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Vol. 41, No. 3, MayJune 2011, pp.

254262
issn0092-2102 eissn1526-551X 11 4103 0254
doi 10.1287/inte.1110.0570
2011 INFORMS
Helping a Small Development Organization
Manage Volunteers More Efciently
Mauro Falasca
Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina 27858,
falascam@ecu.edu
Christopher Zobel, Cliff Ragsdale
Business Information Technology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
{czobel@vt.edu, crags@vt.edu}
Development organizations plan and execute programs that are directed primarily toward promoting human
welfare. Because these organizations rely heavily on volunteers to carry out their social missions, efciently
managing their volunteer workforce is important. In this study, we discuss the development of a spreadsheet-
based, multicriteria volunteer-scheduling model for a small development organization in a developing South
American country. We demonstrate how the model helps to reduce the number of unlled shifts, decrease
total scheduling costs, and better satisfy the volunteers scheduling preferences, thus supporting the long-term
retention and effectiveness of the organizations volunteer workforce.
Key words: development; multicriteria decision making; optimization; scheduling; spreadsheets; volunteer
labor.
History: This paper was refereed.
T
housands of development organizations world-
wide plan and execute programs that are directed
primarily toward promoting human welfare. These
organizations rely heavily on volunteers to carry out
their social missions. To successfully retain their vol-
unteer bases, they must efciently manage their vol-
unteer workforce. Although employee scheduling has
been a topic of extensive research in the business
literature over the past decades, we are aware of
no work that has focused on the problem of opti-
mizing the assignment of volunteers in development
organizations.
In this study, we discuss the creation of a multicri-
teria scheduling model for a small development orga-
nization operating in a developing South American
country. The organization is staffed by volunteers
who work with inner-city youth on a number of
awareness-raising, counseling, and educational initia-
tives. In the context of our discussion, we compare the
performance of the organizations previous schedul-
ing approach against that of our multicriteria model,
and show how the our approach helps to reduce
the number of undesired assignments, labor short-
ages, and total schedule costs for the organization,
thus helping it to use its time and resources more
efciently.
The remainder of the paper is organized as fol-
lows. First, we present an overview of the elds of
labor scheduling and spreadsheet decision modeling.
We then provide a description of the problem, a dis-
cussion of our new scheduling model, and a statisti-
cal analysis of its impact on the client organizations
scheduling process. Finally, we conclude with a dis-
cussion of the lessons learned from our research
study.
Labor Scheduling
Many articles have been published on labor schedul-
ing. The existing work can generally be catego-
rized by type of model, solution methodology,
and application area. Relevant reviews of the state
of the art include articles by Alfares (2004) and
Bechtold et al. (1991), among others. With respect
to solution methods and techniques, the literature is
heavily skewed toward mathematical programming
254
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS 255
approaches (Ernst et al. 2004). Because of the size
of many scheduling problems, many different heuris-
tic methods have also been developed (e.g., Goodale
and Thompson 2004). For our chosen application, the
small size of the organization under study allows the
use of a spreadsheet-based solver to generate an opti-
mal solution to its scheduling problem.
The operations research (OR) literature includes
several different application areas related to labor
assignment problems. Since their inception, schedul-
ing and stafng methods have been applied to areas
ranging from airline crew stafng (Kohl and Karisch
2004) to nurse scheduling (Azaiez and Al Sharif 2005,
Parr and Thompson 2007). However, the scheduling
of volunteers has not been extensively discussed in
the OR literature. A review of the literature related to
labor-scheduling research with a focus on nonprot
or volunteer applications resulted in only two specic
articles.
The rst of these two articles (Gordon and Erkut
2004) discusses the development of a spreadsheet-
based model to schedule volunteers for the annual
Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Although, as in our
current research, the authors used an integer pro-
gramming formulation to incorporate user prefer-
ences and constraints into the model, they did
not explicitly consider the issue of labor shortages.
Because small development organizations such as the
one we analyze in our study typically rely heavily on
a small number of volunteers with limited time avail-
ability, such organizations must explicitly consider
these shortages. By incorporating labor shortages into
the model, we can, for example, help the decision
maker to balance these shortages among shifts. In the
second article (Sampson 2006), the author discusses
the development of an integer goal-programming
model for volunteer labor assignments in the context
of reviewers for an international academic conference.
Our current research differs from that of Sampson in
that we do not assume that volunteer labor costs are
negligible. As we will see in the next section, some
development organizations pay allowances to offset
costs (such as travel expenses) that their volunteers
incur. Overall, although labor assignment problems
have been a topic of extensive research in the busi-
ness literature, no work has focused on the problem
of optimizing the assignment of volunteers in devel-
opment organizations.
Spreadsheet Decision Modeling
Spreadsheets have become one of the worlds most
popular and ubiquitous software packages. Some
researchers have noted that managers often become
so comfortable with spreadsheets that they are reluc-
tant to adopt other software packages, even when the
other packages are more suitable for specic appli-
cations (Chan and Storey 1996). Advances in spread-
sheet analytical functionality have made various
decision-modeling techniques accessible to all types
of organizations. Several authors have discussed the
successful development of spreadsheet-based deci-
sion models for a variety of business and nonprot
organizations (Farasyn et al. 2008, Gordon and Erkut
2004, LeBlanc and Galbreth 2007, Pasupathy and
Medina-Borja 2008).
Given the modeling power that spreadsheets offer,
the familiarity of managers with their use, and the
relatively low cost of acquiring and using them,
spreadsheets represent a good platform for delivering
OR and management science (OR/MS) solutions to
smaller organizations in developing countries. Busi-
ness disciplines, such as nance, have been successful
in creating different instruments for poverty reduc-
tion in developing countries. For example, several
researchers have analyzed the impact of microcre-
dit programs (i.e., programs that provide very small
loans to low-income people in impoverished areas)
to combat poverty and foster long-term development
(Diniz et al. 2009, Gurses 2009, Knight et al. 2009).
In much the same way that these microcredit pro-
grams can help to improve the lives of the people they
serve, we believe that micro-OR models, imple-
mented within spreadsheets and focused on helping
small organizations in developing countries, can have
a benecial impact by providing low-cost, easy-to-
use, easily accessible, and effective support for deci-
sion making. This paper provides an example of one
such micro-OR application.
Description of the Problem
The subject of our study is a small development orga-
nization that implements a number of youth devel-
opment programs in low-income neighborhoods of a
developing South American country. The organiza-
tion has between 20 and 25 active volunteers who
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
256 Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS
Shift Friday Saturday Sunday
M
o
r
n
i
n
g
9
A
M

