Changing Emails
When you create a volunteer in Volunteero and give them app access, you are creating their personal Volunteero account. This account is where all of their volunteering history is stored, including their reports, statistics, volunteering hours, achievements, and other activity.
Once app access has been granted, the volunteer owns this account and can manage their own details, including changing their email address directly within the app.
Staff users can also update a volunteer's email address from the staff dashboard. However, this works differently and can have important knock-on effects. Changing the email address from the staff dashboard effectively creates a new app account for the volunteer. As a result:
The volunteer will receive a new invitation/password to access the app.
The system will treat them as a new app user.
They will need to be reassigned to any missions or shifts.
Their previous app activity, such as volunteering hours and accomplishments, will not appear on the new account.
If the volunteer changes their own email address from within the app, none of these issues occur. Their existing Volunteero account is simply updated, so all of their volunteering history, reports, hours, achievements, and other data stay together. No new account is created.
Our Recommendation
Where possible, we strongly recommend asking volunteers to update their own email address in the app. You can share our help article with them, which explains how to do this.
The remainder of this article explains how to change a volunteer's email address as a staff user. We recommend only using this option when the wrong email address was entered during the application process and the volunteer has not yet submitted any activity, reports, or volunteering hours.
Updating an email on an existing profile via the staff dashboard
In short, you cannot change a volunteer's email while their app account is open. Here is how you do it:
1. Remove the app access
In the Volunteers section on the left-hand side, scroll or search to find the relevant volunteer. Press on their name to open their profile. Open the "App access" and then press "Remove Access".
2. Change the email
Now you can open their profile section and simply amend the volunteer email field to their new email.
3. Open the app account
Now open the "App access" section on their profile and then press "Set up access".
At this point, the volunteer will receive a welcome email to their new account with a new password.
We recommend only using this option when the wrong email address was entered during the application process and the volunteer has not yet submitted any activity, reports, or volunteering hours.
What to do when a volunteer has lost access to their email
If a volunteer has lost access to their email address, they won't be able to update the email address on their account themselves. In this situation, we recommend archiving their existing profile and creating a new one with their new email address. This means their volunteering time and other data stays intact on their old profile and on the insights.
On the existing profile, we recommend:
Turning App Access off.
Changing their Status to Inactive.
Updating any relevant tags or groups.
Unlinking any forms, where applicable.
Top tip: maybe adding "OLD" or “ARCHIVE” to the volunteer's name so it's clear the profile is no longer in use or adding a tag
Once the old profile has been archived, you can manually create a new volunteer profile using their new email address.
On the new profile, you should:
Assign the volunteer to any relevant shifts or missions.
Link any previous forms to the new profile, where appropriate.
Adding all qualifications + DBS checks where relevant
Add back all their badges
If needed, backdate their volunteering hours by adding them as Prior Volunteering Time. This allows the volunteer to see their previous hours in the app, although these hours will not be included in your Insights reporting.
Audit Trail
You can track whether a volunteer has changed their email via the audit trail. You can do this by:
1. Go to ‘Audit Trail’
2. Filter by ‘Volunteer changed their account email’
3. Here you will be able to view which volunteer changed their email, and what it has been changed to.
If you require any further assistance, please use the support chat or email support@volunteero.org to ask a question to our friendly support team. We will be happy to help! 😊