Searching the Volunteer Database

Searching the Volunteer Database:

You will use the “Search/Manage Volunteer Database” function to find volunteers matching any criteria that you determine. For example, you can run a simple search by someone’s last name or an Advanced Search to find all volunteers who have an Interest Category of Mentoring and who are available on Monday: 9am – 1pm.

Almost all data within CERVIS is searchable, including Skills, Equipment, Availability, Groups, any notes that you have added to a volunteer’s profile, and most Custom Fields that you create with the exception of Sensitive Data Fields. It is recommended that you capture as much data as you can for each volunteer so your search capabilities become more powerful and help you find the volunteers that you need. You may collect some data that you don’t need right now (for example, Skills), but it may become useful down the road.

Follow these steps to search the volunteer database:

1. From the CERVIS Main Dashboard, select “Search/Manage Volunteer Database” from the “Volunteer Management” list.
• Select your preferred search method under the Standard Options heading (i.e. Volunteer Name or E-mail) in order to manage a volunteer's record, view a volunteer's details, or E-mail a volunteer or group of volunteers.
• Type in the related information (i.e. Smith) in the blank text-box, and select “Search Volunteer Database”.
• A list will be generated of all volunteers who match your search under Volunteer Search Result Listing (i.e. everyone who has Smith in their Volunteer Name or E-mail).
2. In order to locate a volunteer or group of volunteers meeting very specific criteria (i.e. volunteers who have passed their background check and/or have the skills to perform a specific task and/or have served a certain number of times), select “Advanced Search” under “Advanced Options”.
• Choose as few or as many criteria as you would like and select “Search Volunteer Database”.
• To start over with a blank search, select “Clear Search Selections” at the top or bottom of the page.
3. To run a report on all volunteers who are currently set to Active within the database, select “Find All Active Volunteer Profiles” under “Advanced Options”.
4. To run a report on all duplicate entries in the database, select “Find Duplicate Volunteer Profiles”.
• Note: If there are three John Brown’s listed, the system does not know if this is three different people in the system or if the same person created three different accounts. You will have to make this determination. Also, the system only reports a duplicate entry when the names are exactly the same. The system does not know that Pamela and Pam are the same name so it will not report these as a duplicate entry when running this report.
5. To run a report on all volunteers with a file attachment, select “Find Volunteers with File Attachments”.
6. To run a report on all volunteers with a photo attachment, select “Find Volunteers with Photo Attachments”.