skills. Admins can also expand the search criteria to include more Contact fields. See [Configure Fields on the Find Volunteers Page](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_config_fields.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Customize and configure fields in Volunteers for Salesforce to fit the needs of your organization.") for more information. ![Find Volunteers page](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sfdo-volunteers_for_salesforce-264-0-0-production-enus/1854165a-1e96-498b-9cfb-c6516fed9d92/volunteers_for_salesforce/images/find_volunteers.png) 3. Click **Find** to see a list of matching Contacts. ![Entering criteria to find volunteers](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-sfdo-volunteers_for_salesforce-264-0-0-production-enus/1854165a-1e96-498b-9cfb-c6516fed9d92/volunteers_for_salesforce/images/find_volunteers_results.png) Once you find the volunteers you need, you can [assign them to a Job or Shift](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sfdo.v4s_user_manage_volunteers.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "There are multiple ways to assign volunteers to Shifts, including allowing volunteers to sign up directly from your website (more on that in Sign Up for a Job Shift.) You can also sign up volunteers yourself by assigning them to Shifts in Volunteers for Salesforce.") right from the results section of the page.