❖ Heads up! This article is intended for Site Managers. Click here if you're an Advanced Program Manager. If you're a Program Facilitator looking for more information about reviewing your Opportunities, click here.  

Creating a Program is the first step in sharing your incredible volunteer Opportunities on your site. You must have at least one Program posted on your site before creating an Opportunity. In this article, we cover:  

• How to create an Opportunity
  • Duration types and descriptions
  • Additional Opportunity settings
    • Clickwrap Waivers
• How to update Opportunities

How to create an Opportunity

Before you create an Opportunity, you need to create a Program. A Program is an area on your site where you can create and share volunteer Opportunities with your community. You can customize your volunteer Opportunities to fit your Program needs, for example: 

• If you have Opportunities that require shifts, you can create custom or recurring shifts
• If you have Opportunities that will happen on a specific date, then you can establish that in the duration type settings
• Maybe you have an Opportunity that requires volunteers to wear steel-toed shoes or tall boots—you can specify those requirements when setting up that Opportunity 
• Do you have an Opportunity that's age-restricted? You can set the age minimum and maximum when creating your Opportunities 

There are lots of ways to ensure your Opportunities include all of the necessary information to match your Program objectives. Now, let's create an Opportunity! 

To create an Opportunity: 

1. Create a Program—once you've done that, move on to the next step. 

2. From the left-hand menu of your Site Manager panel, click Opportunities. 

3. On the Manage Opportunities page, select Add New Opportunity. 

From here, you can set up your Opportunity how you want it.  

• Status: You have three status options to choose from in the dropdown. 
  • Active: Active means you're ready to post and share your volunteer Opportunity publicly on your site. Volunteers can see your Opportunities and respond to them when they access your site. 
  • Pending: Pending means you're not quite ready to post and share them just yet. You can create an Opportunity and select Pending if you want to keep it private until you're ready to post it to your site. 
  • Inactive: If an Opportunity has passed or you no longer want to have it on your site, you can set it to inactive. 
    • When an Opportunity is made inactive, it no longer appears on your site for volunteers. Volunteers also can't submit hours to that Opportunity once it's inactive. 
    • You can reactivate an Opportunity by changing the status back to active. 
• Description: The description area for your Opportunities is important because it's where you can:
  • Share your Program or organization's goals, history, impact, mission, purpose, and any additional information you want your volunteers to know about for that Opportunity
  • Highlight what volunteers might be responsible for if they respond and are accepted for that Opportunity. 
  • Include attachments, links, and videos to showcase what the volunteers can expect out of that Opportunity! 
• Privacy: You can set the privacy of your Opportunities to public or private.
  • Public means anyone visiting your site can respond to or view the Opportunities you share.
    
  • Private Opportunities are great for organizations that offer court-mandated community services. 
  • Private Opportunities are also great for assigning an Opportunity to a specific User Group or team. 
    • You'll be able to share a link to the private Opportunity.  
• Duration: Does your organization have Opportunities scheduled for a future date? Do you have a Program that requires weekly shift work or recurring shifts? The Duration field is where you establish those requirements for your Opportunities! There are five duration types to choose from in the dropdown: 

Duration types and descriptions

• Hours: This is the number of hours your volunteers are expected to contribute to the Opportunity. 
  

• Zip Code: Be sure to establish the primary Zip Code where the Opportunity will occur. 
  • If your Opportunity occurs across multiple zip codes, we recommend that you still use the primary zip code here or create additional Opportunities for the other locations. 
    

• Skills & Abilities: The skills you assign here help your volunteers search for and match with available Opportunities.
  

✏️ Quick tip: Remember to click the Create Opportunity button to save your changes!

