Disaster Recovery

The challenge

After a flood, cyclone or earthquake, community organisations often need to roster volunteers at short notice. There is little lead time, the places that need help change as the situation develops, and people turn up who have not registered.

Disaster response is not a separate product. PurposeTech's standard volunteer and crew management can roster volunteers for a response, within what it does today. It is not an emergency management or incident command system, and it does not replace the systems that civil defence and emergency services run.

How the standard platform helps

Prepare a campaign before you need it

Setup takes time, so the practical approach is to prepare ahead:

1. Build a template campaign with your usual regions, areas, sites and shift patterns, a registration form and your email templates
2. When a response starts, duplicate it: the structure, shift types, branding, registration form and email templates are copied, and you set new dates
3. Add or rename sites for the affected locations, using Add Campaign Data (paste from Excel or upload a CSV)
4. Share the sign-up link

Volunteers book from their phones and sign in later with an emailed link, with no password to remember.

Regions, areas and sites

The regions, areas and sites structure maps onto affected zones and the places volunteers are needed:

Changing the structure as the response develops

• Add sites as new needs appear
• Adjust shift times as the operation moves from the acute phase to recovery
• Change capacity on a shift at any time
• Stop new sign-ups at a site by setting it to "Show full", or to "Cancel only" so booked volunteers can cancel but nobody new books
• Hide a site from the public site while you set it up

Rosters for field coordinators

Area and site coordinators work from the roster on their phones:

• See who is booked on each shift, with email and mobile
• Add volunteers who turn up without booking (an email address is optional)
• Move volunteers between shifts and sites (on larger screens)
• Export a PDF or CSV for when connectivity is poor

Coordinators see only the areas and sites they are assigned to. Add or change coordinator assignments as the response scales.

Communicating with volunteers

Communication is by email. PurposeTech does not send SMS or WhatsApp messages.

• Confirmation and reminder emails go out automatically, and each shift type can carry a note such as what to bring or where to meet
• A bulk email can go to everyone with a booking, or to a list of addresses you paste in
• Volunteers who join a waitlist can be phoned and placed on a shift from the Waitlist page

Skills and details

Use the registration form to ask what you need to know, such as first aid certification, driving licence or languages spoken. Show or hide questions depending on earlier answers. Admins can filter the Volunteers list by those answers and by tag when choosing people for specialist tasks. PurposeTech records the answers; it does not verify qualifications or run police vetting.

Reporting

The reports show fill rates by region, area and site, so you can see where you are covered and where you are not. The Volunteers list downloads as CSV. Admins can open a volunteer's activity timeline to see bookings, changes and emails sent.

PurposeTech does not record hours worked or who arrived on the day. On-the-day check-in is on the roadmap.

Not covered today

• No SMS or WhatsApp messaging
• No live map of affected areas or severity levels
• No shared view across several organisations; each organisation runs its own campaign
• No reporting formats for government agencies

Get started

Planning how your organisation would roster volunteers in a response? Get in touch to talk through whether the standard platform fits, and how to prepare a template campaign.