Setting Up & Running Your Volunteer Program
How the program works
The volunteer system has three moving parts:
- Roles — the kinds of work families can sign up for (Setup Crew, Lunch Monitor, Parking, etc.) and how many credits each is worth.
- Shifts — specific instances of a role on a specific date and time, with a capacity limit.
- Requirements — how many credits each family needs to earn per term.
Families sign up for shifts through the Volunteer page or directly from the Community Calendar. Signing up holds a spot but doesn’t earn credit on its own. Credit comes once the shift has been worked, and how that gets recorded is up to you, as covered under Recording what actually happened.
Setting requirements
Go to Admin › Volunteer Policy to configure how many credits each family needs to earn for the term.
Some families owe less than everyone else: part-time families, or a teacher you ask for fewer hours. Open the Credit report tab, find the family, and click the pencil under their name. Type the number of credits they owe this term and save. That family’s progress bar, dashboard reminder, and report status all count against their number from then on. The report marks the row custom and shows the usual number beside it, and the Custom filter lists every family you’ve set a number for. Setting 0 is the same as exempting them. To undo it, click the pencil again and choose Use the term’s number.
A number you set for one family applies to this term only, and it takes priority over the staff exemption checkboxes. If the term has no requirement at all, there’s nothing to adjust, so the option doesn’t appear.
You don’t have to type them all again next term. Once the new term has its requirement set, the Credit report tab shows a Copy from button naming the last term where you set custom numbers. It copies each family’s number into the new term. A family you’ve already set a number for this term keeps it, and families who have withdrawn are skipped. You’ll see how many it will copy before anything changes, and you can edit any of them afterward.
An exempt family isn’t shown a smaller target, it’s shown none. Their Volunteer page says “No volunteer requirement this term” in place of the progress bar, the dashboard stops nudging them about it, they drop off the volunteer badge in the Families directory, and your volunteers report marks them Exempt rather than counting them short. They can still sign up for shifts if they want to.
Both boxes start unticked, so nothing changes for anyone until you tick one. Owners are covered by the admin box.
You can change the requirement mid-term. Families who have already met or exceeded the old target aren’t affected. Their credit totals stay the same; only the target bar shifts.
Roles and credit values
Roles define the kinds of volunteer work available in your co-op and how much each is worth. A two-hour setup shift might be worth 2 credits while a half-day room parent role is worth 4, it’s up to you.
You can edit a role’s credit value after creation. Shifts already signed up for will keep the credit value they were created with. The change only affects new shifts going forward. Deleting a role also removes any shifts linked to it.
One shift per family each day
Some roles exist to spread the work around, and one family taking both the morning and the afternoon slot defeats the point. The role form has a One shift per family each day box for those. With it ticked, once anyone in a household has a shift in that role on a given day, the rest of that day’s shifts in the same role show One shift per family per day instead of a Sign up button for everyone else in the household.
It applies per role and per calendar day, so the same family can still take a different role that day, and the same role on another day. It is off on every role until you tick it, and once ticked it holds everywhere a family can sign up: the website, the calendar and the mobile apps.
Creating shifts
Shifts are specific instances: “Lunch Monitor on October 3rd, 10:30–11:30 AM, max 3 families.” Create them in Volunteer Policy or directly on the calendar.
From the Volunteer Policy page
Open the Schedule tab and click + Add shift. Select a role, set the date, start and end time, and how many families can sign up. Save. The shift appears immediately on the Volunteer page and the Community Calendar, with its full start and end time everywhere it is listed. To edit a shift later, click it from the same Schedule tab and update any field you need, or find it on the calendar instead (see below).
From the Community Calendar
Click the + New button in the calendar toolbar, select Volunteer shift, and fill in the same fields. This is faster when you’re already looking at a specific week and want to place shifts visually. Once a shift exists, clicking its pill on the calendar opens the same Edit, Duplicate, and Delete actions described below. You don’t have to go back to the Volunteer Policy page to manage a shift you spot on the calendar.
The + New menu also has a Volunteer setup… option below the divider. It opens the same requirement and role forms described in the next two sections, so you can adjust your policy without leaving the calendar.
