How to Manage Your Hours Collection Settings

Created by Brittany Crow, Modified on Thu, 18 May 2023 at 09:41 AM by Brittany Crow

 Heads up! This article is intended for site managers. Only site managers can edit site settings. 


There are lots of ways you can personalize your site to collect important information for your reporting needs. In your main site settings, you can decide which standard fields appear on the hours submission form and make them a requirement. You can also create custom questions for the hours submission form. These can also be either optional or required, depending on how you set them up. Here we cover:  


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

  • To enable one of these default fields, check the box under Enabled in the table; to disable any of them, uncheck the box. 
  • To require that these fields are completed on the hours submission form, check the box under Required in the table. 

3. Be sure to click Save to save your changes. 

  • Next, you can add custom questions to the hours submission form!  

✏️ 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 (*): 

  • Decide what type of question you want to ask: 
    • Small and Large Text Field: These give your volunteers a blank field to fill in with their answers to the custom question. 
    • Dropdown: With this option, you'll provide answers that appear in a dropdown menu for volunteers to select from. 
    • Checkbox: This one provides options with checkboxes for the volunteers to answer. 
    • Radio Button: Similar to the checkboxes, this one provides options with buttons for volunteers to answer. 
    • File Upload: This is particularly useful if you want to ask volunteers to upload pictures from the opportunity! 

So you know: When you select Dropdown, Checkbox, or Radio Button, an Options text field appears. Be sure to enter each option the volunteer can select from on its own line. 

  • You can mark this as a required question for volunteers to answer when submitting questions by toggling the button to On

  • You can also select when this question appears to the volunteer. 

4. Be sure to click Save Custom Question when you're done! 

 

Custom hours question examples 

Do you have follow-up questions that you'd like to ask volunteers after they have completed a Need? 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 Need 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 a Need! You can create and customize your hours collection questions to fit your reporting needs.