Hours are how you measure volunteer impact for grants, board reports, and IRS Form 990.
Three ways to log hours
- Shift check-in/check-out — at the shift, an admin marks each volunteer as checked in and checked out. Hours auto-calculate from the time delta.
- Manual entry — admins or volunteers self-report hours on the volunteer detail page > Hours tab.
- Bulk import — CSV with columns volunteer_email, date, hours, program. Useful for migrating from another platform.
Volunteer self-reporting
If you enable it (Settings > Volunteer Settings), volunteers can log their own hours through the donor portal. All self-reports go to a "pending review" queue for admin approval before they count toward totals.
Reports
/nonprofit/volunteers > Reports tab:
- Total hours per program.
- Total hours per volunteer (top contributors).
- Year-over-year trend.
- Hours by month (for capacity planning).
Form 990 export
The IRS Form 990 wants total volunteer hours for the year. The annual report exports them in the format the form expects, plus a summary by program category if you've tagged shifts to programs.