1
P
M
A
f
t
e
r
n
o
o
n
1
P
M

5
P
M
Figure 1: The diagram shows the organizations volunteer shift structure.
can be assigned to either of two centers. The organi-
zations shift structure comprises two shifts on each
Saturday and Sunday: the morning shift (between
9:00 am and 1:00 pm) and the afternoon shift (between
1:00 pm and 5:00 pm) (see Figure 1). On Fridays, vol-
unteers work in the afternoon.
The previous scheduling approach was as follows:
once a week, volunteers submitted their preferences
and were assigned to shifts and centers on a rst-
come, rst-served (FCFS) basis. The schedule was
built manually, a time-consuming task for the person
responsible for the scheduling process; it also resulted
in suboptimal solutions.
The organization has various policies related to the
management of its volunteers. For example, it has
rules that are used to determine the maximum num-
ber of shifts that a volunteer should be assigned each
week (this number may vary between two and four
shifts, depending on a variety of factors, such as the
number of active volunteers and the time of year).
The organization also has a policy related to the max-
imum number of undesired assignments per volun-
teer per planning period (typically set to one or two
shifts). Not surprisingly, the schedules developed by
the organization usually failed to satisfy these con-
straints. The manual approach also made it difcult
to balance shortages among the different shifts; as a
result, the policies were ignored or violated on a reg-
ular basis.
An additional source of inefciency in its schedul-
ing process related to the payment of a per diem
allowance to each scheduled volunteer in the orga-
nization. Volunteers receive this allowance to offset
any travel expenses they might incur regardless of
whether they work one or two shifts on any given
day. The organization thus had an opportunity to save
resources by assigning, whenever possible, the same
volunteer to the morning and afternoon shift instead
of assigning two different volunteers, one to the
morning shift and the other one to the afternoon shift.
Improving the efciency and effectiveness of deliv-
ering development and humanitarian relief efforts has
become increasingly important. Volunteerism plays
an important role in these two efforts, and initiatives
to improve both short-term efciency and long-term
volunteer retention are essential to address the rela-
tive scarcity of available resources. The authors have
been involved with a number of not-for-prot organi-
zations and were familiar with the clients efforts to
implement youth development programs, as well as
their issues with satisfying the volunteers schedule
preferences. Working with the organization provided
us with an opportunity to demonstrate the effective-
ness of the new volunteer-scheduling approach, while
helping to directly make a positive impact on both the
organization and the community.
New Scheduling Approach
To overcome the inefciencies mentioned in the previ-
ous section, we developed a multicriteria scheduling
model with binary and general integer variables to
manage the volunteer assignments. The multicriteria
nature of the problem is extremely relevant. Develop-
ment organizations must manage volunteers wisely
so that they become a renewable resource. However,
these organizations also need to minimize labor short-
ages to increase the effectiveness of their efforts. We
discuss the design of the components of our model
below and include a detailed model formulation in
the appendix.
Dening the Objectives
We determined the organizations objectives to be the
following:
to reduce the number of undesired volunteer
labor assignments,
to reduce volunteer labor shortages, and
to reduce schedule costs (if possible).
These three objectives together contribute to the
overall mission of promoting human welfare while
efciently and effectively using the available human
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS 257
and nancial resources. In our model, we structured
the three objectives mentioned above as follows.
Undesired assignments: We are interested in mini-
mizing the number of undesired assignments so that
volunteers preferences are honored as much as pos-
sible. For this purpose, the model considers individ-
ual shift and center preferences (e.g., volunteers may
request to have a specic day or shift off or they may
request to be assigned to a specic center). Unde-
sired assignments are calculated by having the vol-
unteers specify where and when they would like to
be assigned and then by minimizing the number of
assignments that the volunteers did not request.
Labor shortages: In the second objective, we want
to minimize labor shortages. A labor shortage occurs
when the required minimum number of volunteers
for a specic shift is not met. The model then mini-
mizes, across all shifts and centers, the sum of all neg-
ative deviations from the required minimum number
of volunteers.
Schedule costs: As we explained in the previ-
ous sections, volunteers who are assigned to a shift
receive per diem allowances. We calculate the total
schedule costs in our problem by summing the costs
