CRM volunteer management: are you using a donor tool to do a volunteer job?

Let's be fair to charity CRM software (because we love it), it's genuinely excellent at what it was designed to do.

Platforms like Donorfy, Access Charity CRM and others, are brilliant tools for tracking donors, managing campaigns, and nurturing supporter relationships over time. If growing a donor base is your goal, a great CRM is hard to beat.

But donors and volunteers aren't the same relationship and they should, ideally, to be managed differently.

Around 14.2 million people in the UK volunteered formally through a club, organisation, or group between 2021-2022, with their contribution valued at approximately £18 billion

– NCVO via UK Civil Society Almanac 2024

That £18 billion contribution equates to around 0.8% of UK GDP and, for large volunteer programmes, that's a substantial asset to be managing with a tool that wasn't specifically designed for that job.

A fundraising CRM can store a volunteer's contact details and maybe some notes; this is often enough for smaller scale volunteer programmes. What it typically can't do though, and certainly not without customisation, is handle the operational complexity of actually coordinating those volunteers week to week. In other words, a CRM is not enough.

If you're reading this, the chances are you know what volunteer management actually involves in practice.

If not though, most volunteer-leaning roles find them doing all of this, and more!

• publishing roles
• collecting applications
• running DBS checks
• building rotas
• handling last-minute changes
• onboarding volunteers
• tracking hours
• reporting impact to funders

A fundraising CRM was typically not built to cover all of that in any great depth. So, most teams find themselves cobbling together spreadsheets, email chains, and manual processes to fill any gaps.

Like most processes, it works – until it doesn't. And with volunteer numbers declining and recruitment the persistent top challenge for the sector, the real cost is often the admin overhead of poorly-supported CRM volunteer management. and it's a cost most charities can't afford.

Fr example, UK volunteers contribute an estimated 4.6 billion hours annually, and many charities who reach out to us are struggling to accurately report how many hours their volunteers give, and translate that into the expected impact evidence.

That's not a data problem, it's a "software isn't quite right" one. 

There's some natural overlap between donor and volunteer data.

Some of your most committed donors will become volunteers, and vice versa. But the relationship, and what it needs from you, can be quite different.

It's always reminded me of a consumer that starts to work at a shop they've regularly visited. Say you've shopped at a certain supermarket for years, and you receive their emails, offers, and loyalty card updates. Then one day, you take a job there. You're still a customer, but now you need a staff portal, a rota, a way to swap shifts with colleagues. You now have two relationships, running in parallel, which the supermarket need to think about differently.

Volunteers are the same. They need to be nurtured, engaged, and coordinated in a way that's distinct from your donor relationships. Volunteer management software that's purpose-built for the job, reflects that distinction.

If your VMS can connect to your donor CRM (spoiler: like software in the Access Charity Suite), then that's a great way to see the overall picture!

A dedicated volunteer management system (like Access Assemble) is designed around the full volunteer journey.

It's not a replacement for your fundraising CRM by any means, it works alongside it. 

Here's where Assemble customers feel the difference most:

• Recruitment: A customisable microsite sits on your website, letting you publish roles with full descriptions, locations, hours, and images. Applications, screening, and automated responses all flow through the same system – on-brand, and without the back-and-forth.
• Scheduling: An intuitive rota builder lets you plan one-off or recurring shifts, spot conflicts at a glance, and give volunteers the ability to manage their own availability. Automatic reminders go out without you lifting a finger.
• Communication: SMS, email, push notifications, and internal messaging – all centralised, all with a full audit trail. No more chasing people across three different channels hoping the right message got through.
• Reporting: Volunteer hours are captured automatically against each profile. You get clean, exportable data on hours contributed, recruitment pipeline performance, and engagement – exactly what you're asked to demonstrate impact.

Access Assemble grew out of DutySheet, a volunteer management solution that has been used by 100% of police forces in England and Wales to coordinate Police Specials and emergency service responders since 2006.

That operational heritage matters: it's a system shaped by what volunteer managers actually need, not what someone assumed they might.

Young Enterprise highlight their experience:

"Access Assemble has completely changed how we manage and understand volunteering. It’s removed the guessing, we’ve now got the insight, consistency and confidence to support volunteers brilliantly at scale."

Many of the charities using Assemble have been directly involved in shaping its features too, which is why it continues to reflect the reality of what volunteer managers deal with every day.

For some, it can keep smaller charities ticking over!

But, if your fundraising CRM is doubling as a volunteer management software and you're feeling friction, then your CRM is not enough.

The rota headaches, the manual admin, these aren't inevitable – they're what happens when the wrong tool is carrying too much weight.

CRM volunteer management doesn't have to mean one system doing everything imperfectly. It can mean the right tools working together — each doing what it was actually built for.

Curious what that looks like in practice? There's a four-minute product tour that shows you around Access Assemble, no strings attached.