❖ Heads up! This article is intended for Agency Managers.
Engaging Your Community with Events
If you want to grow your Agency's community, creating Events is a great way to do it. These events aren't just for volunteers—you can invite anyone in your community to attend! It's an opportunity to showcase your Agency's mission and vision.
You can host all kinds of events, like celebrations, volunteer appreciation gatherings, workshops (whether weekly, monthly, or annual), or any other community event your Agency participates in. These events are a perfect chance to show what your Agency is doing for the community and highlight the available volunteer roles.
Events vs. Needs: What’s the Difference?
While both Events and Needs play important roles, they are used for different purposes, and it's important to know when to use each one.
An Event is meant to invite people from the community, not just volunteers. It could be a celebration or a community workshop where you want people to attend and learn more about what your Agency does. However, remember that volunteers can't log hours for Events. Events are about engagement, not tracking time.
On the other hand, a Need is all about finding volunteers for specific tasks. These are the opportunities where volunteers can get involved and contribute their time. Volunteers can track their hours only for Needs, as these are the roles they are directly helping with.
Creating Events
To get started:
1. Go to My Agency > Events.
2. Click Add New Event.
3. Fill out the Create Event form.
4. Click Create Event when you're done!
Customizing Events
Be sure to fill in all required fields and include as much detail as you want in the Description field:
Description: Use the description field to personalize your event's details. This can be as informative as you'd like! You can use the text editor for this field to:
Include images and links
Add headings
Change your font color to make words pop!
Switch to the HTML source code view and embed videos and more using HTML
Please note that not all embedded videos are compatible with the site.
Start Date/Time & End Date/Time: The dates and times you enter here reflect the date and time the event takes place.
All Day Event: Does your event run all day? Toggle this button to On if you don't have a determined end time for your event.
How to Enable RSVPs for Events
Do you want to allow eventgoers to RSVP ahead of time? You can enable RSVPs and set a capacity if your event has limited space for attendees!
Enable RSVPs: To enable RSVPs for an event, toggle this button to On. When you toggle this on, the option to add a capacity appears.
RSVP Capacity: This is for the maximum event capacity. If you want an unlimited capacity, leave this as 0.
Two notifications are triggered when a volunteer RSVPs for an event:
A confirmation email with the event information is sent to the volunteer
A notification is sent to you to inform you of the RSVP
If an RSVP capacity has been met for an event, then when someone tries to RSVP they receive a message that the event is full. Their RSVP is changed to "maybe" and you get an email notifying you of their interest in the event.
Editing Existing Events
To get started:
1. Go to My Agency > Events.
2. Select the event you want to edit.
3. Make the necessary edits and be sure to click Update Event to save your changes.
Cloning Events
Do you have an event that your agency plans to host on multiple occasions or at different locations? For instance, maybe you host a monthly workshop or plan to host a reading event at multiple library branches.
The best practice is to clone the event as a new one instead of just updating old information. Cloning an event also allows you to create a unique event ID for your records and reporting. To get started:
1. Go to My Agency > Events.
2. Select the event you want to edit.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the Update Event page.
4. Click Clone Event.
A popup appears to confirm your selection. Click Yes to confirm or No to cancel. This opens a Create Event page with all of the information and settings from the original event copied over. The title includes (copy) at the end of the cloned event.
Be sure to update the title with something unique to differentiate it from the original event. e.g., Do you have the same event happening at different locations on different days? Change the title to reflect the location, like:
Read-A-Thon—The Gloria County Library East Branch
5. When you're done making the necessary changes to the cloned event, click Create Event to finish!
Deactivating an Event
To get started:
1. Go to My Agency > Events.
2. Check the box or boxes beside the event(s) you want to deactivate.
3. Click the trash can icon beside Actions. A popup appears to confirm your selection. Click Yes to confirm or No to cancel.
You can also click the event you wish to deactivate and scroll to the bottom of the page to click the Delete Event button.
Deactivating an event doesn't delete it completely from the Agency. If you want to reactivate a deactivated event, please contact your Site Manager to have them change the event's status from inactive to active for you.
Exporting Events Data
To get started:
1. Go to My Agency > Events.
2. Check the box or boxes under the ID column for the events you want to export data for.
3. Select the export button beside Actions that you need.
You can export your RSVPs or Events.
When you click the export you want, it downloads as a CSV to your desktop.
The Volunteer Perspective
Want to see how your events appear to your volunteers? You can by clicking View for the event you want to review!
1. Go to My Agency > Events.
2. Click View for the event you wish to review.
3. This takes you to the front end where you can see how your event appears to volunteers and test out responding to it.
The buttons to respond are only present when you have enabled RSVPs.