Shifts that repeat every week
A role that needs covering at the same time every week does not have to be entered date by date. Tick Repeat weekly through the end of this term on the shift form and HomeschoolGo creates the whole run in one go, skipping any dates the term has marked as no-meet. The same box is on the + New shift form in the calendar.
Families see a series marked Weekly through the end of the term, and they can take every remaining week in one action rather than signing up again each week. Each occurrence is still its own shift underneath, so capacity, reminders, attendance and credit all work per date, and a family can cancel one week without dropping the rest.
Taking the rest of a series is all or nothing. If any of the remaining weeks is already full, none of them are booked and the family is told so. They can still sign up for the weeks that have room one at a time.
On the Schedule tab, every shift in a series carries a Weekly series tag. Click or tap the tag to see which weekdays and time the series runs on, and its first and last upcoming dates. The same summary is at the top of the Edit form.
If you missed a date when you created the series and added it by hand afterwards, open the menu on that shift and choose Add to a series. It joins the series, so a family who takes the rest of the series from that week on gets it too. Only a series for the same role is offered. The dialog also lists the people who already took every remaining week of the series (or, for a date added after the series’ last week, every upcoming week), with a box to sign them up for the added date as well. It’s ticked to start with; untick it to leave them off. Anyone who had signed up for that date and then cancelled is left off either way.
Duplicating a shift
For a one-off copy rather than a weekly run, click Duplicate on any existing shift. A pre-filled form opens with the same role, time, and capacity. Change the date, and anything else that differs, and save.
Duplicating a shift from a weekly series adds a Keep in the same weekly series box, unticked to start with. Tick it when you’re filling in a week the series missed, and the copy joins the series instead of standing on its own. You can also choose to sign up the people who already took the rest of the series.
Editing a shift
Click Edit on any existing shift to change its date, time, role, or capacity. Families already signed up are not affected. Their signup stays in place. Use this when a shift needs to move to a different time or when you want to expand capacity after a slot fills.
If the shift is part of a weekly series, the form asks what to apply your changes to. Only this shift is selected to start with. Choose This and all later shifts in the series to fix every remaining week at once, for example a series entered as 9 AM that should have been 9 PM. Each shift keeps its own date and takes the new time, role, capacity, location and reminder setting. To move a shift to a different day, change it on its own.
When anyone is signed up for the shifts you’re editing and you change the time or place, they’re emailed about it. Each volunteer gets one email listing their shifts with the old and new times, even when a whole series moves. Nobody is emailed when the time and place stay the same, and you can untick the box if you’ve already told them. Volunteers who turned off Volunteer shift changes (or all email) in their notification settings aren’t emailed.
Deleting a whole day
The Schedule tab lists shifts under a heading for each day. While you scroll through a long day, its heading stays pinned at the top until the next day’s takes its place, and each shift still shows its own date and time. For a holiday or a cancelled co-op day, click Delete day beside that day’s heading. You’ll see how many shifts will be removed and how many volunteers were signed up before anything is deleted. Each of them gets one email listing the shifts that were cancelled. Untick Email the volunteers if you’ve already let them know another way. Volunteers who turned off Volunteer shift changes (or all email) in their own notification settings aren’t emailed. Deleting a single shift that someone has signed up for asks the same question.
Signing someone up yourself
Open the menu on a shift and choose Manage volunteers. The dialog lists who is signed up, with a Remove button beside each name. Each entry shows the person’s name with their family’s name in brackets, so you can tell which parent in a two-parent household took the shift. The shift chips on the Schedule tab and the rows on the Attendance tab show names the same way.
Below the list is a search box. Type a family or parent name and pick the family. If more than one adult in that family has signed in, choose one under Who is volunteering?, then click Add to shift. This is the quick way to move a paper or spreadsheet sign-up sheet into HomeschoolGo, or to swap someone in when a parent asks.
