CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

In my NGO, I'm thinking of using a Volunteer Individual's sub-type, just because the volunteers need custom fields (days/hours available per week).

In my understanding, a decision to create Contact Subtype could be based on the fact that it will need custom fields not present in the original Individual record.

Volunteers, Board members, Teachers all have different custom fields. What I want is a Add/Edit form that shows only the fields particular to a given type of individual.

I've read that a "better" way is to categorize them as Groups, since a given individual can be moved among them or belong to many at once.

If I do employ Groups in this case, how can I create a form that can offer all the custom fields selectively? Using Profiles?

But what if a, say, volunteer also becomes an employee of an organization?

For what I've learned in the forum, once you create a contact sub-type you can't change the individual's sub-type. I know that someone achieved it by way of merging contacts though the GUI.

The CiviCRM manual (I read it end-to-end) is a kind of obscure in this regard.

Any advice?

Thanks
Andre

I know this doesn't work for everyone, but one combination we have used is to treat Volunteering as an 'event' even if that event is for a whole year- reason being that by doing it as an event is that you can then create something of a history of what people have offered to do. Nothing worse than doing a search for volunteers and having little idea as to whether what they offered to do 2 years ago is still relevant - and this way you get the fields related to the 'participant' not the contact - just a thought