associated with each individual shift assignment. We
then adjust this calculation to reect the cost savings
that can be achieved by assigning the same volunteer
to the morning and afternoon shifts, because volun-
teers receive the same allowance whether they work
one or two shifts on any given day (see Equations (1)
and (5)).
To show the members of the organization how the
new optimization approach works, we rst solved
our multicriteria model as a two-objective problem
by removing the third and least-important objec-
tive (total schedule costs) from the formulation. The
two-objective formulation allowed us to more effec-
tively demonstrate the functioning of the optimization
model because the simplication made it easier for
the decision maker to interpret the trade-offs between
the other two objectives. This also allowed us to bet-
ter capture input from the decision maker regarding
parameters and constraints.
For the sake of simplicity, we decided to develop
a weighted rather than a preemptive model. This
allowed us to consider the three objectives simul-
taneously and avoid running the model more than
once to arrive at a solution. The resulting objective
function, Equation (1), minimizes a weighted linear
combination of the three objectives. We decided to
express these objectives as percentages to avoid scal-
ing issues. Next, we had to decide how to assign
weights to each goal. Therefore, we discussed the
relative importance of the objectives with the orga-
nization. It considered treating volunteers fairly and
accommodating their preferences as its most impor-
tant objective and total schedule cost as its least
important objective. Equation (2) formalizes the rela-
tionship among the three objectives. Using this infor-
mation, we incorporated data validation functionality
into the spreadsheet-based model to enforce the rela-
tionship among the three objectives and ensure that
the parameters entered by the user are valid.
Formulating the Model
The solution to the volunteer management problem is
the assignment of volunteers to the different shifts at
one of the centers. We represent this solution by a set
of binary variables that assumes a value of one if a
volunteer is assigned to a specic shift at a particular
center, and a value of zero otherwise. A second set of
integer variables represents the shortage of volunteers
(in terms of number of volunteers) for each shift at
each center.
The model has two other sets of binary variables.
The variables in the rst set assume a value of one if a
volunteer is assigned to at most one shift on a specic
day, and assume a value of zero otherwise. The vari-
ables in the second set assume a value of one if a vol-
unteer is assigned to both the morning and afternoon
shifts in the same day, and a value of zero otherwise.
We included these two sets of variables in the model
to manage per diem allowances more efciently.
As we explain above, the organization must collect
data related to volunteer preferences to use the model.
We suggested that it consider volunteer seniority;
however, it felt that implementing a seniority policy
would affect the retention of the newer volunteers.
Therefore, the model gives the same priority to the
preferences of all volunteers.
The organization also must specify the available
budget for the scheduling period and the per diem
rate it will pay each volunteer. A model constraint
uses these two parameters to ensure that the total
schedule cost does not exceed the available budget.
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
258 Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS
Another step in the development of the model
involved translating the various policies into model
constraints. With respect to the number of volunteers
required per shift, a set of constraints in the model
uses this information to ensure that an appropriate
number of volunteers is assigned to each shift. It
uses a different set of constraints to balance short-
ages among shifts and centers. These constraints use
the maximum allowed size of volunteer shortages
per shift to limit shortages across all shifts over the
scheduling horizon.
Finally, two additional sets of constraints place
upper limits on the number of shifts a volunteer may
work and on the number of undesired assignments.
The underlying premise is that volunteers should be
treated fairly and that they should not be under-
worked or overworked.
Designing the Graphical User Interface
Because the users of this model are individuals who
are somewhat familiar with using spreadsheets but
have no knowledge of optimization, we designed
the model worksheets and forms to make the data
entry procedures, the solution process, and the report-
ing functions as easy as possible to use. The system
(see Figure 2) uses Excel as the software platform;
D-Aid volunteer scheduling system
Manage volunteer
information
Problem parameters
and what-if analysis
Review results
Review and print
schedules
Help
Figure 2: The screenshot shows our systems main menu.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) provides addi-
tional automation and data analysis capabilities. The
