Building a Volunteer Database

[Guest]

I am trying to put together a Volunteer Database for our Church. I have used
Access in the past, but very little. I can manage to put together a simple
Name & Address database, but need help in linking tables, reprots, queries,
etc. I have been tyring to use some lesson CDs, but am having difficulty on
the following. I would appreciate any help I could get. Thanks

My questions are these:

1 My Volunteer list consists of volunteers from the same family. i have
them keyed in individually, but they have the same names, addresses, phone,
etc. I need to associate these individuals with several catagories of
volunteering, i.e, Fellowship, Building, Worship, music, etc. then within
each of those catagories are several specific duties i.e., Worship for
instance has choices of greeting, users, readers, etc.

How do I create a database that will enable me to link this altogether. I
am stumped.

 

[Guest]

Beth,
First, you should plan out each level of one to many relationships. For
instance, you have a table with the parishoner information. In this case you
may want to have either a family ID so that you do not duplicate mailing
information or you may want to begin with a table with the family information
and then have another table with the parishoner information. Either way, you
would need to have a key field which would identify each unique record.
Avoid using an autonumber and instead give it some logical value like a few
digits from the last name and then numerical value. Set up your table so
that the field is Key. Then in your next table (which could be the family
members) have your family ID field and then a field for the member. Those
two fields together could be key.

Next you have the categories for volunteering. Since you have another one
to many relationship, now you need to set up a table which would have the
parishoner family and member ID and then the category ID. The same would be
for the specific duties.

A good rule to go by is anytime you have a one to one situation, that should
be in the same table. A one to many requires additional tables.
Another thing you may want to do is set up lookup tables for the volunteer
categories and the duties. If you attach these lookup tables to a combo box
on a form or in the table design, the person doing data entry can pick from
the drop down and the data can be limited to the lookup table.

After you have your tables set up go to Tools - Relationships and join the
tables together. Set up referential integrity.

Sorry, I am going on and on. This is obviously just a starting point. I
hope it helps.

 

[John Vinson]

I am trying to put together a Volunteer Database for our Church. I have used
Access in the past, but very little. I can manage to put together a simple
Name & Address database, but need help in linking tables, reprots, queries,
etc. I have been tyring to use some lesson CDs, but am having difficulty on
the following. I would appreciate any help I could get. Thanks

My questions are these:

1 My Volunteer list consists of volunteers from the same family. i have
them keyed in individually, but they have the same names, addresses, phone,
etc. I need to associate these individuals with several catagories of
volunteering, i.e, Fellowship, Building, Worship, music, etc. then within
each of those catagories are several specific duties i.e., Worship for
instance has choices of greeting, users, readers, etc.

How do I create a database that will enable me to link this altogether. I
am stumped.

I have a very similar church membership database which I'd be willing
to send you, free of charge. It has a Families table for home
addresses, related one-to-many to a Members table; and an Activities
table related many-to-many to the Members table, so each member can be
assigned to many activities and vice versa. It's got some reports for
printing envelopes and mailing labels, hotlinked email addresses so
you can email someone with a mouse click, etc. If you're interested
please reply here or email me at jvinson <at> wysardofinfo <dot> com,
specifying which version of Access you're running.


John W. Vinson[MVP]