VolunteerSpot

I was recently on twitter, when someone posted a link advertising VolunteerSpot. It was advertised as a way to keep track of volunteers and limiting the number of volunteers for one thing. I was quickly intrigued, especially with helping coordinate field day for school and needing chaperones for an upcoming field trip, that I opened the link to see what it was all about. Today I finalized everything for my field trip and sat down to use VolunteerSpot and I must say I am in love with this website!

Today I only tackled setting up VolunteerSpot for my field trip. My class is going on a field trip and sharing a bus with another class. The parents in my class are great about volunteering to go on field trips, but I have a small problem because I can only take 6 parents on the bus. In the past, I have handled this problem different ways: I had a lottery and pulled names of parents and also took first parents to come in with a form. The problem with the first method is that not all the parents picked turned in their form right away and he problem I faced with the second method is that I had filled all the seats for parents on the first morning and had to tell some of the parents of children who came in that first morning that the seats were filled.

So far, it seems VolunteerSpot seems like a fair method for getting parent chaperones and arranging which parents will get to ride on the bus. For example, tomorrow I'm sending out one email to all the parents in my class with a link to sign up as a chaperone. Parents will have two options: one to chaperone and ride the bus and the other to chaperone and carpool. The great thing about VolunteerSpot is once 6 parents have signed up to ride the bus, no other parent can sign-up for this section. I also don't have to let parents know that the seats are full because they will see that already online. It seems like the fairest way for parents because if their child is sick all the parents are still getting the information and it isn't a matter of whose child made it to class first.