CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm placing this issue near the root of this Forum because it touches on several areas - membership, events, etc.
Many people have expressed a need to be able to log the amount of time that volunteers contribute. Most of the comments I have seen suggest doing this through CiviEvents, which I have tried to do:
   I created a numeric data field called 'Volunteer Hours'
   I created a Profile called 'Service Work' that includes First Name, Last Name, Email Address, and Volunteer Hours; I think I may add a field for Project, but haven't created that Field Set, yet.
   I created an ongoing (whole fiscal or calendar year) event called 'Ongoing Service Work'. For user convenience, I also created an Event Type called 'Service Work" and ranked it #1.
        I'm running into a problem because when I try to add a Profile in the Configure Event / Registration page, I get a drop-down menu that does not include my Service Work Profile. I can find the Profile when I go back to the Custom Data pages, so I know I saved it. Can anyone suggest why this is happening, or should I just go post in the Profiles forum?
   Once I get the input side of this worked out, I plan to go into the Reports section and create some report template(s) that will tell me hours/volunteer, hours/project, and hours/volunteer/project. It might be useful to be able to track volunteer hours back to funders for matching purposes, but I think I can pick that up when I work out a Project structure (parallel projects for different funders?).
    Any help with this little glitch will be much appreciated. If I get this worked out, I will write a cookbook for others and post it in the Wiki. Or if someone else has already worked it out, please point me to the documentation. I could see doing this through CiviCase as well.
Thanks, folks.

I'm also doing some work for an organization that needs to track Volunteer Hours - Turns out the easiest way for us was to:

• Use the Activity capabilities
  
• Add the Activity Types (for example, we used "Travel", "Instruction", "Volunteer" as our Activity Types
• Enter the time in minutes under Duration
• Use groups to report time
• Created a new report called "Target Activity" which allows us to report Duration by Groups

If you need the report, I'm happy to send it off to you....