If the shift is part of a weekly series, the dialog also has a Also add them to every later date in this weekly series box. It starts unticked. Tick it and the button changes to Add to series, which signs the person up for this date and every later date in the series. Dates that are already full, or that they already hold, are skipped, and the message afterward lists them, for example “Skipped: Oct 13 (full).” To fill a skipped date, raise its capacity and add them to that date on its own. This works differently from a family taking the rest of a series themselves, which books nothing unless every week has room.
Only people who have signed in to HomeschoolGo can be added, because a signup belongs to a person’s account. If nobody in a family has signed in yet, the dialog says so. Invite them first, then add them.
The usual limits still apply. A full shift stays full, so raise its capacity from Edit first. A role limited to one shift per family per day still refuses a second one that day. Adding someone does not send them a message. If the shift has reminders on, they get the normal reminder before it starts, so tell people they have been signed up. A shift already marked completed or no-show can’t be added again or removed here. Use the Attendance tab for those.
The same dialog has Print and CSV buttons above the list. Print opens a check-in sheet you can take to a table by the door: a numbered list of names, whatever note each person left, and an empty column to tick off as they arrive. CSV downloads the same names and notes as a spreadsheet file. Both use the list as it stands right now, so print it on the morning of the shift rather than the week before.
Reminders for a shift
The shift form has a Reminders box. With it checked, everyone signed up gets a heads-up about a week out and then a second reminder closer to the shift. The Send the reminder dropdown decides how close that second one lands: 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, or 1 week before. A shift uses two days unless you pick something else. Reminders go out once a day in the morning, so the timing is approximate rather than to the hour.
Uncheck the box and this shift sends nothing. That is worth doing for a standing weekly slot everyone already plans around, where another email is just more mail. The setting belongs to the one shift, so turning it off does not affect any other shift or anyone’s own notification preferences.
Letting volunteers check in
Self check-in lets volunteers tell you they have arrived, so you can see at a glance who is on site without walking around with a clipboard. It is off until you turn it on. Go to Admin › Volunteer Policy, open the Requirements & roles tab, and tick Let volunteers check themselves in on the Volunteer check-in card. The setting covers every term, not only the one you are looking at.
Once it is on, a Check in card appears at the top of the family Volunteer page while a shift is about to start. From 30 minutes before the shift until it ends, the volunteer clicks I’m here. Anyone in the same household can check in for a shift someone else in the family signed up for. A mistaken check-in can be undone with Undo until the shift ends.
On your side, each checked-in volunteer gets a check mark and the time on the Schedule tab, and the shift shows how many have checked in. The Manage volunteers dialog and the Attendance tab show a Checked in badge with the time. While a shift is running, the Schedule tab keeps it listed until it ends and refreshes itself about every 30 seconds, so you can leave it open on a phone or laptop at the check-in table.
Recording what actually happened
A signup reserves the family’s spot; it does not earn credit by itself. Credit is earned only after the shift is completed, so future commitments never appear as work already performed.
Choose whether completed shifts are confirmed by a coordinator or closed automatically after a grace period. Go to Admin › Volunteer Policy, open the Requirements & roles tab, and pick one of three under Tracking credits:
Off
Where every co-op starts. HomeschoolGo doesn’t add credit for shifts at all, and the Attendance tab has nothing to work through. Signups, reminders and the schedule all work as usual. Pick this if your co-op keeps track of completed shifts somewhere else, such as its own spreadsheet.
Credit volunteers automatically after each shift
Shifts close themselves out once they are over, with no action from you. A second dropdown sets how long to wait first, anywhere from as soon as the shift ends to a week after it, which is your window to record a no-show. This is the right choice for most co-ops: you record the exceptions and leave the rest alone.
Only credit shifts a coordinator marks complete
Every shift waits for somebody to confirm it. Use this when attendance genuinely has to be checked, and expect to work the queue. Families are told on their own Volunteer page which of their shifts are still waiting on you.
Either of the two on settings fills the Attendance tab. It lists shifts that have already happened, with the people from each one who are still waiting on a decision and two buttons next to every name. Mark complete confirms the shift and adds its credit. No-show records that the person didn’t come, so no credit is added. Once everyone on a shift has an outcome, the shift drops off the list, and a count at the top shows how many are left to review. In automatic mode you only need to step in for the exceptions, before the waiting period runs out.
