Volunteers

The Volunteers page lists the people who help at your shelter — volunteers and fosters — with a profile for each and tools to bring people on board.

Who can use this page: staff and administrators (it requires permission to manage people).

Volunteers, fosters, and users

A volunteer is a person with the volunteer role, and a foster is a volunteer who also fosters animals. Behind the scenes they're regular user accounts with a volunteer profile — so the same person can appear here and in Settings → Users. This page is the people-focused view: contact details, restrictions, and activity history. The Users page is the account-focused view: roles, access, and security.

Add a volunteer

1. Click Add volunteer and enter their name and contact details.
2. Save. The volunteer is created with the volunteer role.
3. When they're ready to sign in, send them a password reset so they can set their own password (volunteers aren't given a password at creation).

To bring on a whole group at once, use the bulk import below instead.

Find a volunteer

Search by name and click a row to open the profile, which shows contact details, any restrictions (safety flags), and shift and activity history.

Bulk import volunteers

Onboarding many volunteers? Use Imports: choose the volunteers template, upload your spreadsheet, confirm the personal-data acknowledgement, and finish the wizard. The new volunteers appear here, ready for a password reset when it's time to sign them in.

A note on restrictions

ShelterSync never deletes a volunteer. If someone should stop having access, they're restricted (with a reason) rather than removed — so their history stays intact and they can be reinstated later.

Fields explained

Field	What it means
Status	Whether the volunteer is active or restricted. Accounts are restricted, never deleted, so they can be reinstated.
Phone number	Pick the country, then type the local number — the country code is added for you, so don't type it yourself. The phone is used for sign-in and SMS verification codes, so it must be reachable.
Date of birth	Optional. Used only to protect younger volunteers. Anyone under 13 can't be added. Anyone under 18 is a minor and their profile is private by default — their name, photo, and activity stay off shared lists like the volunteer leaderboard.
Profile visibility	Who can see this volunteer beyond administrators and staff. Private keeps them off shared lists like the leaderboard; Organization lets them appear there. Minors default to private, and both options carry equal weight — the choice is never nudged.