❖ Heads up! This article is intended for Site Managers. If you're an Agency Manager, click here. 

As a site manager, you can oversee and manage all Needs posted on your site. Agency managers can only manage the Needs of their assigned agencies and may ask for your help. Needs are the volunteer opportunities you or your agencies post for volunteers to respond to. Before you create a Need, you need to set up an agency. An agency is an area on your site where you, and your agency managers, can create and share volunteer Needs with your community. You can customize volunteer Needs to fit your organization and agencies, for example: 

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

Here we cover: 

• How to create a Need
  • Setting up your Need
  • Additional Need settings
    • Clickwrap Waivers
• How to update Needs

ⓘ So you know: Some sites have language overrides in place. This means you may see Needs in place of Opportunities, Programs in place of Agencies, or even Prerequisites in place of Qualifications. Contact us to request a language override for your site! 

How to create a Need

To get started, create an agency! Once you've done that, you can start creating Needs for it!

1. Go to Volunteerism > Needs. 

2. Select Add New Need. 

• This opens the Create Need page where you can start setting up your Needs!

Setting up your Need

There are several fields and options you can use on the Create Need page to customize your volunteer Needs, including: 

• Status: You have three status options to choose from in the dropdown. 
  • Active: Select this when you're ready to post and share your volunteer Need publicly on your site. 
    • Volunteers can see and respond to Needs when they're Active. 
  • Pending: Select this if you're not ready to post and share them. 
    • You can start creating a Need and select Pending if you want to keep it private until you're ready to post it to your site. 
  • Inactive: If a Need has passed or you no longer want to have it on your site, you can set it to Inactive. 
    • When a Need is inactive, it no longer appears on your site for volunteers. 
    • Volunteers also can't submit hours to inactive Needs. 
    • You can reactivate it by changing the status back to Active. 

• Description: Here's where you can:
  • Share your organization's goals, history, impact, mission, purpose, and any additional information you want your volunteers to know about for that Need.
  • Highlight what volunteers might be responsible for if they respond and are accepted for that Need.
  • Include attachments, links, and videos to showcase what the volunteers can expect from that Need.

• Privacy: You can set the privacy of Needs to Public or Private.
  • Public means anyone visiting your site can respond to or view the Needs you share.
    
  • Private Needs are great for organizations that offer court-mandated community services. 
  • Private Needs are also great for assigning to a specific User Group or team. 
    • You can share a link to the private Need for those you want to respond to it.   
• Duration: Does your organization have Needs scheduled for a future date? Do you have an agency that requires weekly shift work or recurring shifts? 
  • The Duration field is where you establish those requirements for Needs! 
  • There are five duration types to choose from in the dropdown: 

• Registration close date Some options change depending on the duration type you select, including a registration close date. 
  • You can decide when the registration closes on a Need so that volunteers can't sign up for it after the close date passes. 

ⓘ So you know: The Registration Closed Date is the date when the Need is closed to volunteer responses.

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

• Zip Code: Be sure to establish the primary Zip Code where the Need will occur. 
  • If the Need occurs across multiple zip codes, we recommend using the primary zip code here or creating additional Needs for the other locations. 

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

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

Additional Need settings

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

• Capacity: This field lets you establish the number of volunteer spots required for a Need. 

• Hours Description: This is the exact hours a Need takes place (e.g., 8 am - 6 pm). 

• Allow Team Registration: 
  • Check No if you only want individual responses for the Need. 
  • Check Yes to allow multiple people to be signed up in a team for a Need.
  • 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 a Need. 

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

• Family Friendly, Outdoors, and Wheelchair Accessible: For these three additional settings, you can select Yes, No, or Not Applicable (N/A). 
  • An additional text field appears when you select Yes for Outdoors. 
    • This gives you the chance to explain what your inclement weather plan is in case bad weather threatens to dampen your volunteer day! 

• Attributes: Here you can include additional details about the Need, like: 
  • We'll provide snacks halfway through each shift. 
  • Bring an apron!
  • Wear closed-toe shoes. 
  • Wear your painting clothes!

• Virtual Need: Select Yes if the Need includes tasks that can be done from home or other off-site locations. 
  • This is helpful when a Need 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 Needs. 
  • This makes it easier to match volunteers to Needs near them. 

• Tags: Tags are a great way to share Needs with volunteers and make it easier for volunteers to search for Needs by specific criteria or causes. 

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

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

✏️ Quick tip: Clusters don't show up for volunteers to see, so we typically only recommend using this if you want to sort Needs for your own information!

• Additional Notification Recipients: In this field, you can add emails of individuals you want to be notified when a Need 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 a Need 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 other site managers. 
• Clickwrap Waiver: Does your Need require waivers? If you want to add a Clickwrap Waiver for volunteers to agree to when responding to the Need, 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 Need. When a volunteer goes to respond to that volunteer Need, 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 a Need: 

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

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

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

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

Here's the volunteer perspective for interacting with Clickwrap Waivers when responding to a Need: 

How to update Needs

If you ever need to update a Need, go to Volunteerism > Needs and select the Need you want to update: 

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