California Wildlife Center - Non-Proft & Volunteer Scheduling - Case Study

Case Study: California Wildlife Center in Malibu, California, United States

Business Overview

Since 1998 the California Wildlife Center is a non-profit organization that operates a wildlife rehabilitation facility. We provide care and medical treatment to over 3,400 injured, sick and orphaned wild animals every year (over 25,000 animals since inception). We are located on land generously provided to us by California State Parks. We receive no state or federal funding and provide our services free of charge to the public.

Scheduling Overview

CWC was an all volunteer organization for many years and now we have 6 employees and about 90 volunteers. We have volunteers located in many parts of the county and they must schedule themselves for a weekly shift at our facility. We coordinate the number of individuals needed on a particular shift as well as to fill gaps in shift coverage which has always been an issue.

Previous Scheduling Method

Our previous employee scheduling system consisted of a paper calendar for the various departments that have been used to track volunteer schedules. This has been cumbersome and not effective for many reasons.

Since ShiftPlanning

We are rolling out the work scheduler Shiftplanning service to our volunteers this month after having trained our staff how to use it. We would recommend ShiftPlanning and we found the team to be very helpful with our questions and concerns. By allowing volunteers to easily see where shift gaps and staffing needs are, shift coverage will dramatically improve.

This is a HUGE improvement. - Cindy Reyes - Executive Director - California Wildlife Center

I would recommend ShiftPlanning especially to any team that works remotely where employees communicate online. They have responded quickly to any issues we have reported and taken our feedback very seriously. The work scheduler has a had a positive impact on the team, both from a scheduling management standpoint and an employee standpoint. Being able to access and view our schedules easily, from almost anywhere, as well as the ability to trade shifts and view the entire schedule are all huge improvements over our previous work scheduler.

Further

The Message Wall is incredibly useful for allowing volunteers to communicate with each other as well as allowing staff to ‘get the word out’ about upcoming activities or needs in our various animal care programs.