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

You can collect important information from volunteers when they submit their volunteer hours by creating custom questions! In this article, we cover: 

• How to set up hours collection settings
  • How to add custom hours questions 
  • Custom hours question examples 

How to set up hours collection settings

To set up your hour collection settings: 

1. Go to Settings > Hours: 
2. Check which fields you want to include on the Volunteer Hours Submission Form: 
   1. To enable one of these default fields, check the box under Enabled in the table; to disable any of them, uncheck the box. 
   2. To require that these fields are completed on the hours submission form, check the box under Required in the table. 
3. Create custom questions to get the information you want! 

✏️ Quick tip: If your site has established user groups, we recommend enabling User Groups on the Volunteer Hours Submission Form. This ensures that those hours are associated with their applicable user groups! 

How to add custom hours questions 

To add custom hours questions:  

1. Go to Settings > Hours. 
2. Scroll until you see Hours Questions and click Add Hours Question: 
3. Fill in the required fields that have an asterisk (*): 
4. Decide what type of question you want to ask: 
   1. Small and LargeText Field: These give your volunteers a blank field to fill in with their answers to the custom question. 
   2. Dropdown: With this option, you'll provide answers that appear in a dropdown menu for volunteers to select from. 
   3. Checkbox: This one provides options with checkboxes for the volunteers to answer. 
   4. Radio Button: Similar to the checkboxes, this one provides options with buttons for volunteers to answer. 
   5. File Upload: This is particularly useful if you want to ask volunteers to upload pictures from the opportunity! 
5. You can mark this as a required question for volunteers to answer when submitting questions by toggling the button to On. 
6. You can also select when this question appears to the volunteer: 
7. Be sure to click Save Custom Question when you're done! 

✏️ Quick tip: When creating custom questions that are dropdown, checkbox, or radio button types, be sure to hover over the help text beside Options. To ensure your answer options display correctly, each answer should be entered on its own individual line: 

Custom hours question examples 

Do you have follow-up questions that you'd like to ask volunteers after they have completed an opportunity? Or, would you like to give volunteers the chance to leave feedback or share pictures from their experience? You can create custom questions for volunteers to answer when they submit their hours to accomplish this. Here are a few example questions that you might consider asking: 

• How was your volunteer experience? 
• Would you like to share any images from the opportunity for us to post on our social media pages? 
• How likely are you to volunteer with us again? 
• Is there anything we can change to improve the volunteer experience with us? 

These are only a few examples of how you can collect important information from volunteers after they've participated in an opportunity!