When a shift with limited capacity fills, VolunteerPress starts a waitlist for it automatically. Volunteers keep signing up, and when a spot opens, the wait is resolved without you doing anything. This guide covers the whole cycle.
How volunteers join
A waitlist only exists on shifts with a capacity — a capacity of 0 means unlimited spots, so nobody ever waits. Once the last spot is taken, the shift’s signup button on your site changes from Sign up to Join the waitlist, with the note “Full — new signups join the waitlist.” The form is the same; on submitting it the volunteer sees “You’re on the waitlist.” and receives the normal signup confirmation email, whose text tells them the shift is full and that they will be emailed if a spot opens up. In your admin, the signup appears with the status Waitlisted.
Volunteers are not shown a queue position, and there is no separate waitlist screen — a waitlist is just a shift’s Waitlisted signups, in the order they arrived.
When a spot opens
The moment a confirmed volunteer cancels — or you cancel or delete their signup — the volunteer who has waited longest is confirmed automatically, immediately. They receive an email with the subject “A spot opened up:” and the opportunity’s name, confirming their spot and including a cancel link in case their plans have changed. If they cancel in turn, the next volunteer on the waitlist is promoted the same way. One spot, one promotion — nobody is skipped and nobody is asked to race.
One case is deliberately manual: raising a shift’s capacity does not confirm anyone by itself. If you widen a shift from 6 spots to 8, promote the waitlisted volunteers yourself, as below.
What coordinators can do
- See the waitlist. On Shift signups, filter Status to Waitlisted — or filter to one opportunity to see a specific shift’s queue. Shift lists in the admin also show a “waitlisted” count next to each shift’s fill numbers.
- Promote by hand. The Confirm action on a waitlisted signup gives that volunteer a spot now, in any order you choose, as long as the shift has room. They receive the same “A spot opened up” email as an automatic promotion.
- Make room. Cancelling a confirmed signup frees a spot, which the waitlist fills automatically. Cancelling a waitlisted signup just removes that volunteer from the queue — it promotes nobody, since no confirmed spot opened.
To write to a shift’s waitlist — for example, “spots often open the day before” — compose a message with the audience set to that shift and the status filter set to Waitlisted only: see Emailing volunteers.