Pre-migration checklist

Migrating volunteer management software isn’t just a technical project — it affects your staff, volunteers, reporting, and fundraising workflows. A smooth transition protects trust and avoids disruption. This checklist outlines what to review before you switch systems so your organization stays in control.
 
With more than 20 years experience helping nonprofits migrate to the Volunteer Matrix platform, we've come up with this list of suggestions for the least chance of volunteer and staff difficulty when migrating to a new volunteer scheduling & management system.
 

Check your existing contract

Many software providers operate on annual or multi-year agreements that automatically renew if not canceled in advance.
If you happen to only be using spreadsheets currently, the good news is you can terminate your Excel use at any time ;).

• Determine your current contract end date.
• If you have paid in advance, then likely those funds are non-refundable and that becomes your contract end date.
• Review the contract, and see if there are any clauses/reasons that allow you to cancel before the end of the contract.
• If there doesn't seem to be an explicit clause, you can ask their support if you provide termination in writing by email if you can leave the contract early.
• If you are paying monthly, or have not paid for 100% of the current contract, then you likely could give them termination in writing (email) and just ensure you don't pay them again. If you have a credit card on file with them, see if you can delete the payment method yourself from your admin site. Nonpayment on your part becomes their reason for early termination (problem solved).

 
      Note: Volunteer Matrix has no contract, and will refund any advance paid funds (after the first 6 months) to your organization if you ever do notify us in writing of termination.
 

Check your current integration partners

Verify if you have any current integrations with your existing software, and if so, verify those also are configured in Volunteer Matrix. Be sure to check with other departments as well.
 

Set a timeline

You will want to give yourself a little time before a big event to ensure your new system is working how you want it to. At the same time we have seen that setting a loooooong timeline ends up meaning nothing (maybe ever) happens toward migration. Assuming your volunteer management team has a few hours a week available, a 4 week timeline is plenty long enough. If you have a current contract with another company, you want to shoot for live at least a few weeks before that contract ends just so you have access to any previous data you might have forgotten.
 
      Note: Volunteer Matrix support requests are typically completed within 24 hours, but most often in less than one hour.
 

Set volunteer expectations

The most challenging part we see in a migration is some existing volunteers may push-back against anything new (usually older volunteers). We suggest that you let your volunteers know you will be using a new volunteer system starting X date, and that their data will be migrated (no need to reenter everything, and past hours will be retained), and that they will be emailed their new login around that time.
A good sales pitch for volunteers to get-onboard is that your new software will better help your organization track volunteer hours and data that you might use for fundraising and grant writing (100% true).
Also let them know that the new system will make it easier for them to locate opportunities and sign up and to cancel when needed.

Previous volunteer data

Your volunteer data belongs to your organization. Before migrating, confirm that you can export complete records including profiles, historical schedules, logged hours, qualifications, and notes. A proper migration should preserve reporting continuity — especially if you rely on historical data for grant reporting.
We can import 100% of your past volunteer data. Volunteer profiles, schedules, etc. We have done imports before of over 20 years of data. If you have full schedules, then you can run any of the suite of Statistics/Reports/Exports on that data as if it was always in Volunteer Matrix.
Since Volunteer Matrix does not charge any organization by the number of volunteers, projects, schedules, etc. there is no reason to not import all your data. There is no 'active' volunteer data point since that feature only exists in other systems so that they can charge you for active profiles. Your inactive folks are automatically 'inactive' if the report you run start/end dates don't include a volunteers past schedules.

Train your team

Have any member of your staff & volunteer staff complete training sufficient for what they will need to do in the system. There are many non-admin access ways for your staff to access schedules and rosters, so in some cases you will only need to setup their automatic email or personal calendar updates instead of creating them as an admin.
Make sure your team knows that support is 100% included, and that they can reach out for assistance.

Check your organization's website

If your current website lists roles, has a online form or other information that won't be correct for your new/updated process going forward, make a list of those pages, links, etc. for your website person to remove or change (be sure to locate all links to your old software). Let them know the date you expect to go live and provide them your dedicated Volunteer Matrix URL (something like https://xyz.volunteermatrix.com). If you already plan on having multiple different calendars, map out those addresses, and which of your existing website pages will have which links in them.