❖ Heads up! This article is intended for Agency Managers. 

Do you want to vet volunteers for specific Needs? Are you looking for ways to build a network of volunteers who can respond to those special Needs? Or, do you want to manually schedule volunteers for specific shifts instead of allowing them to choose? 

If you said yes to any of the above, consider creating hand-raising Needs! Here we cover: 

• What are hand-raising Needs? 
• What do I need to do to get started? 
• How it works for you and the volunteer

What are hand-raising Needs? 

Hand-raising Needs are meant to be used as a pre-screener for the volunteers responding to them. These are great for building interest around your Needs before assigning or scheduling volunteers. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when determining if you should create your own hand-raising Needs: 

• Do you want interested volunteers to complete a round of interviews, onboarding steps, paperwork, or special training before they can participate with your agency? 
• Do you want to vet interested volunteers to ensure their skillsets and backgrounds align with your agency's goals and needs? 
• Would you like to compile a waitlist of interested volunteers to assign and schedule as necessary? 
• Would you like to compile a group of volunteers that expressed interest in helping during events of a disaster? 

If you answered yes to any of the above, then hand-raising Needs are a great way to meet those demands!

What do I need to do to get started? 

When considering if a hand-raising Need is right for you, start by identifying Needs that require a special vetting process. If you have a Need that requires more than just an eSign waiver or qualification, you can set it up as a hand-raising Need. Setting up a hand-raising Need requires: 

1. A Need that has multiple steps in the vetting process to ensure volunteers are qualified and a good fit. 

2. A public and private Need that you set up for the process. 

• Volunteers show interest by responding to the public Need. 
  • These should clearly indicate to the volunteer that they're only showing interest for the Need and must complete the vetting process to be approved. 
• The private Need is for after they've been approved. 

✏️ Quick tip: We recommend selecting the Is Ongoing duration type when setting up this Need since it gives volunteers the chance to show interest through a specified date.

3. A site manager to create a User Group with the vetted volunteers and assign the private Needs to it. 

How it works for you and the volunteer

Here are the steps of this process:  

1. The volunteer selects a Need that clearly emphasizes they're only showing interest in the listed Need—not signing up just yet, but rather raising their hand for it. 

• Once they've found a hand-raising Needs, they click Respond.
  • This doesn't ensure they'll be selected and scheduled for that Need. It only means they're interested in volunteering for it.

2. You can then review the responses of interested volunteers and decide to move forward with the application and vetting process from there. 

3. Once the volunteers you've selected to screen have completed all of the steps you require for the Need and are approved, they can then be added to a User Group assigned to the private Need. 

• Please reach out to your Site Manager about creating a User Group for those volunteers. Only Site Managers can create and manage User Groups, including associating Needs with them. 

4. When they're in the User Group, they can access the private Need and respond to it. 

• They won't see the private Need until after they've been added to the User Group with the assigned Need. 
• The private Need has a lock icon in the top right corner of the card, which indicates it's private.

5. Now, you can start scheduling them!