Volunteer Database

A volunteer scheduling system for festivals and community events, originally built for Apogaea and now maintained by DenverBurners.

What It Does

This platform helps event organizers coordinate volunteer shifts across departments, manage role-based access, and track training certifications. It's designed for events that need to staff everything from greeters and gate ticket checkers to certified positions like emergency medical response, fire safety, and conflict de-escalation.

Events and Departments — Organizers create events and break them into departments (e.g. Gate, Medical, Fire, Rangers). Each department can have its own set of shifts across the event's schedule.

Shifts and Slots — Shifts define the work that needs doing: what time, how long, and how many volunteers are needed. Each shift is broken into individual slots that volunteers can sign up for.

Roles and Permissions — Every shift can be gated by permission level to ensure volunteers have the right training or certification. The built-in roles include admin, volunteer, medical, fire, ranger, ranger-khaki, event-admin, department-lead, photography, and board-member.

Training Verification — Volunteers can upload certification documents (CPR cards, fire training certificates, etc.) through their profile. Administrators review and approve uploads before granting the corresponding role, ensuring nobody signs up for a shift they aren't qualified for.

Password-Protected Shifts — Shifts can also be gated by password, giving department leads another way to control access to sensitive positions.

Roadmap

This project has been in production use for over 10 years. We're actively modernizing the codebase and expanding it into a broader open source event management platform. Most volunteer coordination and event management tools are proprietary and expensive. We believe event organizers deserve software they can own, modify, and self-host.

Phase 1: Infrastructure Modernization

Bringing the project up to current standards while keeping it stable for existing users.

• Dockerized development and deployment environment
• Upgraded to MariaDB 10.11 (from MySQL 5.7)
• Upgraded to Node 16 and Composer 2
• Dynamic UID/GID configuration for portable deployments
• Nginx security hardening (restricted PHP execution)
• Upgrade from Laravel 5.6 to the latest Laravel release
• Upgrade frontend build tooling (webpack to Vite)
• Update PHP from 7.4 to current supported version

Phase 2: Multi-Event Platform

Building out support for multiple organizations and events on a single installation.

• Multi-event database consolidation and import tooling
• Dedicated Playasoft website (replacing the current GitHub redirect)
• Improved onboarding for new organizations
• Modernized UI and mobile experience

Phase 3: Event Management Suite

Expanding beyond volunteer scheduling into a full suite of open source event management tools.

• Broader event coordination features
• Hosted option for organizations that don't want to self-host
• Plugin architecture for community extensions

Contributions are welcome at every phase. See the issues page for current tasks.

Quick Start

Requirements: Docker and Docker Compose.

git clone https://github.com/playasoft/volunteers.git
cd volunteers

# Create your environment config
cp .env.example .env

# Set UID/GID to match your host user (required for file permissions)
sed -i "s/^UID=.*/UID=$(id -u)/" .env && sed -i "s/^GID=.*/GID=$(id -g)/" .env

# Set a real database password in .env
# Edit DB_PASSWORD, SITE_NAME, SITE_URL, and any other values for your environment

# Build and start containers
docker compose build
docker compose up -d

# Install dependencies
docker compose exec app composer install

# Set up the application
docker compose exec app php artisan key:generate
docker compose exec app php artisan migrate
docker compose exec app php artisan db:seed

# Build frontend assets
docker compose exec app cp resources/js/config.example.js resources/js/config.js
docker compose exec app npm install
docker compose exec app npm run build

The site will be available at http://localhost (or whatever NGINX_PORT you configured in .env).

Configuration

All configuration is done through the .env file. Key settings:

Variable	Purpose
SITE_NAME	Displayed on the home page and in emails
SITE_DESCRIPTION	HTML description shown on the home page
SITE_URL	Used in email links sent to volunteers
NGINX_PORT	Host port for the web server (default: 80)
DB_PORT	Host port for MariaDB (default: 3306)
DB_PASSWORD	Database password — change this from the default
UID / GID	Must match your host user for file permissions

Docker Environment

The project runs three containers:

Container	Image	Purpose
voldb-app	PHP 7.4-FPM + Node 16	Runs the Laravel application
voldb-nginx	nginx:alpine	Serves web requests, proxies PHP to the app container
voldb-db	MariaDB 10.11	Database

Common commands:

# View logs
docker compose logs -f

# Run artisan commands
docker compose exec app php artisan [command]

# Access the database
docker compose exec db mysql -u root -p

# Rebuild after Dockerfile changes
docker compose build

# Stop everything
docker compose down

# Stop and wipe all data (database, vendor, node_modules)
docker compose down -v

Websockets (Optional)

For real-time updates when shifts are taken or departments change:

1. Install and configure redis as the broadcast driver in .env
2. Set WEBSOCKETS_ENABLED=true in .env
3. Run npm install in the node/ directory
4. Run node websocket-server.js in the node/ directory (use pm2 or screen to keep it running)

Further Documentation

• Writing Tests and Factories

License

AGPL-3.0