ability to augment Excels capabilities with VBA
makes it a powerful and visually interactive modeling
environment for building decision support systems.
The major functions provided include access to
a worksheet in which the volunteers contact infor-
mation and their shift and center preferences can
be maintained and updated for the current schedul-
ing period. The menu also allows a user to navi-
gate to a worksheet in which he/she can enter all
the parameters (other than the individual volunteer
parameters) described in the appendix. This work-
sheet extensively uses data validation to enforce the
relationships among the parameters and to ensure
that the values entered are valid. After entering all the
parameters, the user must click on a solve button
to run a VBA macro, which formulates and solves the
model. A relevant feature of this worksheet is that it
allows the user to change any parameter and analyze
what happens to the values of the three objectives in
the optimal solution (see Figure 3).
The individual volunteer results are then available,
via the menu, on another spreadsheet, in which the
user can print the results to distribute to the volun-
teers. A help function is also available to assist the
user in navigating and using the system. The user
interface provides the organization with an Excel-
Objective weights
Undesired assignments 6
Solve problem
View detailed
results
Results
Objective values
Undesired assignments
Labor shortages
Total schedule costs 1,120
8
9
Values %
15
13
86
3
1
Labor shortages
Total schedule costs
Figure 3: The system provides the user with what-if functionality. This
Parameters worksheet illustrates how a user can easily change any
objective weight, click on the solve button, and quickly visualize any
changes in the optimal solution.
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS 259
based decision support tool in a user-friendly and
straightforward setup.
Results
The nal step of our model development process was
to test the performance of the spreadsheet-based opti-
mization model to measure its impact on the clients
operations. For this purpose, we compared the per-
formance of the organizations manual scheduling
approach to that of our optimization model.
The data we used to compare the two approaches
consisted of 13 periods of volunteer preferences,
which we entered into spreadsheets. We then devel-
oped schedules using both approaches (i.e., manually
assigning volunteers on an FCFS basis and our opti-
mization model), and calculated the results obtained
with respect to the three objectives. Finally, we per-
formed three paired-sample hypothesis tests (one for
each objective) to determine if any statistically signif-
icant differences existed between the performance of
the two approaches. Figures 4, 5, and 6 compare the
results of the two approaches.
Because treating volunteers fairly and accommo-
dating their preferences was the organizations most
important objective, we gave it the largest weight
in the model formulation; our new optimization
model was able to reduce the average percentage
of undesired assignments from 22 percent to almost
17 percent (i.e., a relative decrease of 23 percent).
The hypothesis test indicated that the average results
obtained with the optimization model for the unde-
sired assignments objective were signicantly lower
than the results obtained with the FCFS approach at
the 0.05 level of signicance (n =13).
(
%
)
25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
FCFS approach Optimization
model
Undesired assignments
Mean percentage of
undesired assignments
Figure 4: The graph compares the mean results obtained using both solu-
tion methods for the undesired assignments objective.
(
%
)
15
10
5
0
FCFS approach Optimization
model
Mean percentage of
unfilled assignments
Labor shortages
Figure 5: The graph compares the mean results obtained using both solu-
tion methods for the labor shortages objective.
However, the percentage of unlled assignments
was reduced from 16 percent to 15 percent (i.e., a rela-
tive decrease of 6 percent). The reduction in shortages
was less than that of the number of undesired assign-
ments because this objective received a lesser weight
in the model formulation.
As we discussed above, the client organization feels
that accommodating volunteers preferences is more
important than letting some stafng needs go unmet;
this preference is reected in the model results. The
results of the hypothesis test indicated that there were
no statistically signicant differences between the two
approaches with respect to labor shortages at the 0.05
level of signicance. However, a relative benet of the
model is that by incorporating labor shortages (see
Equation (8)), the decision maker can balance those
shortages among shifts and centers.
With respect to the third objective, total sched-
ule cost, the average percentage of utilized budget
was reduced from 94 percent to 82 percent (i.e., a
relative decrease of 13 percent). The hypothesis test
for the cost objective conrmed that the average
(
%
)
100
75
50
25
0
FCFS approach Optimization
model
Schedule costs
