Adding Subscribers To Your Volunteer Network : The Social Collective

With your organisation on the platform, you can bring your existing volunteer network with you and attract new volunteers who may not have known about you before. On the platform we call these networks of people "Subscribers".

About Subscribers

Subscribers are people who wish to stay updated about the volunteer opportunities your organisation organises. They are existing members of your organisation; members of your partner organisations who are also interested in your work; or members of the public who find your volunteering opportunities and are interested in your organisation’s mission.
A person can subscribe to your organisation by clicking the Subscribe button on the Organisation page. Subscribers automatically* get notified via SMS and email every time a new opportunity/activity/programme is uploaded by your organisation. *This can be turned off to prevent spamming your subscribers.
Subscribers can sign up quickly and easily for new opportunities/activities/programmes or they can be added in bulk by you (the organisation administrator).
Subscribers can also share opportunities with their friends on social media sites to create more awareness and help increase the organisation’s volunteer network.

Adding Subscribers Individually

To add volunteers or members to your organisation as subscribers, the single upload is a quick way to add a small number of subscribers. Follow these steps:

1. Log in to the platform and click on Organisations

2. Find the organisation that you would like to add subscribers to, and click the Organisation’s name or the [Manage] button on the right-hand side of the screen.

3. On the Organisation’s dashboard, click on the "Add Subscriber" button, and fill out the details for individual subscribers on the form that appears.

4. You will need people’s full names, mobile numbers and email addresses (if emails are available). All personal information you upload is kept private. Click "Add Subscriber" at the end of the form when you're done. That person will now be on your organisation's subscriber list and they will receive a notification that they have been added to it. They will also be automatically notified when your organisation has opportunities and invites its subscribers. Read more about managing opportunities and volunteers here.

Using Bulk-Add to add a lot of subscribers at once

For large groups or databases, "bulk-uploading" volunteers means taking your existing list of volunteers that are already on your personal records and uploading them in a .csv file format so that the details can be saved as subscribers on the platform.

A .csv file can be created in any Excel document or Google Spreadsheet. For help converting your files to .csv files, please read Microsoft’s guide if you’re using Excel; or Google’s guide if you’re using Google Docs. To do it on Google Spreadsheets, see the screenshots below as an example.

Volunteers' details in the document or spreadsheet must be listed in columns in the order of: firstname, lastname, email, cellphone number. This order is very important for organising the information, but you need to delete the headings when you upload your file. (If you keep the headings, “firstname, lastname” will appear as a Subscriber, which is incorrect!)

Saving Cellphone Numbers

The phone numbers need to be saved in a Text format so that the 0 is included in the front of the number. To make sure your cellphone numbers appear correctly, make sure that the Number format is set to Text (see image below). If you’ve already filled out all the numbers, convert them to the right format as follows:

Highlight the mobile numbers by clicking on the column letter (column D in image below).
Select “Text” from the drop-down box above “Number” to make sure all numbers are written in text format.
Then fill in the 0 for each number so that it is saved correctly (eg: 0721231234 instead of 721231234)

Then, when all the information is stored on the spreadsheet in the correct format, save it as a .csv file...

If you’re on Excel or Google Spreadsheets, click File > Save As > CSV. Give your file a name, and click Save. You might get a pop-up message from Excel telling you that a CSV file “does not support multiple file types”. You can ignore this and simply select OK.

Back on the platform, from your organisation's dashboard click on Add Subscriber again...

...and scroll to the bottom of the Subscriber form and click the link that reads, "We also offer a bulk creation using a csv file. To add subscribers using our bulk creation form please follow this link." (shown below)

You'll be directed to a page that looks like this where you'll upload the .csv file you just created:

Be sure to tick the box that reads, "Skip first line" if your .csv file still contains the headings "first name", "last name" etc.

When the file has uploaded, click "Add Subscribers" to complete your Bulk Upload.

Congratulations! You've now made communication with your network a lot easier. To learn more about managing your subscribers and getting more subscribers interested in your opportunities, click here.