Below that, a Credit history card lists every credit for the term: completed shifts and any adjustments you made by hand. Search it by family or reason to answer “where did this number come from?” If a decision needs correcting after the fact, use Adjust credits on the Requirements & roles tab.
Tracking family compliance
The Credit report tab on the Volunteer page (also under Admin › Reports as Volunteer credits) shows each family’s credits for the term against the requirement. Earned credits come from completed shifts and anything you added or took away by hand. Shifts a family has signed up for but not yet worked are listed separately, because they aren’t earned until the shift is done.
Each family gets one status: Met (earned the requirement), On track (not there yet, but their booked shifts would get them there), Short (still short even counting what they’ve booked, with how many more they need), or Exempt. The list opens with the families who need a nudge first. Filter by status or search by name to narrow it. The report is available on every plan.
When any family is short, a note above the list says how many still need to book shifts, with a Draft reminder button. It opens a new email under Communications, addressed to those families only (exempt families are left out), with a short starter subject and message you can edit. Nothing is sent until you review it and send it yourself.
Signups are a separate question from credits, and worth checking on their own. The Schedule tab lists each upcoming shift with a fill badge and the names of everyone signed up, which tells you who has committed to what before the shift happens rather than after.
A weekly schedule for teachers
Teachers often want to know which parents are helping in the coming week. Click Print weekly schedule at the top of the Schedule tab. It opens a page in a new tab with every volunteer shift for one week, Monday through Sunday, grouped by day. Each shift shows its time, role, location, who has signed up, and how many spots are still open. Use the previous and next week links to move between weeks, then click Print / Save as PDF to print it or save a PDF you can email to your teachers. Like the per-shift check-in sheet, it shows the signups as they stand when you open it.
Off-schedule contributions
Not every volunteer contribution fits a scheduled shift. A family might drop off supplies, host a field trip, or pitch in some other way you want to recognize. The Adjust credits panel on the Requirements & roles tab handles those directly. Pick the family, enter how many credits, and write a short reason.
Write the reason for the family, not for your records. They read it word for word on their own credit history, so “Baked for the fall fundraiser” tells them why their total moved, while “misc” does not.
Entering a negative number takes credits back, which is how you undo a mistake. Nothing is ever deleted. A correction adds a second line rather than rewriting the first, so what the family sees stays an honest account of what happened.
What families see
Families see the volunteer program in a few places:
Dashboard reminder
While a family’s earned credits plus the credits from shifts they have booked are still below the requirement, their dashboard can show a note saying how many credits they still need, with a link to the Volunteer page. It shows only when nothing more urgent, such as a join fee or a balance due, is waiting. Once they have booked enough shifts, the note goes away. A family you’ve exempted never sees it. The dashboard also shows the family’s next shift once they have signed up for one.
Volunteer page
The Volunteer page (sidebar) shows a progress bar at the top, plus a View credit history disclosure listing each credit as it lands. The solid part of the bar is earned credit, which moves once a shift has been worked and credited, not when the family signs up. When tracking is on and the family has upcoming shifts booked, a lighter striped part shows those booked credits, and a key under the bar gives both numbers. Booked credits never count as earned. The key also says how many credits the family still needs to book, or “Enough shifts booked” once their signups would cover the requirement, and a line explains when booked shifts turn into earned credit at your co-op: after each shift they work, or once a coordinator confirms it. With nothing booked, a line under the bar explains the same thing from your tracking setting. With tracking off, it tells families that signing up doesn’t add to the total and that the coordinator records credit.
If you have turned on self check-in, a Check in card sits at the top of the page around shift time, as described under Letting volunteers check in.
If the signed-in person has claimed any shifts, a Your shifts card lists them next, each one linking down to that shift so they can cancel it if needed. For a weekly series they took, the card lists the dates they hold, so they don’t have to scroll through the series to find their weeks. That card is personal, not household-wide: a shift a spouse or co-parent claimed shows on their page, not on everyone’s. The shift itself does say so, though. Any other adult in the same household sees “Dana is signed up” on that row, so nobody double-books the family into one slot, and a volunteer spot is one person’s, so a second adult can still take one of their own. The exception is a role set to one shift per family each day, described below, where the whole household shares a single spot that day.
