As grep. Also, if you don't use placeholders then there's no need to assign the query to a var before doing it. And the DBI error string would be interesting if it dies. If I wasn't going to use place holders I'd do

$dbh->do("update Volunteer set volunteer_id = $new_id and Number = $ne
+wnumber where id = 2") or die $dbh->errstr;
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... except for grep's reason I *would* use placeholders, so I'd use a slight tweak on dws:

  my $sth = $dbh->prepare("UPDATE Volunteer " .
      "SET Volunteer = ? " .
      "WHERE Date = ? AND Volunteer = 'TBD' AND Number = ?"
  ) or die $dbh->errstr;
  my $rv = $sth->execute($status, $date, $id) or die $dbh->errstr;
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§ George Sherston