How to create a Volunteer Application Form

You can finally say goodbye to your Word documents and posted volunteer registration forms. In this article, we teach you how to create online volunteer forms all within Volunteero.

You'll be able to link these forms to a relevant Opportunity (guide here) and embed them directly into your website, meaning that prospective volunteers can apply using a Volunteero form that arrives in your submissions section. 

Once you have submissions on your Volunteero account, your staff users can manage these by following the steps in this guide.

So let's get started, so you can get the most out of Volunteero's recruitment features!

Jump to sections:

Head to the 'Recruitment' section on the left-hand hand of the Staff Dashboard and click on 'Forms'

Click + Form on the right-hand side.

Complete the following sections on your form creation

Form name: The most important part is that this is recognisable to your teams internally. If you will be making numerous different volunteer registration forms, they need to be clearly named to understand what that volunteer submission relates to. This could be role-related or relating to stage e.g. "Volunteer Enquiry Form" then "Volunteer Full Registration Form".

Window Title: This is the name that is displayed in the browser window. You may want this to be more 'public-facing' if you have given your form a more internal name.

Form Type: Volunteero has 3 form types (Volunteer registration, client referral and referee). For this example, you'll likely want to select 'Volunteer registration'.

Select a process

In the form creation section, you will be prompted to select a process. If this is the first form you are setting up, you will need to create a process.

"But what is a process?"

A process is essentially the steps you need to take as a charity for that volunteer to be considered ready to volunteer or at least to have a profile created and given app account access. Each volunteer submission will pick up the process assigned to the form they submitted through. Your team will then be able to change the statuses of each stage and add notes, allowing you to manage the new submissions through to completion. Here is an idea of the stages we typically see...

The processes will appear like the example below when you are managing a submission.

It is important to capture all stages that may be needed. If a particular volunteer does not require a particular stage for whatever reason, that is fine; your team can just complete that stage on the submission and add relevant notes. One other point worth noting here, the stages do not need to be completed in order.

Now just add a support contact email and select the staff users who should receive notifications when you receive submissions from that form.

Accepting submissions: Select this box if you want people to be able to view and submit this form. Leave it off if you are not taking submissions or the form is in draft mode. (Please note: that if you want to test out the form, then it will need to accept submissions)

Application tracking

Enable application tracking to keep applicants up to date on their submissions. More info in this article here

Click on the Notifications tab within the form creator to decide which of your staff users you want to be notified of a submission.

If you are going to be linking a reference field to this form, decide whether the form will atomically send for them upon submission or if you'd prefer to manually trigger at a later date. More info in this guide here.

After you have created your form, you will be able to make use of the form fields on the left-hand side to customise your form contents.

Adding fields

You can see the available fields on the left-hand side of the Staff Dashboard. When adding fields, you'll be presented with various options such as

Rich Text and Media

Add welcome text by "Rich text and media" field and you can then add some text to give the volunteer applicant some context and perhaps even a message of thanks for their interest. We have also found that volunteers appreciate you provide some idea of the next steps, e.g. We will be in touch within 7 days.

Add a logo by dragging a "Rich text and media" field. On the left-hand side, you will see various icons, which are the formatting and styling elements. One of these is an image icon; select this. You then need to add the image address. In order to find this, find your logo either by Google image search or on your website, right-click on the image and select "Copy image address". It is this that you paste into the Insert Image field in the Staff Dashboard.

Guide here for adding Image URLs into rich text and media fields on Volunteero.

Profile fields

Standard fields such as:

All can be dragged and dropped into the form and then labelled.

Short Answer text

Customise short answer text fields to have Volunteero profile links with:

Emergency contact information

Use short answer fields and phone number fields to capture up to two emergency contacts for applicants on a form.

Long Answer text

You may ask other questions that do not have a corresponding field in Volunteero. These will always be saved and held on the volunteer record but you do not need to link these.

Common uses for Long text fields tend to be around motivations for volunteering, personal profiles and information from these answers may be used to tag profiles later on.

Some common form set-ups that we see across Volunteero users can include:

Drop-down field

Make use of this field to offer various options for applicants to select from, we commonly see this field used to select:

Check Box Fields

Use this field to have applicants select from various answers.

We also often see organisations utilising this field for agreements to policies and terms.

Do you need volunteers to agree to terms, data policies or anything else? Well you can do so using this feature. Add a "Checkboxes" field to the form. Add a question that says something like "Please confirm you agree to...." Now in the description section just below the question, add the link to the policy or terms on your website for they need to read and agree. Finally, add one answer labelled "I agree". Please see below.

File upload - As you will see, their is a field which is called "File Upload". This does what it says on the tin. If you do require numerous documents to be uploaded, we recommend you add numerous document upload fields and specify what you are looking for with each.

Select which file types are allowed as part of the file upload field

Large File upload

Can be used to capture larger files from submissions, including videos.

Select which file types are allowed as part of the large file upload field

Digital Signatures

Drop in our digital signature field to get a written confirmation from an applicant.

Email reference

Volunteeros' email reference field enables you to automatically collect an applicant's referee(s) at the point of submission.

You can opt to have these automatically or manually triggered.

Read our full guide on setting up the references tool here.

Application tracking

Worth noting- If you are using the application status tracking tool, and an applicant has submitted their application via a web page, they will be given the option to 'opt-in' to application tracking by providing an email.

We cannot require them to opt in, so we recommend encouraging those applicants to opt into the update emails by providing a little bit of text in your application form, near the submit button, advising them to provide an email address on the next page to receive their application status updates.

Reorder questions by clicking and holding the grid icon on the field you wish to move (as seen below) and then move to the desired position.

Layout fields side by side by clicking 50% or 100% option on the field you wish to change. This helps improve the overall look and feel of the form as well as conserve space.

Required Answer- Select if you want that field to be a required answer

You have put in the work and have a beautiful online form ready to go. Now you need to share it. Click on the "Share form" button and you will have a few options.

And now you are ready to go. Time to grab a coffee and watch the new wonderful volunteer applications come in. Check out our article on Manage Form Submissions article for more information on what to do once they start rolling in 🥳

If you require any further assistance, please use the support chat to ask a question to our friendly support team. We will be happy to help!