Below that, available shifts are listed by date and role, each showing a “filled/capacity” count and spots remaining, with a “Shift full” label once it reaches capacity. Families click Sign Up to claim a shift. By default families see only the count, not who took the other spots. To show them first names as well, go to Admin › Settings, open the Programs tab, and tick Show who’s signed up on the Volunteer page and Calendar on the Volunteer signup names card. Families then see a line such as “Daniel and Sarah are signed up” on each shift, on the Volunteer page and in the calendar’s shift details. You can turn it off again at any time. Admins see names either way. Signups are checked on the server too, so a full shift can’t be joined through a stale page. If two people go for the last spot at the same moment, one gets it and the other is told the shift is full.
Once someone signs up, HomeschoolGo emails a heads-up about a week before the shift and a second reminder closer to it (the lead time the admin chose for that shift), with a push notification alongside each if they have the app. A family can turn all of it off from the Volunteer shift reminders row in My Profile’s Communication preferences card, without affecting their other email settings. If an admin turned reminders off for that one shift, nothing is sent.
After signing up, a family can also leave a short note for the coordinator from the same row (Add a note), for example to say a different adult will be covering the shift. Notes show on the admin Volunteer page under that family’s name on the shift, and can be edited any time before the shift.
Community Calendar
Volunteer shifts appear as pills on the Community Calendar. A family can click any shift pill to see the role and available spots and sign up directly, without going to the Volunteer page.
Common questions
Families have signed up for shifts but their credits still read zero.
That’s expected until the shifts have happened. Signing up doesn’t earn credit; working the shift does. Their Volunteer page says so, with a line counting the credits pending from shifts they have booked. With automatic tracking, credit lands after the shift ends and the waiting period you chose has passed. With coordinator confirmation, it lands when someone clicks Mark complete on the Attendance tab. With tracking off, shifts don’t add credit at all. If a shift has been worked and still shows nothing, check that it is in the term the family is looking at and that the role carries a credit value above zero. Requirements and roles both belong to a single term, so a shift created against last term credits nothing toward this one.
Can I set different requirements for different families?
Yes. On the Credit report tab, click the pencil under a family’s name and type the number they owe this term. Setting 0 exempts them. The two exemption checkboxes on the Requirements & roles tab still waive the requirement for every teacher family or admin family at once. See Setting requirements above for the details.
A family signed up for a shift but didn’t show. Do I need to remove the credit?
There’s nothing to remove, because signing up never earned it. Open the Attendance tab on Admin › Volunteer Policy, find the shift, and click No-show next to their name so no credit is added. With automatic tracking, do this before the waiting period ends, or the credit lands on its own and you’ll need Adjust credits to take it back. The same goes if you hear a good reason afterward and want to give the credit after all. With tracking switched off no credit is involved, and the signup list is the record to go by.
Can I carry unused credits from one term to the next?
No. Credits are term-specific and don’t roll over automatically. If you want to recognize families who exceeded the requirement last term, the most direct option is a shift in the new term they can sign up for.
A shift filled up instantly. Can I increase capacity after the fact?
Yes. Click Edit on the shift in the Schedule tab of Admin › Volunteer Policy, update the capacity, and save. Families already signed up aren’t affected. The new spots open immediately.
A returning family says they can’t sign up for a shift.
Two things to check. First, on Admin › Terms & Schedule, confirm the shift’s term shows an Opened badge — a term you just created or copied starts closed, and shifts in a closed term aren’t visible to families at all. Second, if the term is open, a returning family has to confirm its information for that term before it can take on a new-term commitment like a shift. If they haven’t gotten to that yet, signing up sends them to the Confirm your information page instead. There’s no admin view of who has completed that step; ask the family to log in and check.
Still have a question? Head back to the Help & Support page or reach out to your co-op admin directly from the dashboard.