Energize is the place for volunteer management resources - software is at http://www.energizeinc.com/prof/vendors.html#software
Many orgs track volunteers through their donor management/fundraising software, with, as you'd expect, mixed results.
An interesting aside is that many agencies continue to use the relatively primitive means to track volunteers - even if they have state of the art applications. I think this goes to Deborah's comments earlier on process management software. Just because you have a place to manage all of your tasks and deadlines doesn't mean that you're actually going to use. Similarly, having good volunteer management tools doesn't mean that the exigencies of running a program wont get in the way the software falls by the wayside.
Jeff Forster of the Bayer Center in Pittsburgh and I are going to discuss resistance and fear in part of our presentation on MSO collaboration at the Alliance for Nonprofit Management meeting in LA in a few weeks. The official topic deals with how multiples MSOs (Management Support Organizations, for those not familiar with that TLA) have collaborated on the development of a database tools to tracks people, organizations and the training and consulting services they receive. One of the observations is that some staff will have an inchoate dislike of using the system because it exposes their work to quantification that they don't necessarily control. Not their work is in anyway deficient, it's just that they're uncomfortable with other people looking at the data independently.
The other lesson learned, more appropriate to the topic of volunteer management, is that a lot of what tracking software does is provide historical depth. It's information that is interesting in the long term, but not necessary for the day to day. If you can get your work done today with the Excel monster, why take even 5 extra minutes to use the new system?
Tim Mills-Groninger
IT Resource Center, Chicago
312/372-4872 x132
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>>;What's your recommendation for a paperless volunteer management program? Over a hundred volunteers. Cost and functionality are both considerations. Also learning curve.>>