Volunteer Management System

Systers has many volunteers and potential volunteers that offer their skills, time and commitment to our vision. However, there is no system in place to track volunteers, their hours, and run reports. Many volunteers actually track and report their volunteer hours with Systers/ABI to their employers. The employers in turn may provide an incentive and often times match their hours volunteering with a monetary donation to the institute.
Additionally, as part of their internal current process (Figure 1), companies contact ABI finance department to verify hours worked by their employees/volunteers that was reported. ABI finance confirms volunteer hours with Systers program manager and has to send that confirmation back to the company. The new implemented VMS will manage volunteer contact information, track hours and events they worked, and providing reporting functionality at the least.

Review VMS Requirements document

Important Links

• Volunteer Management System GitHub Repository
• Volunteer Management System Installation Guide
• Volunteer Management System Requirements Document

Development Environment

• Language: Python
• Framework: Django
• Difficulty: Intermediate

Application Advice

If you want to become a Outreachy student, do the following:

• Read Volunteer Management System Requirements Document
• Deploy the project on your local machine
• Make a contributions to VMS or provide proof that you have enough experience with Python and Django. You can find easy TODO tasks on our GitHub issues page.
• Make a rough timeline and split up the idea into tasks. If possible create a prototype, identify possible issues early.
• Talk to a mentor.
• Apply on the Outreachy website. FYI no late submissions will be accepted.

Project ideas

• Unit Testing
• Searches
  • Search volunteer based on region/city, job/task
  • Search jobs based on region/city
  • Add your idea
• Volunteer Reports
  • When entering their volunteer hours, each volunteer should be able to receive a confirmation report of hours entered
• Electronically sign volunteer agreement, docusign can be used.
• Validations
  • Validate location
  • Validate Organizations
  • Validate Phone Numbers
  • Your Idea here
• Issues tagged as needed enhancements.

Your idea here

If you have an idea of your how to improve VMS, drop us a message to discuss it :)