Standardizing Volunteer Operations for the Alzheimer’s Society of of BC and Yukon

Introduction

The Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon works alongside people affected by dementia to change the conversation, change the experience and change the future of living with dementia. Through support programs, education, advocacy and research, the organization helps people living with dementia, care partners and families access information, resources and community connections across BC and the Yukon.

As the number of people affected by dementia continues to grow, the Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon plays a vital role in raising awareness, reducing stigma, supporting quality dementia care and advocating for policies that improve the lives of people living with dementia.

To deliver its programs and services through 19 regional communities, the Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon relies on a dedicated network of volunteers who contribute through both event-based and ongoing roles. To support the growth and coordination of this provincial program, the Volunteer Resource team selected Rosterfy to standardize volunteer management processes and create a consistent experience across the organization.

The challenge

Before implementing Rosterfy, the Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon faced the ultimate operational paradox plaguing large-scale North American charities: how to scale massive provincial administration without turning a deeply empathetic, cause-driven mission into a sterile, corporate process. 

Rosterfy offers the organization the ability to centralize and standardize database tracking across multiple departments and a variety of programs, services, and events.

The difference maker

Rosterfy offers tools for enterprise-grade security compliance (SOC2 and ISO27001) paired with radical flexibility.

• Robust data privacy infrastructure: Rosterfy satisfied the organization’s requirements for secure data handling, providing a compliant, centralized environment to manage provincial volunteer operations safely.
• Highly Customisable Workflows: Rather than forcing the Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon to compromise its screening and onboarding standards, Rosterfy allowed for the mapping of complex onboarding pipelines tailored to specific community support environments.
• System-Wide Flexibility: From public-facing opportunity modules that allow prospective volunteers to safely “window shop” roles to automated post-event data feedback loops, Rosterfy acts as a comprehensive, scalable hub.

“Rosterfy offered the highest amount of customization during our vetting process… [It] has allowed us to have more conversations about the ideal process for volunteer experience because Rosterfy provides the freedom to create a process that aligns with what we want.”
Matt Brookes, Provincial Configuration Lead

The results

Rosterfy’s allowed for the highest level of flexibility getting us the closest to our ideal internal operational best practice. 

• Streamlined administrative workflows: By utilizing intuitive, customized workflows tailored to the organization’s specific processes, volunteer coordinators can manage onboarding and scheduling with ease, significantly reducing day-to-day administrative tasks.
• Eliminating data silos: The organization utilizes the customizable reporting process in tandem with the easy to use export option to share information with Raiser’s Edge NXT.
• Frictionless self-service booking: Volunteers gained total autonomy to complete visual onboarding check-lists and schedule themselves into crucial shifts, eliminating those messy back-and-forth emails.
• Increased volunteer feedback: Within 24 hours of their flagship event, the Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon used Rosterfy to automate a post-event survey loop, capturing 44 volunteer responses in just 48 hours – the highest level of engagement recorded in seven years.

Balancing scale with empathy

For large-scale non-profits, a 33 percent volunteer attrition rate is a historical norm. The Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon knew that technology alone wouldn’t solve this issue; the true solution lay in adding meaningful, person-to-person touchpoints to the volunteer experience.

Rosterfy became a valuable tool in facilitating this ideal process. By handling the heavy lifting of back-end compliance and administrative logistics, the platform freed local coordinators from the digital paperwork.

This newly recovered time allowed the team to focus on real-world connections, executing personal phone calls and virtual orientations that made volunteers feel truly valued. As a result of this balanced approach, the organization successfully noted a distinct drop below their usual 33 percent attrition rate this year.

The impact

By fortifying their administrative backbone, Rosterfy has enabled the Alzheimer Society of BC and Yukon to support a high-volume, real-world network at an increasing scale:

• Program growth: Backed by a stable administrative foundation, active ongoing volunteer counts expanded from 180 to 196 active volunteers in ongoing roles alongside growth in the fundraising events.
• Accelerated event re-engagement: Instead of restarting data capture from scratch every year, coordinators instantly leverage Rosterfy’s centralized database to re-engage historical volunteers, reducing net-new recruitment costs and getting teams registered faster.
• Improved provincial scaling: Rosterfy has enabled the organization to scale operations to support rural, and remote communities across 19 Walk locations. Crucially, the system centralized the administration so that if required, a single Volunteer Coordinator could effectively manage the sign-ups, communications, and training modules for an event with 19 unique locations.