I know you're out there - I just can't seem to find you.  We were just about to get started utilizings jobs to link our Docents and Tours until we realized there is no start or end time for a Job.  We've looked into using Events and Jobs, but still run into some tricky bits.  Has anyone made this work?  Ideally, we'd have an online Tour request/registration form that we'd dump into Excel and then Import to Raiser's, and be able to pick Volunteers based not only on availability by day but also by time.  Many thanks,

Dawn Penny, Chrysler Museum of Art

Hi Dawn,

I have the same question and posted it under RE - New Users Forum on 02/04/10, so far no responses.  I need it for our basic daily volunteer jobs in the museum, plus we do school and group tours as well.  In addition to the start and end time, I would also like to include number of people in the group/school tours. The only place I can see to place either of these is in the job description itself, but that does get messy after a bit. 

I would also like to connect the job to the school or tour group and while it can be done on the job side, there is no link on the constituent side.  The only thing I can think of is to create an gift attribute or a gift note. 

Susan Raymer

Walter P. Chrysler Museum

 We are exploring using the Vol Module for volunteer management and I did not realize there was not a start/end for jobs. Does the Outlook integration help with this at all? We were hoping to use the outlook calendar along with this module. I figured outlook would be for calendar, but maybe it's more for the contact side of things?

 Are either of you using Patron Edge? Or were you planning to do all in RE?

Allison Wieland, Anchorage Museum

We've just put our heads together and decided to use Events and Jobs together.  The Tour is the event (and includes Start & End times), the Docents get attached through a Job.

None of it is great, but it will do for now.  We're using the Capacity as # booked and No. Attended as # who actually came to track attendance, as well as to break it down further with Event and Job attributes. 

We do not have PE - we're trying to get out of a box office environment and we currently use Vista for our tours. 

DRP

Freaky that us two completely different Chrysler Museums are working on the same problem!

We're attaching the school/org as a Participant in our Event - much more robust than the little "This job is for..." box in the Job.

Yes, I was a bit surprised by that as well.  I am sure you are a much bigger and more experienced non-profit that we are at the moment.  We are located on the "campus" of the coporate headquarters and did belong to the company until July 2008 when we became a non-profit.  We are hurtling into doing everything at once with a small staff to stay on top of things.  I have been here only since late 2008, having worked for another non-profit for a long time. 

I had thought of something along those lines but not sure we need all the information that an event provides.  I will take a look at it again.