Track Hours For Recognition and Government Reports

Woodburn Fire District in Oregon operates with the Fire Department and an emergency response team, all of whom are volunteers! The Community Emergency Response Team (C.E.R.T) consists of trained volunteers who help the community in the event and aftermath of an emergency such as a natural disaster or pandemic.

The C.E.R.T program within the Woodburn Fire District is connected to the Woodburn Fire Department and is sponsored and monitored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) within the Department of Homeland Security and Marion County Emergency Management.

“We actively help people in the community to take care of themselves, and then take care of their neighbors and others in the community in the event of a disaster, whether it is natural or manmade,” says Ulrich Reich, C.E.R.T Coordinator of Woodburn Fire District.

C.E.R.T volunteers go through first aid training to understand and identify life-threatening injuries, control bleeding, treat for shock, and more, as well as resourceful skill training like locating any natural gas or electrical hazards, extinguishing small fires, searching buildings, and working in as an organized team.

To become a C.E.R.T volunteer, you must go through a six week course, and attend a monthly refresher class. Along with helping in cases of unpredictable emergencies and disasters, C.E.R.T volunteers are also asked to participate in planned events like Woodburn Fire District & Walmart Kids Bike Rodeo, and Woodburn Fire District Open House. 

Needless to say, it’s a lot of hard work to become a C.E.R.T volunteer, and there are times when C.E.R.T volunteers who work hours on end to help the community. Recognizing these volunteers for their hard work is one of the main reasons why Ulrich Reich decided to find a volunteer time tracking software system for the program. 

The C.E.R.T program has different levels of recognition based on annual volunteer hours, all of which are easily recognized using the Track it Forward milestone system. 

As volunteers log hours, they will be able to see their progress toward milestones on the Track it Forward dashboard. These reports are constantly updated for volunteers and administrators to view in real time. “We have a recognition banquet at the beginning of each year for the previous year…Everyone gets recognized no matter what number of hours they’ve completed. The software allows us to recognize in real time when people have reached certain milestones,” Ulrich explains.

Woodburn Fire District C.E.R.T program also tracks hours for reports that are done monthly for the county, fire department, and emergency services that help sponsor and encourage the C.E.R.T program and their activities throughout the year. 

Woodburn C.E.R.T categorizes different types of volunteer activities, and Ulrich can pull reports on this data instantly.

Ulrich says, “It’s easily customizable. We started out with 7 categories for activities, now we have 18 or 20. It’s easy to add and subtract categories and activities when you don’t need them anymore. It’s a good representation of what we do.” Their custom hour categories include Basic C.E.R.T. Online Class, Communications, OSHA COVID Training, Public Service, and Fire Fighter Rehabilitation Deployment, to name a few.

Track It Forward allows custom reports to be pulled at any time. These reports can include any information that is gathered within your site, which is also customizable. For example, the Woodburn Fire Department uses Track It Forward hour logs to gather the following information:

• Hours volunteered 
• Activity Category (which is pre-set from a dropdown menu created by Ulrich)
• Mileage (for tax purposes) 
• C.E.R.T certificate 
• Photo upload 
• Notes 
• And organizer information (to help identify who was in charge at the event to verify volunteer hours)

“Track It Forward generating reports is really easy and you can customize the report to showcase whatever you need to have,” says Ulrich. 

How Track It Forward Helps C.E.R.T Volunteers & Volunteer Managers 

Along with Track It Forward running reports and providing a database for volunteer statistics, Ulrich has found additional benefits to using Track It Forward. 

In the past, Woodburn Fire District would track volunteer hours through a manual process. Volunteers s emailed Ulrich their time, and he would have to enter that into a spreadsheet manually. With more than 50 volunteers and some volunteering 500+ hours per year, this process became incredibly time-consuming. 

“The ability to have someone log their own hours so I don’t have to do it saves me time and effort,” Ulrich explains. “I can concentrate my time on other things with…the program other than logging over 50 people’s times in a day.” 

Ulrich says most people use their phones to log their hours because it is easy to do at the event. With Track It Forward’s mobile app, C.E.R.T volunteers can easily log hours on-the-go and input all data necessary to help provide verification for volunteering. 

Track It Forward aims to make volunteer tracking and reporting easy for both C.E.R.T Volunteers and Volunteer Managers like Ulrich! “It’s been a very positive experience,” says Ulrich. “[Track it Forward] was a perfect fit and reasonably priced, and so for the foreseeable future we will continue to use it.”