Additional Opportunity settings

There are several more ways to customize your Opportunities. You can set the number of volunteers needed for an Opportunity, allow teams to register together, assign minimum and maximum ages, and more! These settings let you personalize each Opportunity and include important details for your volunteers, including: 

• Capacity: This field lets you establish the number of volunteer spots needed for an Opportunity. 
• Hours Description: This is the exact hours an opportunity takes place (e.g., 8 am - 6 pm). 
• Allow Team Registration: 
  • Check No if you only want individual responses for the Opportunity. 
  • Check Yes if you want multiple people to be signed up in a team for the Opportunity. 
  • Check Teams Only if you only want to allow teams to register. 
• Minimum and Maximum Age: You can establish the minimum and maximum ages for an Opportunity. 

ⓘ So you know: Setting a Minimum and Maximum Age does not prevent volunteers outside those age limits from responding to an Opportunity. You can set up qualifications to help prevent them from signing up for age-restricted Opportunities. 

• Family Friendly, Outdoors, and Wheelchair Accessible: For these three additional settings, you can select Yes, No, or Not Applicable (N/A). 
  • These are great ways to help your volunteers prepare for the event and know what to expect when they arrive. 
• Attributes: Here you can include additional details about the Opportunity, like: 
  • We'll provide snacks halfway through each shift. 
  • Bring an apron!
  • Wear closed-toe shoes. 
  • Wear your painting clothes!
    

• Virtual Opportunity: You can select Yes here if the Opportunity includes things that can be done from home or other off-site locations. 
  • This is helpful if your Opportunity includes activities like writing, creating graphics, or even data entry, etc. 
• Address: The address is used to share a map with volunteers when they're searching for Opportunities. 
  • This makes it easier to match volunteers to Opportunities near them. 
• Tags: Tags are a great way to share your Opportunities with volunteers and make it easier for volunteers to search for your Opportunities by specific criteria or causes. 
  

✏️ Quick tip: Tags are not visible or searchable by volunteers. You can use these for your information or sorting! 

• Clusters: Clusters are a tool for grouping Opportunities by special causes, outside of the supplied 16 causes. 

✏️ Quick tip: Clusters do not show up for volunteers to see, so we typically only recommend using this if you want to sort Opportunities for your information!

• Additional Notification Recipients: In this field, you can add emails of individuals you want to be notified when an Opportunity has a response.
  • To use this feature, toggle the button On and type in the email addresses in the field that populates. 
    • The emails must be entered on individual lines. 
      

• Designate a Site Supervisor: You can designate a site supervisor, which displays to volunteers when they interact with an Opportunity and appears on the FEMA report. 
  • When you toggle this On, fields populate to enter the name and email address of an individual you wish to assign as the site supervisor. 
    

• Comments: Comments are hidden from the public and other users. 
  • These comments are only visible between you and the other Site Manager if there is one. 
• Clickwrap Waiver: Does your Opportunity require waivers? If you want to add a Clickwrap Waiver for volunteers to agree to when responding to the Opportunity, you can upload it here! 
  • Please note that volunteers must check the box to agree that they've reviewed the waiver and agree to its terms before they can finish responding to the volunteer Opportunity. 

Clickwrap Waivers

Clickwrap Waivers aren't the same thing as Qualification Waivers. A Clickwrap Waiver is simply a waiver that you attach to a volunteer Opportunity. When a volunteer goes to respond to that volunteer Opportunity, they're asked to review the Clickwrap Waiver and then check a box to confirm that they reviewed it and agree to the terms outlined within it. To attach a Clickwrap Waiver to an Opportunity: 

1. Scroll to the bottom of the Create Opportunity form. 

2. Click Choose File and select the file you wish to upload. 

3. If you've finished setting up the rest of your Opportunity, go ahead and click Create Opportunity. 

• If you're adding a Clickwrap Waiver to an existing Opportunity, click Update Opportunity. 

Here's the volunteer perspective for interacting with Clickwrap Waivers when responding to an Opportunity: 

How to update Opportunities

If you ever need to update an Opportunity, then navigate to Volunteerism > Opportunities and click on the Opportunity you need to update in the table: 

• This takes you to the Edit Opportunity page where you can edit the settings as necessary.  
• Be sure to click the Update Opportunity button to save your changes. 
  • If volunteers have started responding to the opportunity, you may want to notify them of these updates by checking the Notify respondents of this update: