Board Members are a vital part of your organization's volunteer team, but they sometimes can be the most resistant to performing those basic tasks required of all your volunteers.   Especially registering in your VolunteerMatters system and completing your required onboarding steps; application, waivers, background checks, etc..

We have put together the following template email that you can use to invite your Board Members into your portal and complete those tasks. You can also just pick and choose sections that work for you along with the standard portal invitation language.  The template below is assuming that there is not an existing contact record for your volunteer in the system and you will be sending the email from outside VolunteerMatters.

Hint:  If you like portal invitation language but there is something in it that just won't work for this batch of volunteers, copy the text from the portal invitation and paste it into the "Special Message" field on the General Note tool.   This will allow you to edit the verbiage for a single email rather than modifying the typical template through support.  

Sample Board Member Invite Verbiage:

Dear Board Members,

We are happy to announce that we have deployed a brand new volunteer portal. The portal is designed to do a better job of recruiting, coordinating, and tracking our volunteer activities. This includes you! Our board volunteers serve as an example to all other volunteers. As such, we are inviting you to participate in the registration process we ask of all of our volunteers. Our registration and onboarding process is designed to assure that our volunteers are properly vetted and trained so they may provide an effective and safe contribution to our cause.

After volunteers have registered, we can track the valuable time and talent they provide to make our organization great. One of the greatest ways we can demonstrate our appreciation of our volunteers is to make sure that we are properly tracking their contributions.

We are asking our board volunteers to go through this process first so that they may lead the way!

As a part of your on boarding process, you will be asked to submit an application, sign certain waivers and agreements, submit a background check application, and other elements. The great news is that this process is entirely contained within our new volunteer portal. This new resource will serve as a one stop shop for volunteers to submit all required credentials as a part of their service to our organization. If you should have any questions along the way, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Default Portal Invitation Template Verbiage:

Dear John,

{This is a special message you can provide when sending an invitation.}

We are very excited to announce that {Organization Name} has launched a new website portal to help us better serve our volunteers. The volunteer portal provides an online volunteer project catalog - a central resource for volunteers to search, browse and sign-up for volunteer opportunities across all of our programs and events.

The system greatly simplifies the volunteer’s interactions with {Organization Name} and helps us better track all of the great work you are doing on our behalf.

We would appreciate it if you would create a username and password for the new site so you can gain access to all of the system’s features. Please visit:

{registration url}

Once on the registration form, enter your email address. The system will recognize your email and prompt you to click a link to send a verification email to your email address. The email will include a new custom registration URL for you to click on and take you back to a personalized registration form with your information pre-populated. All you will have to do is create a username and password!

Thank you for volunteering with {Organization Name}! You're a part of a dynamic, diverse network of cause-driven neighbors dedicated to strengthening the foundations of community. Thank you for being a part of this important work—together, we’re building a better us.