Increase participation and engagement by creating a volunteer opportunity in Benevity Volunteer.
Permissions
Volunteer opportunities can be created by administrators, users, or nonprofits. You can create an opportunity for specific teams, for regional areas, or for everyone in your company.
Creating volunteer opportunities
Scroll down for the steps to follow. You can also check out this short how-to video if you prefer to learn by watching.
To get started, hover over the Volunteer tab on the navigation bar and select Create a Volunteer Opportunity. The creation form will open and you can begin filling out the info in each of the sections.
Basics
- Add your opportunity name, summary and description. The summary is the subtitle of your opportunity name and must be less than 100 characters (including spaces).
- Enable rich text to get formatting options like bold, italics, lists, hyperlinks and videos.
- Select any related categories in the Event Descriptor section.
- Add any reporting tags that might be applicable to this opportunity.
- Select Next to go to the When & Where tab. You can come back anytime to make edits.
When & Where
- Enter the start and end date and time. If it's ongoing, don't add an end date. This will leave the opportunity open-ended, allowing you to add more shifts later.
- Add any notes specific to the date and time of the event.
- Choose if the opportunity will be remote or in-person. If it's in-person, add a location name and address.
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Add any notes specific to the location of the event.
Note: If volunteers add the opportunity to their calendar, the info in the Location Notes box will auto-populate in their calendar event.
- Select Next to go to the Contact tab.
Contact
- Add the name and email of the primary contact (info for the primary contact will show on the opportunity page). You can optionally also add the phone number.
- If you want multiple contacts, select Add Another Contact and provide their details. You can add up to 5 contacts per opportunity. And you can choose if you want the additional contacts to also show on the opportunity page.
- Choose if you want the contacts to be notified via email when someone signs up.
- Select the Comments to Volunteering Contact checkbox if you want volunteers to be able to add comments of their own when they sign up for a shift.
- Select Next to go to the Cause tab. Now that you've completed the first three tabs, your opportunity will be saved, but unpublished, on the administrator side of Benevity Volunteer.
Cause
- Pick Yes or No for adding a nonprofit to the opportunity.
- If you choose Yes, add the nonprofit by using the filter and search.
- Select Next to go to the Shifts tab.
Shifts
- Enable the Automatically track volunteer time toggle to have volunteer shifts automatically tracked. Keep the toggle disabled to have volunteers manually track their time.
- Select Add New Shift to, you guessed it, add more shifts.
- Enter the start and end date and time for the shift.
- Enter the volunteering time, the length of time volunteers will participate in the shift. This is different than shift length, which is the total duration from shift start time to end time. Depending on the shift you create, volunteering time could be different from shift length (e.g. shift length is 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but volunteers are only needed for 2 hours). You can also set the time zone for each shift.
- Set the maximum number of volunteers who can sign up for each shift.
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Choose if you want to turn on any of the additional options, such as...
- Deadline to sign up: Do you want to close sign ups at a specific time period before the shifts will start?
- Waitlists: Do you want to create a waitlist? If enabled, people can continue to sign up after a shift has reached its maximum volunteer capacity. Folks on the waitlist will be notified by email if a spot opens up.
- Guests: Can employees sign up their friends and family as guests? If you choose this option, volunteers will see a field inviting them to add guests when they sign up. Note: Guests are included in the maximum number of volunteers for a shift.
- Select Next to go to the Images tab.
Images
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You can add two types of images:
- Small image that's displayed in the top right corner of the event’s page, and as a thumbnail when people browse opportunities.
- Large image that's displayed as a banner at the top of the volunteer opportunity page.
- Browse for the small or large image you want to add and select Upload.
- Edit the image placement. Make sure the image fits within the dimension and size requirements.
- Select Next to go to the Volunteers tab.
Volunteers
- Add information on the skills and interests of the volunteers you want to attract. This comes in handy if people are searching for specific tasks or filtering by the skills and interests they've added in their profiles. Check out a list of the current skills and interests available in Benevity Volunteer.
- Identify whether a waiver is required for the event, and add the link to the online waiver. Note: If you want to make waivers required for all opportunities, contact your Benevity Client Success Manager and they'll help.
- You can add customized questions, like t-shirt size or food restrictions. To do this, select the I need additional information from volunteers checkbox and fill in the fields.
- Select Next to go to the Promotion tab.
Promotion
- Add social media links for volunteers to reference.
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Decide if you want the opportunity to be visible Company Wide, (everyone in your program can see it), or By Invitation, (only people with the URL can see it).
Tip: The By Invitation option is not available if you have already opened the Admin tab and selected a Country for Featured Opportunity. For more information, review the opportunity's settings on the Admin tab.
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Select Next to go to the Rewards tab.
Tip: Promote and share your volunteer event with downloadable and printable QR codes.
Rewards
- Pick the type of reward you want volunteers to earn. If you want to add or edit your existing rewards, please connect with the Client Technical Support team.
- Select Next to go to the Admin tab.
Admin
The Admin tab is only visible to program administrators. This is where you'll go to add more of the behind the scenes pieces of how the opportunity will be published.
- Select the notify checkbox if the administrator who created the opportunity is different than the one who you want to be listed as the author/owner. It will always default to the administrator who created it.
- In the Source dropdown, indicate if the opportunity was created by the company, a user, or a nonprofit.
- In the Approval Status dropdown, indicate if the opportunity will be approved or queued for review.
- If the Publish box is checked, the opportunity will be published to the site and viewable by everyone in the program. You can feature opportunities in the carousel view, under the main Volunteer tab, by selecting Country for Featured Volunteer Opportunity.
- Under Comment Settings, choose if you want volunteers to read and write comments on the opportunity page.
- Select Submit and the opportunity will be published or sent for review, depending on your site settings. If approved, the opportunity will be published and people will be able to start signing up.
All done, great job!
The volunteer opportunity is now published and people can begin signing up for shifts. Here's what the opportunity will look like once it's been published...