If you leverage Benevity's Volunteering Catalog, you can curate your own program catalog of opportunities for your people to browse and coordinate volunteering. Which people can do this depends on your program.
Opportunities may be volunteer-hosted or nonprofit-hosted. Nonprofit-hosted opportunities are hosted by the nonprofit and your people must contact the organization to arrange a date and time for the event. In the volunteering catalog, you can find nonprofit-hosted opportunities by checking the Hosted by filter.
Permissions
Anyone with permissions to create volunteering events from your program catalog can coordinate nonprofit-hosted events.
Step 1: Contact the nonprofit
The first step is to find an opportunity and contact the nonprofit to confirm the date, time, and details of the event. Your people can go to Volunteer > Coordinate Volunteering and open a nonprofit-hosted opportunity. Select Contact Nonprofit at the bottom of the opportunity page and complete the form to request a shift.
Enter the following details:
- Preferred date: Choose your ideal date.
- Alternative dates: Suggest backup options.
- Number of volunteers: Indicate roughly how many people will be joining (for example, 8-10 volunteers).
- Notes to organizer: Share any additional information or questions.
- Your name and email: Provide your contact details.
- Data sharing consent: Agree to the consent requirements by checking the box.
Review the details and select Send Request to notify the nonprofit. Check your email for confirmation that your shift request has been received. Coordinate with the nonprofit to finalize the details of your event and, if you need help, contact Benevity using the contact information in the email.
Step 2: Add a volunteering event to your program
Once you have agreed on the volunteering details, the next step is to add a volunteering event to your program.
To add an event:
- Find the relevant volunteering opportunity in your program catalog.
- Answer Do you have a date and time organized with the nonprofit? With Yes.
If your program has allowed customized events:
- Select Create Event.
- Customize the event details, including adding shifts. If you need to leave the event page, you can access your draft by navigating to your profile and selecting My Opportunities.
- Once you've completed the details, Submit to publish or submit for review, depending on your program's settings.
If your program doesn't customize events:
- Select Add Shift at the bottom of the page. This creates an event for you, and directs you to the Shift page to add shift details:
- Shift name: Provide a descriptive name for the shift.
- Maximum number of volunteers: Set a limit for how many people can sign up.
- Start and end dates: Include the relevant dates.
- Time zone: Select the appropriate time zone for the event.
- Volunteering time for the shift: Enter a time if you only need volunteers for a portion of the shift.
- Enable automatic time tracking if you want volunteer time to be automatically tracked for this event.
- Select Add Shift to add as many additional shifts as you need.
- Select Save Shifts to save your shifts.
Once shifts are added, the event is visible to all employees to sign up for.
Sharing your volunteering event
Once your event is published, you can share it with your team or others to encourage sign-ups and fill available spots.