Zala Creative has a long history of serving the Volunteer Centres in Ireland. We have recently built a prototype Volunteer Management Plugin, that can be used on any WordPress site. The ideas for the plugin partly came from a request from one of the centres, and partly from a general knowledge we have acquired over the years on the needs of the centres. There is some overlap with the current i-Vol/Salesforce system, with a few added features. We also think it may be advantageous at some point to break away from Salesforce and take complete control of your volunteers’ data. Below is a description of what we have built so far, and a few screenshots.
If you would be interested in trialing this plugin, please contact:
Steve Jacobs
steve@zala.ie
Admin area — a Volunteers menu with:
- Searchable/filterable volunteer list with CSV export
- Full profile editor with 8 tabs: Personal Details, Skills, Interests, Availability, Vetting, Engagement History, Notes, Audit Log
- Skills and Interests management pages for admins to configure the lookup lists
Role-based access:
- Admins — full access including delete and audit log
- Volunteer Staff — view, edit profiles, add engagement records and notes, view vetting
- Volunteers (self-service) — front-end portal via
[vpm_my_profile]shortcode, can update contact details, interests, and availability; read-only view of skills and history
V etting tracking — Garda, Tusla, First Aid, Safeguarding, and custom types; expiry dates highlighted in red when past.
Engagement history — types include Activity, Placement, Training, Event, and Role — each with programme, location, dates, and description.
Audit trail — every create, update, and delete is logged with the WordPress user who made the change.
