You've made the awesome decision to sign up for Virtuous and VOMO. Now what? In this article we'll dive into how these to platforms are integrated in order to sync your volunteers and their serving history from VOMO over to your Virtuous CRM.

The Basics

What volunteer information is synced?

How Opportunities Sync

The Basics

Before diving into the details of this integration between VOMO and Virtuous CRM, let's begin with the basics discussing two essential points:

• It's a ONE-WAY integration. Meaning, volunteers are synced FROM your VOMO platform TO your Virtuous CRM. Contacts (and Individuals) are not synced from Virtuous CRM to VOMO. This ensures that your Virtuous CRM remains THE source of truth for all contact records in your organization.
  
  
• When are Volunteers synced?
  • When you invite them to join your organization and they accept
  • When they join your organization
  • When they complete volunteer hours for the first time after the integration is connected

When a bundle of volunteers is synced through the integration to be imported in Virtuous, you can use the Gift and Contact Import Tool to match this person with a current Contact in your Virtuous database or create a new one. After you match a volunteer to a Contact record in Virtuous (or create a new Contact record), each time they serve, the volunteer hours they serve will sync to their record in Virtuous.

You may have noticed that VOMO requires an email to create a user account whether you are an Admin, Organizer, or Volunteer. That’s because each user’s email is used as the unique identifier in VOMO. When the connection between VOMO and a Virtuous individual is made, that connection stays with that individual even if they are archived. If a user is archived with a record that was made through the VOMO connection then volunteer hours will not sync to the newly created individual record and will continue to sync to the archived record. This may result in your record showing 0 hours for that volunteer. 

We highly recommend that Admins do not merge/archive any records that have synced from VOMO to Virtuous.

What volunteer information is synced?

VOMO sends to Virtuous CRM two types of data for each volunteer that is serving. The information that can is synced is the volunteer's:

• Basic Contact Information
• Hours Served on Opportunities

Basic Contact Information

A VOMO Volunteer is synced to Virtuous CRM as a Household (Contact with an Individual). Each VOMO Volunteer has specific contact information associated with their profile. Only basic biographical information will be sent:

• First and Last Name
• Email Address (the unique identifier in VOMO)
• Address (including Apartment and Suite numbers)
• Phone Number
• Gender (this Field is optional in VOMO)

Lastly, even if the VOMO volunteer already exists in Virtuous as a Contact/Individual, you will be able to match them using the Gift and Contact Import tool without having to create a duplicate record in Virtuous.

Hours Served on Opportunities

An hour served by a Volunteer in a VOMO Opportunity is synced to a Volunteer Opportunity in Virtuous CRM. Each time a volunteer joins a VOMO Opportunity, their participation is recorded on their Volunteer Resume along with the serving date, time and number of hours. Once added to their VOMO Volunteer Resume, the integration will sync that new serving history over to their Contact record in Virtuous CRM.

*Note that only NEW volunteer history (hours served AFTER the integration is set up) will be synced from VOMO to Virtuous CRM.

How Opportunities Sync

Along with a Volunteer's basic profile, their new serving history will sync over to Virtuous as well. In order for their volunteer hours to sync properly, the integration will create a new Volunteer Opportunity in Virtuous that is linked to the Opportunity in VOMO, where it came from.

When the volunteer serves in a Date and Time Opportunity in VOMO (or logs past hours served in an Anytime Opportunity) the integration will create a Volunteer Opportunity in Virtuous and update the Date and Hours fields for that Volunteer Opportunity in Virtuous. Then, the number of times they served and the hours they served are stored in that Volunteer Opportunity in Virtuous.

A few key points to note:

• Only Approved volunteer hours served in VOMO will be sent to Virtuous. Volunteers who are Pending Approval will remain in VOMO until approved. 
• If the Require Hours Verification advanced option is activated for the VOMO Opportunity, only Verified hours will be sent to Virtuous. Volunteer hours that are Pending Verification for a Volunteer will remain in VOMO until officially marked as Verified by the VOMO Opportunity Owner (or a VOMO Admin).