Appearance
Volunteers
The Volunteers page lists the people who help at your shelter — volunteers and fosters — with a profile for each and tools to bring people on board.
Who can use this page: staff and administrators (it requires permission to manage people).
Volunteers, fosters, and users
A volunteer is a person with the volunteer role, and a foster is a volunteer who also fosters animals. Behind the scenes they're regular user accounts with a volunteer profile — so the same person can appear here and in Settings → Users. This page is the people-focused view: contact details, restrictions, and activity history. The Users page is the account-focused view: roles, access, and security.
Add a volunteer
- Click Add volunteer and enter their name and contact details.
- Save. The volunteer is created with the volunteer role.
- When they're ready to sign in, send them a password reset so they can set their own password (volunteers aren't given a password at creation).
To bring on a whole group at once, use the bulk import below instead.
Find a volunteer
Search by name and click a row to open the profile, which shows contact details, any restrictions (safety flags), and shift and activity history.
Bulk import volunteers
Onboarding many volunteers? Use Imports: choose the volunteers template, upload your spreadsheet, confirm the personal-data acknowledgement, and finish the wizard. The new volunteers appear here, ready for a password reset when it's time to sign them in.
A note on restrictions
ShelterSync never deletes a volunteer. If someone should stop having access, they're restricted (with a reason) rather than removed — so their history stays intact and they can be reinstated later.
Fields explained
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Status | Whether the volunteer is active or restricted. Accounts are restricted, never deleted, so they can be reinstated. |