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The President's Volunteer Service Award (of which we were recently named a Certifying Organization) requires all volunteer hours to be validated. This is a problem with hours that are posted in Get Connected that are not in response to a need. Currently, the name and contact info for a person who COULD validate non-opportunity hours is optional. If this were to become a required field, could that person not get an automatic email to validate the hours and then it work like those that are in response to a need? It is unrealistic to contact each and every person to ask if Johnny has, indeed, performed the volunteer services that he claims to have completed.
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7 Comments
Eli Poulos posted over 5 years ago Admin
Hi Catina, thanks for reaching out!
The volunteer hours dashboard shows both pending and approved hours so that volunteers can check on the status of their hours. The resume and the dashboard both show which hours entries are approved and which are pending, can you tell me a little more about why pending hours showing up in addition to approved hours is causing problems? Thanks!
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Catina Swift posted over 5 years ago
Our organization would advocate for only approved hours showing in the Volunteer Resume and Volunteer Hours Dashboard because we have folks requiring volunteer hours for court-ordered reasons. The way the site is set up now does not provide the actual picture and could be used inappropriately. Thanks!
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Nina Rogers posted about 7 years ago Admin
Hi, Linda,
Automated notifications for hours are only sent for hours associated with need responses on the site. The optional individual hours feature was designed so that volunteers could submit hours that were not associated with an agency or a posted need. A site manager can verify the hours from their site manager panel, but because the contact person for individual hours isn't typically the manager of a registered agency on the site (or even a registered user of the site), there is no area on the site for them to verify the individual hours. The contact field is there in case the site manager wishes to reach out to that person to verify the hours.
We are collecting feedback on individual hours here. Your suggestion is included there, but if you would like to elaborate in the comments (beyond what you've written here), you are welcome to do that. Thanks for visiting the forum and sharing your ideas!
Nina
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Linda Chipman posted about 7 years ago
Hi,
We are new to the platform, but just had some volunteers help us with a need that wasn't originally posted. So, I tested adding my hours and placed an agency manager as the person who could validate.
It doesn't appear that the agency manager gets an email stating "Susie Q posted hours, can you please verify?"
It certainly would be beneficial if hours can be verified with anyone that has a vaild email whether they are an agency manager or not.
So--its my understanding that the only hours that can be verified are through a posted need?
I hope you may be looking at ways to make the hours more easily verifiable so that young folks, particularly, can post their hours.
Thank you!
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Lucy Schaich posted over 7 years ago
We are also allowing teens to enter individual hours that they may perform outside of the needs posted on our website.
I don't see any any way for these hours to be "approved" - even if that was a setting for automatic approval. Right now it appears that they stay in the pending status forever.
I would like them to be able to post these hours including who could verify them - but I have a policy of trusting what they have entered. So just having a way for me as an admin to make their status "verified" would be useful.
It would also be great if there was a way to add "individual" hours that may not be associated with an opportunity - but are associated with an organization on our site.
Many volunteers are tracking hours for positions with partner organizations that are not being currently recruited for as a need. The organization contact could be notified that hours had been submitted that require verification.
When teens print out their volunteer resume - they will need to have all of their hours showing up as verified - not pending - in order to receive their awards. Right now I don't see a way for them to do this with individual hours.
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Suzanne Goodrich posted over 7 years ago
I would also like the option to get individual hours verified; many students are finding their own sites (which makes sense for them), but the verification MUST be included. Please add the verification of individual hours as an OPTION for students who enter individual hours.
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Nina Rogers posted about 8 years ago Admin
Hi, Debby,
Congratulations on being named as a certifying organization for the President's Volunteer Service Award!
In Get Connected, "individual hours" are meant to be for the individual's own use, if they wish to log hours that were not with a particular agency on your site. For that reason, we do not require that they be verified by anyone, or even that the individual enter the name of someone who can verify it.
I will add this to my list of suggested enhancements and will bring it up at a future meeting. Thanks for your feedback!
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