Welcome to TimeGivers — the calm, modern way to coordinate volunteers. This guide walks you through every part of the app, from your first login to advanced automation.
Getting started
- Go to Sign up and create an account with your work email.
- Confirm your email if prompted, then log in.
- Complete the 3-step onboarding wizard (see below).
- You land on the Dashboard, which shows active volunteers, upcoming shifts, hours logged and your trial countdown.
Onboarding your organisation
The onboarding wizard collects the basics we need to personalise the app:
- Organisation details — name, contact email and phone.
- Type — nonprofit, community group, faith organisation, sports club, school/education, or other.
- Size — roughly how many volunteers you coordinate. This helps us suggest the right plan.
You can change any of these later from Settings.
Volunteers
Open Volunteers from the sidebar to see your full roster. Use the search box to filter by name or email.
- Add a volunteer — click Add volunteer, enter their name and email. They appear immediately in the roster.
- Open a profile — click any volunteer's name to view and edit contact info, skills (Spanish, forklift, first aid, etc.), weekly availability (morning / afternoon / evening) and group memberships.
- Invite them to the portal — from the profile, generate an invite link and send it to the volunteer. They'll sign in via that link and get access to the mobile-friendly portal.
Groups
Groups let you segment your volunteers — e.g. Event Staff, Animal Care, First Aid Team. Open Groups to create a new group with a colour tag, then click into a group to add or remove members. Groups are used for broadcast messages and quicker shift assignments.
Shifts & scheduling
Shifts shows a weekly grid. You can:
- Click New shift to create a shift with role, date, time and capacity.
- Drag volunteers from the sidebar onto a shift card to assign them. TimeGivers highlights conflicts — overlapping shifts, or mismatches with a volunteer's stated availability — before you commit.
- Click a shift to edit it, remove assignees or delete it.
Event templates
Repeating events? Build them once. Open Templates, create a template (e.g. "Saturday Market Day") with a list of shifts and their relative offsets (start/end times relative to the event date). Then apply the template to a specific date to generate all shifts in one click.
Messaging
Messages gives you a two-pane inbox:
- The left pane lists Volunteers and Groups.
- Pick a volunteer to message them directly, or pick a group to broadcast to all its members. Volunteers can reply from their portal.
Compliance tracking
Use Compliance to define the checks your volunteers need — Working with Children Check (WWCC), Police Check, First Aid, driver's licence, etc. There are presets to save you time, and each requirement can require an expiry date.
On each volunteer's profile you can record their status (Not started, In progress, Verified, Expired), issue date, expiry date, reference number and notes. Verified checks automatically flip to Expired when the expiry date passes so you're never caught out.
Volunteer portal
Volunteers get a mobile-optimised portal at /portal after they accept an invite. There they can:
- See My shifts and check themselves in.
- Browse Open shifts and sign up instantly.
- Update their profile and availability.
- Message the organisation.
Reports & attendance
Open Reports for three tabs:
- Volunteer totals — hours per volunteer over a date range.
- Shift performance — fill rate and attendance per shift.
- Attendance log — record no-shows and override check-ins as an admin.
Every tab exports to CSV.
Billing, trial & plans
Every new organisation gets a 14-day free trial. No card required. During the trial you get full Pro-level features so you can test everything.
Two plans after the trial:
- Starter — $30/month. Up to 50 volunteers, scheduling, messaging, volunteer portal.
- Pro — $60/month. Unlimited volunteers, compliance tracking, event templates, reports/CSV exports, AI/MCP integrations.
Manage your subscription on the Billing page. Cancellations keep access until the end of the current period; plan changes take effect at the next renewal. Payments are processed by Paddle — see our Refund Policy.
AI agents (MCP)
On the Pro plan, TimeGivers exposes an authenticated MCP server so AI assistants can do things like list volunteers, list/create shifts, assign volunteers and send messages on your behalf. Point your MCP-compatible client at the app's MCP endpoint and complete the OAuth consent flow to connect.
Support
Stuck? Email us at support.timegivers@gmail.com — we read every message.