Using a QR sign-in poster at the volunteer table

The QR sign-in poster is the lowest-friction volunteer check-in we've found. It works because every volunteer already has a phone, every phone already has a QR scanner in the camera app, and the result is a personal page bookmarked to their phone that becomes their clock-in surface for every future visit.

The flow, from a volunteer's perspective

First visit: walk in, scan the QR poster, pick your name from the list (one tap). From then on, the page is keyed to your phone via a long-lived cookie. Every return visit is one tap to clock in, one tap to clock out. No app, no password, no signup.

Volunteer can switch which name they're checking in as via a "not you?" button, which we built specifically for the case where one phone signs in two volunteers (a spouse without a phone, an older volunteer who'd rather not deal with it).

What the coordinator does

Two steps. First, generate the poster: from the dashboard, the QR poster generator produces a printable PDF with your workspace name, the QR code, and a brief instruction line. Print it, post it at the volunteer table. (If you'd rather use the standalone poster generator without signing up at all, there's a standalone QR sign-in poster generator.)

Second, watch the dashboard. As volunteers scan and tap in, they appear in the "on the clock now" list. You don't have to do anything else.

When QR posters don't fit

They don't work for volunteers without smartphones. For that case, a kiosk URL on a shared tablet at the table is the better surface, tap your name from the list, tap to clock out when you leave. You can run both surfaces at once; many programs do.

Back to the volunteer-coordinator hub, or grab the free QR poster generator.