Posting an Opportunity

Objectives:

• Learn the basics of posting an opportunity
• Learn where in the platform you can post opportunities
• Learn to complete the opportunity details and how to edit them when you need to
• Learn how to manage the participants of the opportunity
• Learn how you can send a reminder to the participants
• Learn about downloading the attendance register

Introduction

Do you want to create an event for your organisation and attract volunteers? Do you need to host a volunteering day or run a training program?

Here at The Social Collective, we call these events "opportunities" and you can use this platform to make one.

Where to Post Opportunities

You can add an opportunity on the platform from these places:

1. Opportunities Page
   • Click [Opportunities] at the left-hand sidebar
2. Profile Page
   • Click [Profile] at the left-hand sidebar
3. Quick Stats Page of an Organisation
   • Right within your organisation's dashboard
4. Organisation's Opportunity Page
   • Right within the opportunity dashboard

Opportunities Page

Profile Page

Quick Stats Page of an Organisation

Organisation's Opportunity Page

You can also add opportunities through a feature called "Quick Add". If you quick add opportunities:

• Administrators of the organisation receive an email notification about the added opportunity.
• The added opportunities are made private and hidden from the public.
• Subscribers to the organisation are not notified. You can change this setting on the opportunity management settings.

To know more about Quick Add Settings and how you can set it up, read this article.

Completing the Opportunity Details

After you press the "Add Opportunity" button, you will be facing a lengthy form you have to fill in with the opportunity details.

1. Organisation
   • Which organisation the opportunity you're adding falls into
2. What are you adding?
   • What you want to call the opportunity
   • Avoid using all caps and too much punctuation marks
3. Details and notes about the activity
   • Provide description and notes about the activity
4. Number
   • Fill this out only if you want to limit the number of participants
5. When
   • Data of the opportunity
6. Starting time
   • What time the opportunity will begin
7. Hours
   • How long the opportunity will be
8. Location
   • Where the opportunity is held
   • Complete the full address and the Google map location will automatically update
   • Alternately, you can use Google's mapping feature
9. Activity type
   • If you want to change the types of activity shown, read this article.
10. Outcomes
    • What the skills or outcomes you expect attendees to learn
11. What is the budget for the Opportunity
    • The amount you plan to raise or the budget
12. Add an image for your opportunity
13. Private
    • Opportunities are marked as private to hide this opportunity from all public pages

When you are done, do not forget to click "Add Activity".

Note: If you want to know how to write good opportunities, this article shows you how.

If your platform requests payment, you will be directed to the Payment Page where you will have 2 options to pay for the opportunity. After the processing of payment and approval of your opportunity, your opportunity will appear live on the platform.

Managing the Participants of the Opportunity

You can move on to the next important step in managing your opportunity — the participants. To manage the participants, click [Manage volunteers] at the left-hand sidebar.

There are 8 functions you should know about managing volunteers:

1. Add an individual / Select from subscribers (bulk) / Invite targeted users
   • This is where you can add individuals to opportunities or select from existing subscribers of your organisation. If you're interested in knowing more about managing subscribers and growing your network, read this article here.
2. Shield icon
   • Pressing this icon makes the user an opportunity administrator. This article here explains the details of adding an opportunity administrator.
3. Tag
   • Tagging your users helps you find them better. You can know more about using tags to group and manage your community in this article here.
4. Edit User Profile
   • This directs you to a page where you can edit the user's profile.
5. Status
   • This shows the status of the user in terms of being accepted or rejected in the opportunity.
6. Accept/Remove
   • Where you can accept or remove the user from the opportunity subscriber's list

Editing the Details of the Opportunity

If you need to change the details of your opportunity, click [Edit Details] at the left-hand sidebar.

The items you found on Steps 1-3 are the same details you filled out upon adding the opportunity.

If you need to send a private notice to your participants, head over to Step 4.

By default, quick added opportunities are marked as private. If you need to change it to public, just go to Step 5: Sharing and Notification and click on the slider to YES.

Send a Reminder to the Participants

It's easy to send an SMS and email reminder to the participants any time you need to. To do so, simply click [Send SMS & email update] at the left-hand sidebar.

There are 3 groups of recipients who can receive your message:

1. Accepted Volunteers
2. Pending Volunteers
3. Both

Compose your message on the text-field provided and hit the [Send Message] box once you're done.

Note: Keep it short (within 160 characters).

Download the Attendance Register

Before the set day of the opportunity, your subscribers would have "Counted in". Once they do that, their names would populate a register on the platform. You can download and print the attendance register to save you time and effort from having to create your own attendance register.

To see the register, click [Offline attendance register] at the left-hand sidebar.

On the panels above, you can choose to save and/or print the register.

Note: There are extra spaces on the register for any unregistered attendees that shows up. Complete the report so it would be easy for you to transfer the information online after the opportunity.

After the completion of the opportunity, scan the register and complete the opportunity's report. Read more about uploading a scanned copy of attendance registers and submitting a great report after the opportunity.