Post a volunteer need
A need is one volunteer opportunity. You create one from your organization dashboard, under the Needs tab. The form is long because opportunities differ wildly, but only four things are actually required.
The short version. A title, a description, a contact email, and at least one island. That is a valid opportunity. Everything else improves how well volunteers can find it and how few questions they have to ask you.
Identity
Title, description, contact email, and an optional website. Also the status, and a featured image, which is the single thing that most affects whether anyone clicks.
Write the title as the thing a volunteer does, not as the name of your program. Someone scanning a list of forty opportunities is reading titles alone.
A Mālama Hawaiʻi visitor-ready switch sits here too, disabled until Kanu Hawaii has certified your organization to host visiting volunteers. See get Mālama certified.
Location
Islands first, and at least one is required. Then how fixed the location is: a specific location, a flexible location, one that varies, or multiple locations. A specific location takes a street address, city, state and ZIP, and the address field will autocomplete.
Scheduling
Three kinds of date, and they behave differently:
| Date type | Use it for |
|---|---|
| One-time | A single date, with a start and end time. |
| Recurring | Something that repeats. You build the pattern, and the form previews the dates it produces before you save. |
| Open ended | Ongoing help with no fixed date. Describe the timing in words. |
Alongside it, the schedule type says how much choice a volunteer has: a set schedule, a flexible one, one that varies, or shifts they choose from.
Volunteer effort
How many volunteers you expect, how long a shift runs, whether the commitment is one-time or ongoing, and a signup limit if there is a hard cap. The limit is worth setting whenever turning people away in person would be awkward.
Self-reported hours approval decides what happens when a volunteer logs their own hours against this opportunity: Inherit org default, manual review, or auto-approve. It overrides the organization-wide setting for this one opportunity. See attendance and hours.
Estimated Shift Hours is doing more work than it looks like. It is what gets credited to each volunteer when you mark them attended, so an opportunity with no estimate credits nothing.
Classification
Four optional lists, and they are how volunteers filter. An opportunity with none of them is found only by people already scrolling past it. Pick the ones that are true rather than all of them.
| List | What it says |
|---|---|
| Causes | What the work is in aid of. Twenty to choose from. |
| Activity Types | What a volunteer would actually be doing. Thirty-two to choose from, and not the same question as the cause. |
| Good For | Who it suits: families, teens, kupuna, groups, visitors, accessible, resume builder. This is the filter a parent or a group leader reaches for. |
| Initiatives and Affiliations | Partner networks and named efforts, where you belong to one. |
Requirements
Minimum age, minimum age when accompanied by a chaperone, and an upper age limit if one applies. A digital waiver URL, if volunteers must sign something before they arrive. And a free text field for anything else: closed shoes, a truck, a background check.
Estimated impacts
What a shift produces, in units you choose: meals packed, trees planted, pounds removed. Estimates here are what later make a report about your organization mean something.
Signup questions
Extra questions asked at signup, which is how you stop needing a follow-up email to every volunteer. Shirt size, dietary needs, whether they can drive. Ask only what you will use, because every question is one more reason somebody abandons the form.
Statuses
| Status | Who can see it |
|---|---|
| Draft | Your organization only. Nothing is public. |
| Pending | Waiting on review before it goes out. |
| Published | Live, once your organization is approved. Volunteers can find it and sign up. |
| Archived | Finished, and off the site, but kept along with who turned up. Archive rather than delete. |
Which status a new need starts on comes from your organization default.
If your organization is already approved, a published need goes live immediately. If it is still pending, the need publishes as soon as the organization is approved.
After it is live
- The Needs tab lists everything you have, in any status, and each one can be edited or archived.
- The Volunteers tab shows who signed up for what, including the answers to your signup questions, and is where you confirm who turned up.
- Every opportunity has a public page you can share, and an embeddable widget that puts your listings on your own website.
Editing a published need takes effect immediately, including for people already signed up. For a change of date or place, tell them as well: the page updating is not a notification. Archiving is the safe way to take something down.