Bring Your Existing Network Inside

Outcomes:

  • Learn about subscribers
  • Learn about adding subscribers
    • Individually
    • By bulk

Introduction


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


For all intents and purposes, let us define what subscribers mean.


Subscribers are people who wish to stay updated about the volunteer opportunities from your organisation. They could be:

  • Existing members of your organisation
  • Members of your partner organisations who are also interested in your work
  • People who were not part of your organisation or partner organisations who are interested in your organisation's mission


A person can subscribe to your organisation by clicking the [Subscribe] button on your organisation's page. (Click here to read more about subscribing to an organisation.) Subscribers automatically receive email and SMS notification every time a new opportunity/activity/programme is posted by your organisation. This feature can be turned off to prevent spamming your subscribers.


Subscribers can sign up quickly themselves for new opportunities/activities/programmes or you can add them in bulk.


Subscribers can also share the opportunities with their friends on social media platforms to create more awareness and increase the organisation's volunteer network.

Adding Subscribers Individually


If you want to add a small number of subscribers, adding them individually would suffice.


To start, access your organisation's dashboard by clicking [Organisations] at the left-hand sidebar.


To find your organisation faster, use the search bar and click the name.


On the dashboard, click the [Add Subscriber] box.


Fill out the form provided. 


You will need the full name, mobile number, and email address (if available). All pieces of personal information are kept private. If the subscriber is already a user on your platform, their details will appear once you type in their name. Select the correct user profile and the rest of the form details will auto fill.


Users who are already subscribed to an organisations will not show up when adding individual subscribers since they are already subscribed to that organisation. If the user name is not appearing when you type in the name, check and confirm if they appear on the organisation's list of subscribers.


Once you are done, click [Add Subscriber] at the bottom of the page.

Note: The subscriber you added will receive a notification. The subscriber will be notified when your organisation posts an opportunity and invites its members. (Click here to read more about managing opportunities.)



Adding Subscribers by Bulk


If you want to add a database or a large number of subscribers, uploading by bulk will save you time. You can take a list of volunteers and upload them in a .csv file format which would save the details on the platform.


A .csv file can be created using Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheet (or any spreadsheet program that supports .csv). (If you need help converting your files to a .csv file format, click here to read Microsoft's guide or Google's guide.) For all intents and purposes, we will be using Google Spreadsheet as an example.


The details in the document must be listed in the order below (left to right):

  1. First name
  2. Last name
  3. Email
  4. Cellphone number


You need to keep this order since this is the order in which the platform would read the information in your document.


Saving phone numbers would prove to be tricky. Spreadsheet programs would read numerical characters as it is. That means, starting a number with "0" like 0721231234 would read as 721231234. The zero would not be shown.


To avoid this, you have to manually set the text format into "Text".


To do this on Google Spreadsheet, click the column letter which represents the cellphone number (most likely, it would be column "D") to select all input within that column.


Then, click the [123] button to bring down different options of format available.


Select [Plain text] from the drop-down menu.

Note: If you input the numbers before changing the format, you will have to put in the zeros again.


To save the file as .csv, click [File] from the menu bar.


Hover over the [Download as] option from the drop-down menu and select [Comma-separated values].


On the platform, access your organisation's dashboard (if you do not know how, check the instructions above).


Click the [Add Subscriber] box.


Scroll down and click the link provided below for the bulk creation form.


On the next page, click the [Choose File] button and choose the .csv file you downloaded.


If on the file you wrote headers such as "firstname', "lastname" etc., tick the box about skipping the first line.


Lastly, click the [Add Subscribers] box to upload the file and add the subscribers.


For more information: