After a few completed opportunities, you might be wondering how you can go reward volunteers for all their hard work. The first option to reward volunteers is through Achievement Badges. These badges are attached to volunteer profiles after they’ve logged a set amount of hours. You can also change the names and icons of the badges to match any reward systems you might already have in place.

Task

Set the number of hours needed to unlock each badge and change the name/picture if needed.

The Process

Step One
Go to the Admin Settings Cog.

Step Two
Click ‘Basic TeamKinetic Setup’.

Step Three
Click the ‘Achievement Badges’ tab in the left-hand-side menu.

Step Four 
Change the badges in any way you want.

Creating events is very easy and can be a great way to collate a bunch of opportunities that are related to a specific occasion, e.g. a festival. This will make the opportunities easier for your volunteers to find and easier for providers to manage. 

You can find out more about how we’ve previously helped organise large events in this blog post!

Task

Create an event and add at least one opportunity to it.

The Process

First we’ll create the event.

Step One 
Go to ‘Opportunities & Providers’.

Step Two 
Click ‘Events’. 

Step Three
Fill in the necessary fields and click ‘Add’.

Next, we can either create a new opportunity to be part of the event, or add an existing opportunity to it. 

Creating an opportunity as part of an event

Step One
Go to ‘Opportunities and Providers’.

Step Two
Click ‘Create Opportunity’.

Step Three 
Fill in all fields until you reach the boxes below.

Step Four 
Finish creating the opportunity as usual. 

Adding an existing opportunity to an event

Step One 
Go to ‘Opportunities and Providers’.

Step Two 
Click ‘Opportunities’.

Step Three 
Find the opportunity you wish to add and click on it. 

Step Four 
Click on the ‘Details’ tab on the left-hand-side menu and scroll down until you see the options pictured above to add the opportunity to the event.

By now we should have a volunteer on their first opportunity… but now what? You can now start to manage opportunities, completing tasks such as logging hours for completed sessions, using the chat room to send information to the volunteers on the opportunity, and processing applicants.

To log hours, the volunteer first leaves feedback (if this is mandated by your settings) for the provider/opportunity. Next, they enter how many hours they spent on the opportunity session. The provider/admin then leaves their own feedback for the volunteer and inputs the hours spent volunteering (they should match!).

Note: you’ll only be able to log hours for session-based opportunities if they have already happened and have a volunteer signed up. To log hours now for this task, you’ll need to create a flexible opportunity as hours for flexible opportunities can be logged at any time.

Task

Complete and log hours for an opportunity from both the provider and volunteer side.

The Process

There are a few different ways to complete this one but first we’ll look at how to do it from the admin/provider side.

Step One 
Go to the ‘Opportunities & Providers’ tab.

Step Two
Click ‘Opportunities’.

Step Three
Find the opportunity you want to log hours for 

Step Four 
Click ‘Log Hours’ in the left-hand-side menu.

Step Five 
Leave feedback for the volunteer and log hours.

It’s also important to familiarise yourself with the volunteer’s point of view when learning to manage opportunities in case they have any questions or issues with the process. You can see a video of this process below.

Step One 
From the volunteer homepage, go to the ‘Opportunities With Hours To Log’ box OR the ‘ Opportunities’ tab on the left-hand-side menu.

Step Two 
Click ‘Log’ / ‘Log Hours’

Step Three
Leave feedback for the provider and input the hours spent volunteering.

Now your site is properly set up and looks like your site instead of a generic TeamKinetic system, it’s time to get to work and create your first opportunity. All the different fields to fill in on an opportunity may seem complicated at first but you’ll quickly get the hang of it!

It’s important to get to grips with all these different options so you can go on to create opportunities quickly in the future and save yourself some time. Right now, the basic thing you need to know is the difference between session-based and flexible opportunities.

We covered this in the introductory page of the workbook but it can’t hurt to go over it again!

Session-based Opportunities
Sessions can either be recurring (daily, weekly, monthly, etc) or individual. They’re used for activities that have a specific time/date they need to be completed on.

Flexible opportunities
In contrast, flexible opportunities can be completed at any time. This is great for opportunities that can be done online, such as language translations, or over the phone, such as befriending.

Task

Create an opportunity.

The Process

Step One
Go to ‘Opportunities and Providers’.

Step Two
Click ‘Create Opportunity’.

Step Three 
Fill in all fields with details relevant to your opportunity. 

Step Four 
Click ‘Add’.

We’ve got the system set up, what next? Site customisation can help turn a good looking TeamKinetic system into a great branded system. Just take a look MCRVIP’s site to see what we mean!
To start with, we’ll create a custom front page and footer, adjust colours to match your branding and edit some CSS properties. 

Task

Complete all relevant site customisation options.

The Process

Step One
Click the admin cog in the top right corner.

Step Two 
Click ‘Look & Feel’

Step Three
Go through the following tabs to make your website more personalised:
– Logo (if not completed during registration)
– Colours and Text
– Front Page
– Footer
– CSS