In all likelihood, your children's ministry is very comfortable with the Check-In system. What follows is a creative use that can be made of the Check-In system as well as the Portal for managing people who serve in an Event like VBS.
Objective: Create Groups and populate them with volunteers for your VBS. Use these Groups to schedule people to serve in specific days/nights of your VBS.
Getting your volunteers listed:
- Create Groups for VBS. A single Group may suffice, but Groups by area of service might be helpful (teachers, crafts, general helpers, etc):
- Make sure Available Online is set to Yes.
- Create Events with a title like Volunteer for VBS July 12-17:
- Have these Events happen every Sunday morning during your push to recruit volunteers.
- Set Allow Check-in to Yes.
- Set Ignore Program Groups to Yes.
- After saving the Event, add the newly-created Groups to the Groups sub-page of the Event.
- Use the Copy function to cause this Event to recur or simply extend this Event out for the duration of the sign-up season.
- Each Sunday, setup an attended Check-In station and enable this Event for Check-In.
- Direct people willing to serve at VBS to this station and use the Edit Family option to add them to the desired Group. Then check them in and print a tag reminding them they volunteered.
Scheduling your volunteers
- Create events for each day/night of VBS.
- Add the VBS groups to the Event.
- Use the RSVP feature of the Portal's My Groups page to send RSVP emails to those who have volunteered for that group. Sending an RSVP for each Event ensures you know how many people are confirmed by Event.