Mean percentage of
budget utilized
Figure 6: The graph compares the mean results obtained using both solu-
tion methods for the cost objective.
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
260 Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS
results obtained with the optimization model were
signicantly lower than the results obtained with the
previous approach at the 0.05 level of signicance. It
is relevant to note that although this objective was
the least important (and thus received the smallest
weight in the formulation), the model was able to
optimize the payment of per diem allowances and
save resources by assigning, whenever possible, the
same volunteer to the morning and afternoon shift.
Given the organizations limited budget, these sav-
ings are signicant.
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
In this paper, we discussed how the development of
customized spreadsheet-based decision support mod-
els can help to address some challenges and de-
ciencies faced by a small development organization.
In particular, we developed a scheduling model that
was able to better satisfy volunteers scheduling pref-
erences, thus supporting the long-term retention of
the organizations volunteer workforce. We also dis-
cussed how the new model helped to reduce the
number of unlled assignments and to decrease total
scheduling costs.
This scheduling model has been actively imple-
mented by the organization for which it was devel-
oped, and has already led to a signicantly better
level of accommodation of the volunteers requested
schedules, and thus a higher level of satisfaction with
those schedules. The client has also observed sub-
stantial savings in the amount of time spent on the
scheduling process as a result of the efciencies pro-
vided by the models use and has observed a decrease
in organizational costs. As with most small develop-
ment organizations, the lack of resource availability
makes savings such as these extremely important for
supporting the long-term effectiveness and sustain-
ability of their operations, even if such savings are
relatively modest in size.
Advances in spreadsheet modeling have made
decision models accessible to many types of orga-
nizations, regardless of their size and budget. In
particular, the use of spreadsheets in our study
represented a low-cost and widely available alterna-
tive that made implementing the project within the
client organization signicantly more straightforward
than it otherwise would have been. Despite such ease
of implementation, however, the new approach also
provided enough exibility and modeling power to
allow us to develop an effective and user-friendly
decision support tool. This tool has already led to
increased support for the clients information man-
agement efforts and has provided the client with more
comprehensive decision-making support by enabling
access to techniques such as what-if analyses for com-
paring scheduling options. Overall, the client has
been very pleased with the model and with the pos-
itive impact that it has had on the organizations
operations.
As discussed above, business disciplines such as
nance have been successful in creating instruments
for poverty reduction in developing countries. Our
example has demonstrated that small, focused appli-
cations of traditional OR/MS topics can also help
in these environments by supporting and promot-
ing more effective and efcient decision making. We
hope that more applications of this kind will con-
tinue to emerge, and that small development orga-
nizations will increasingly have access to usable and
affordable tools that enable greater efciencies in their
operations.
Appendix
Model
Decision Variables
x
ijk
= 1 if volunteer i is assigned to shift at center |,
0 otherwise.
j
|
= Shortage of volunteers (number of persons) for
shift at center |.
o
ilk
= 1 if volunteer i is assigned to one or fewer shifts
on day l at center |.
p
ilk
= 1 if volunteer i is assigned to both the morning
and afternoon shifts on day l at center |.
Data Sets
= The set of all volunteers.
= The set of all afternoon shifts.
) = The set of all shifts in the scheduling period.
K = The set of all centers.
| = The set of all days in the scheduling period.
A = The set of all morning shifts.
G= The set of all objectives.
Falasca, Zobel, and Ragsdale: Helping a Small Development Organization Manage Volunteers
Interfaces 41(3), pp. 254262, 2011 INFORMS 261
Parameters
u
ijk
= 1 if volunteer i prefers not to be assigned to shift
at center |, 0 otherwise.
c = Per diem allowance.
c
|
= Number of volunteers required for shift at cen-
ter |.
] = Available budget for the scheduling period.
.
i
= Maximum number of shifts to assign to volun-
teer i over the scheduling period.
.
i
= Minimum number of shifts to assign to volun-
teer i over the scheduling period.
p
|
= Maximum allowed shortage of volunteers
(number of persons) for shift at center | over
the scheduling period.
u
i
= Maximum allowed number of undesired assign-
ments for volunteer i over the scheduling
period.
.
g
= Weight assigned to objective g over the schedul-
ing period.
Model Formulation
Min .
1

|K
u
ijk
x
ijk

|K
c
|

+.
2

|K
j
|

|K
c
|

+.
3

|K
x
ijk

l|

|K
p
ilk
)
]

(1)
where
.
1
>.
2
>.
3
(2)
st

i
x
ijk
+j
|
c
|
, ) , and | K (3)

|K
cx
ijk
] (4)
x
ijk
+x
i

|
=o
ilk
+2p
ilk
i , A|,

|, l |, and | K (5)

|K
u
ijk
x
ijk
u
i
, i (6)
.
i

|K
x
ijk
.
i
, i (7)
j
|
p
|
, ) and | K (8)
x
ijk
{0, 1] i , ) , and | K (9)
j
|
0 and integer, ) , and | K (10)
o
ilk
and p
ilk
{0, 1], i , l |, and | K. (11)
The objective function, (1), minimizes a weighted
combination of the percentage of undesired assign-
ments, the percentage of unlled slots, and the per-
centage of the budget used. Equation (2) formalizes
the relationship among the organizations three objec-
tives. As we explained in previous sections, the per-
centage of undesired assignments must receive the
highest weight, whereas the percentage of utilized
budget should be assigned the lowest weight.
Constraint set (3) tries to ensure that an appropriate
number of volunteers is assigned to each time shift at
each center to satisfy the workload requirements as
determined by the organization. Constraint (4) makes
certain that the actual schedule costs do not exceed
the available budget, whereas constraint set (5) is used
to more efciently manage the payment of per diem
allowances.
Constraint set (6) places an upper limit on the
number of undesired assignments for each volun-
teer over the scheduling period. Constraint set (7)
ensures that volunteers receive an adequate num-
ber of assignments, whereas constraint set (8) bal-
ances labor shortages by placing an upper limit on
the shortage of volunteers per shift over the schedul-
ing horizon. Finally, Equations (9), (10), and (11) sat-
isfy the different binary, nonnegativity, and integrality
conditions for the decision variables.
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The editor in chief has received a verication letter
from the client attesting to the impact of this work on
the organization. The author of the letter, who wishes
to remain anonymous, wrote: We use the program to
make decisions regarding when and where to assign
volunteers. The main benet of the program is that it
allows us to accommodate better the requests of our
members. This is important because we work with
volunteers who have very limited availabilities.
Needless to say, the program generates schedules
in seconds, saving us time. It also allows us to keep
all the information we need in one location. The pro-
gram has even helped us save nancial resources by
handling very efciently the way we assign daily
allowances.
In sum, the program helps us reduce the admin-
istrative workload and allows us to carry out our
volunteer management activities faster and more
efciently.

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