We know how important volunteers are, and we want you to be able to manage your volunteers quickly and efficiently. Our Volunteering tool helps you keep your volunteer records up to date and find out how volunteers are contributing to your organization.
There are a few critical steps to ensuring a successful, clean volunteer data import.
Step 1: Gather your Data
If this is your first import, you may have data spread across many different sources (spreadsheets, petitions, data stored in other CRMs), so take this opportunity to bring all your data together to import to one place - Keela! You can consolidate all your volunteer data into one spreadsheet.
Step 2: What Data is Relevant to your Organization?
This is a great time to review your data and determine exactly which volunteer activities are still relevant for record-keeping purposes. Be sure that your volunteer list and activity records are up to date, with all the necessary fields that you find fitting to your organization. We recommend that you get rid of anything that you don't require now, to reduce any clutter in your CRM system and to make the next import step a bit easier.
Step 3: Compare Data to Keela Requirements
You should now only have data that you think is important to your organization. The next step is to refer to the template at the bottom of this page and the chart below to see what fits with the Keela criteria.
During the import process, Keela will ask you to match each column in your file with a field in Keela, so you'll want to prepare your files so the header and data in each column corresponds with a Keela field. We recommend changing the headers of your data spreadsheet to exactly match the Field names in the Accepted Fields table above wherever possible. This is because we have a magic tool (okay, it's not magic) that is able to match up these headers during the Import process. If you ensure that these headers match exactly, you'll save yourself a bunch of time later on!
Depending on your data, you may also need to do some cleanup such as:
- removing columns you don't need
- adding missing columns
- splitting or consolidating data into columns
If you're using Excel to prepare your data, you can find some helpful instructions for these functions in the Office Help portal here.
Accepted Fields
Accepted fields available for importing volunteer data includes the following.
Important: To ensure all data is imported to Keela, please ensure that all inputs are Capitalized as per the formatting examples below. In some cases, Keela cannot recognize lower case, so your data will not be imported if the input is not capitalized.
| FIELD NAME | DESCRIPTION | FORMAT NOTES | FORMATTING EXAMPLE |
|
Origin ID |
Keela's unique ID for existing contacts OR an ID that you provide from a previous CRM |
When importing new data for volunteers whose contact already exist in Keela, you can add the Origin ID to your file to allow Keela to match the new data with the existing record. Only strings of numbers and letters will be accepted. No special characters. If you import your own Origin ID to Keela, we will keep that number in the background so Keela can easily match any future records with that ID |
NFDM8KXX4mvm2GsRP |
|
Contact Type |
The type of this Contact |
By default, Keela will import a contact as an individual. If the contact record is for a company, write Company in this column |
Company |
|
Name - Full Name |
A person's full name |
Use this field if your contact's first, middle and last name are in a single column, like the example on the right. If the name is separated into different columns in your file, use the separate name fields below instead and leave this column blank |
John Michael Smith |
|
Name - First Name |
A person's first name |
Any format will be accepted |
John |
|
Name - Middle Name |
A person's middle name |
Any format will be accepted |
Michael |
|
Name - Last Name |
A person's last name |
Any format will be accepted |
Smith |
|
Name- Company |
Name of the Company for a Company record OR an individual associated to a company |
Any format will be accepted |
ABC Corp |
|
|
The primary email address for this contact |
The Primary email is used for all email communication in Keela |
john@abc.com |
|
Campaign - Name |
The name of the Campaign's the person is associated with |
Any format will be accepted |
Giving Tuesday |
|
Impact Area - Name |
The name of the Impact Areas the person is associated with |
Any format will be accepted |
Charlies Surgery |
|
Activity Name |
The name of the volunteer activity |
Any format will be accepted |
Writing Thank You Letters |
|
Start Date |
The date the volunteer activity started |
Standard date formats will be accepted (e.g. 01/31/2013, 2010-01-31, 31-Jan-2020) |
04/11/2018 |
|
End Date |
The date the volunteer activity ended |
Standard date formats will be accepted (e.g. 01/31/2013, 2010-01-31, 31-Jan-2020) |
04/11/2018 |
|
Hours |
The total amount of hours of the volunteer activity |
Any Number |
12 |
|
Description |
Description of the volunteer activity |
Any format will be accepted |
Packed lunches for the other volunteers who were facilitating the marathon |
Step 4: Convert your Data to CSV
Keela accepts only CSV (Comma Seprated Values) files for import. If you're working with a different file type, such as XLS, you can save your file to CSV format using Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets or other spreadsheet programs. Just look for the "Save As" or "Export" function in your spreadsheet program to find the option to save it as a CSV.
What's Next?
Well, if you have no more data to Format, you're ready to import! Skip on over to our Importing Your Data article to learn exactly how this process works.
TEMPLATE