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

You may want volunteers to meet certain requirements to register for your site or respond to Opportunities. The Qualifications area on your site is where you'll create those requirements! This tool also helps ensure volunteers are matched well to the Opportunities they respond to. In this article, we cover:

• Why use qualifications? 
• How to create a qualification 
  • Question types and descriptions
  • Permission types and descriptions
• How to add qualifications to user registration
• How to set up a waiver 
• Examples from the volunteer perspective

Why use qualifications? 

Qualifications are a great tool for matching volunteers to Opportunities they qualify for. It's also helpful in ensuring other requirements are met, including: 

• Having volunteers review your organization's privacy policy during the registration process
• Sharing important content that volunteers must review before responding to or viewing posted Opportunities
• Bringing attention to important areas on your site, such as Custom Pages or other important elements that you want volunteers to be aware of when they register or interact with your Opportunities
• Getting answers to important questions to verify the volunteer meets the minimum requirements to participate with your organization or volunteer for your Opportunities

How to create a qualification 

You can create and manage qualifications for your site from the Qualifications area:  

1. Go to Volunteerism > Qualifications.

2. From the Manage Qualifications page, click Add New Qualification. 

3. Start creating qualifications! 

Once you're on the Create Qualifications page, you'll see several options for setting up your qualification, like status, type, duration, etc. Here's a breakdown of each section: 

• Status: The default status is Active, which means the qualification is shared publicly on your site once you finish creating it. Inactive status is for when you want to deactivate or remove a qualification. 
• Type: There can be up to seven question types to choose from, depending on how your site is configured. What you choose depends on what kind of question you want to ask volunteers: 

ⓘ So you know: The seventh type is Background Check, which is only available when you have the First Advantage integration activated on your site. 

• To learn more about this option, click here. 

Question types and descriptions

Question Type	Description
Small Text Field	This provides a blank field for volunteers to write in a short reply.  When to use: volunteers need to provide a short answer to your Qualification question.
Large Text Field	This provides a blank field for volunteers to write in a longer reply.
Dropdown	This provides a dropdown selection for volunteers to choose an answer you provide.
Radio Button	This presents answers that you provide with buttons for volunteers to select from.
File Upload	This gives volunteers the option to submit a file with their answers.  When to use: volunteers need to submit supporting documents (e.g., a copy of their driver's license).
Waiver	This requires volunteers to sign a waiver when submitting the qualification.  Note: You must create a waiver first and then you can select that waiver from the dropdown. If you haven't already created a waiver, when you select this type, then a Create New Waiver button appears.
Background Check	This prompts users to complete a background check through First Advantage.  Note: This is only available if you have set up the integration with First Advantage on your site. Click here for more information.

• Title: The title appears in the volunteer's qualification table, Opportunity form, etc. 
• Question: This is the question you want the volunteer to answer. Type it here as you want it to appear for the volunteer. 

✏️ Quick tip: If you have a waiver-type qualification, you might write "Please sign this waiver" in the Question field. 

• Auto Approve: You can choose to have volunteers' answers to the qualification auto-approved by selecting Auto approve from the dropdown here. The default setting is No, which means you'll need to approve any Pending Qualifications that are submitted to your site. 
  • Click here for information about reviewing and approving submitted qualifications! 
• Permissions: Here you can decide how volunteers must interact with qualifications on your site. 

ⓘ So you know: You can always bulk add your qualifications to several Opportunities at once. Click here for more information. 

Permission types and descriptions

• Duration: There are ten duration types available in the dropdown: 

• User-provided date: Select this option if you want volunteers to provide an expiration date when they answer the qualification question. 
• 1 or 2 weeks: These are great options for health-related waivers—e.g. if you want volunteers to sign a waiver that they haven't had any signs or symptoms of illness in the last two weeks. 
• 1 or 6 months
• 1, 2, or 3 years
• First of the year
• Forever

ⓘ So you know: These dates reflect when the qualification is answered and added to the volunteer's profile—not the date they're approved. 

• Add content link: Toggle this On to add content to a qualification. The Link URL and Link Text fields appear when you toggle it On: 

✏️ Quick tip: This is helpful if you want to have volunteers review your organization's privacy policy on a custom page you've created or if you'd like to share any other links to additional content for their review when answering a qualification. 

ⓘ So you know: If you recently upgraded your site to Amplify, you may have the option to add Qualification Categories. Qualification categories help Site Managers sort and find Qualifications when adding them to a volunteer Opportunity. They are not visible to volunteers or contribute to reports. 

How to add qualifications to user registration

You can also add qualifications for users to complete when registering on your site. After you create the qualification, you can add it to user registration in the Tracks area of your site. 

1. Go to Volunteerism > Tracks. 

2. Select the Track you wish to enable a qualification on. 

3. Click the Qualifications tab. 

4. Under Show and Require, check which qualifications you want assigned to that Track. 

5. Be sure to click Update Qualifications to save your changes. 

How to set up a waiver 

You can create and assign waivers to qualifications as necessary. 

To set up a waiver: 

1. Navigate to Volunteerism > Qualifications. 

2. On the Manage Qualifications page, click Waiver Setup. 

3. Select Add New Waiver. 

4. On the Manage Waiver page, start setting up your waiver: 

5. For Waiver Type, select if the waiver is for Adults and Minors, Adults Only, or Minors Only. 

✅ Best practice: If you have a waiver that requires both adults and minors to sign it before they can volunteer, then select Adults and Minors. 

• The site directs the user to either the adult or minor version depending on their birthdate. 

6. Name the Waiver. 

7. Click Submit. 

8. You'll be prompted to upload a .pdf of your waiver. 

9. Add signature and date fields for your volunteers. 

• To add date, initial, or signature fields, click and drag the element you want to add to your waiver and place it where it needs to be in the document for signing:
  

• Once you've applied the signature fields where they need to go, click Submit Page:
  

• Now that your signature fields are in place, click Finalize Waiver(s):
  

ⓘ So you know: You can reassign the fields if necessary by clicking Re-assign Fields. 

• If you click Finalize Waivers, you won't be able to re-assign those fields. 

10. From here, you can either create a new qualification to attach the waiver to or select Done.

• If you select Done, the waiver appears in the dropdown menu when you create a new qualification and select Waiver as the question type. 

ⓘ  So you know: Some sites have language overrides in place. This means one site might use prerequisites, another may use qualifications. Please contact us if you'd like to request any language overrides for your site! 

Examples from the volunteer perspective

Here are some examples of what qualifications may look like from the volunteer perspective, depending on their purpose: 

• In this example is a qualification with the permission setting Required to View Any Opportunities: 
  

• If you have a qualification with the dropdown option for volunteers to answer a question before responding to any Opportunities, it may look like this:

• If you have the file upload option set up for volunteers to submit supporting documents when viewing or responding to an Opportunity, it might look like this: 

• If you want to have volunteers review content during registration or when responding or viewing an Opportunity, your qualification could look like this:

• You can also use qualifications to ask important questions when a volunteer first registers with your site. These questions appear in the final step when they fill out the registration form for your site: