❖ Heads up! This article is intended for Site Managers. Click here if you're an Advanced Program Manager looking for information about managing your Opportunities. If you're a Program Facilitator looking for more information about reviewing your Opportunities, click here.
Your Opportunities will require a variety of skill sets—which is where the Skills feature for your site comes in handy! In this article, we cover:
Why should I include skills?
Skills are a great way to match volunteers with your Opportunities. When a volunteer comes to your site, they can search for volunteer Opportunities by cause, location, or even skills! This makes it easier for them to respond to the Opportunities that matter most to them and that they can provide their expertise. For example:
- If you have Opportunities for rebuilding homes, you can add skills like Home Repair, Restoration, or Construction.
- If you have Opportunities that involve working with shelter animals, you might add Animal Care or Veterinarian to your list of available skills.
- Maybe you have Opportunities to work in a food pantry—Cooking, Food Prep, or Food Handling could be the necessary skills that match volunteers to those Opportunities!
Skills can also be customized to highlight your organization's mission and purpose.
How many skills can I have on my site?
You can select the number and type of skills you want to be attributed to your organization's available Opportunities; however, the default number of skills on your site is 16.
- You can choose from the 16 default skills we provide or create your own.
- When you create your own, you can also assign specific colors and icons to them.
- This lets you personalize your skills the way you want.
- You can have the number of skills allowed on your site adjusted in increments of 4.
- We can increase your skills in increments of 4, up to 24 total.
- We can decrease your skills in increments of 4, down to only 4.
✏️ Quick tip: Contact us to discuss increasing or decreasing the number of skills on your site.
How to create custom skills for Opportunities
To start creating custom skills:
1. Go to Settings > Skills. 
2. Uncheck the skills you don't want to include from the default list in the table. 
3. In the field beside the Add New Skill button, type in the name of the skill you want to add. 
4. Click Add New Skill.
5. Be sure to click Submit Skills to save your changes! 
How to customize your skills with colors and icons
Now, once you have added the new skills, you'll see the option to add color and an icon to personalize your new skill:
To add a color:
1. Click the field with the (#) symbol to the left of the Pick an Icon button.
2. You can either type in the hex code or use the color selector by clicking and dragging through the color spectrum. 
3. Once you've found the one you want, click Ok.
4. Be sure to click Submit Skills to save your changes! 
✏️ Quick Tip: You can look up hex codes, use hex codes if your organization has pre-defined colors to use, or use an extension to match colors from other sites, like a Color Picker or Eye Dropper extension.
To add an icon:
1. Click the Pick an Icon button. 
2. Select the icon you want from the list. 
3. Click Submit Skills to save your changes!