How do Opportunities work on Vome?
If you're managing a one-time event, read this article: How do I set up my portal to organize event-based volunteering?
Opportunities are generally used to describe a job, position, role, activity, task, assignment, etc. (See Example 1 below). There's also reason to consider using the Opportunities module to manage interviews, orientation sessions and/or training sessions (See Example 2 below).
Opportunities and Shifts are two distinct concepts:
- An opportunity is generally a job, while the shifts are the date & time slot pairing instances of that job.
- For scheduling purposes, the number of available spots is tied to the shift and not the opportunity at large.
Example 1:
- Opportunity = Driver
- Shift = Driver - Tuesday Dec. 7th at 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM, or every Monday from Jan 8th - Dec 23rd in 2024.
Example 2:
- Opportunity = Safety Training
- Shift 1 = Safety Training on Thursday, Feb. 8th from 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM, 10 available spots
- Shift 2 = Safety Training on Tuesday, Mar. 5th from 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM, 10 available spots
Imagine you have a Driver opportunity at your organization. It is likely that not every person is eligible to reserve shifts for the Driver opportunity as they may need to provide proof of a drivers license or have access to a vehicle before reserving any shifts.
Therefore, only approved people for the Driver opportunity will be able to view its available shifts and reserve them!
There are 3 pillars of engagement for each opportunity:
1. Scheduling:
- Each opportunity acts as a "container" for a schedule - either one-off shifts, recurring shifts, or a mix of both.
- Volunteers can self-schedule shifts within an opportunity once they've been assigned.
- Admins can assign volunteers to shifts directly and bypass the need to assign the opportunity as it will automatically do so once the volunteer is assigned their first shift.
2. Hour tracking:
- All hours that are logged in the system are tied to a shift, and each shift is under the umbrella of an opportunity.
- Therefore, opportunities are a foundational element of the system to track hours.
3. Grouping volunteers for communication purposes:
- By assigning volunteers to their respective opportunities, you can filter the database by opportunities to find lists of people you want to target for your communication efforts.
- Each opportunity can have an have an auto-generated chatroom
Important things to know when creating new opportunities:
1. You will group your opportunities by category (ex. program, department event, location, site, etc.). People can see the titles, descriptions and cover photos of your categories on your organization's page or when reading the details of an opportunity in a given category!
Think of a category as a folder that can house one or multiple opportunities within it!
2. You will need to select whether the opportunity is On-site or Remote. Opportunities that are on-site can make use of the on-site check-in portal (You can read: How does the check-in/out portal work on Vome?). However, you can still log hours for remote opportunities (How do I log hours for remote shifts?).
3. The recruitment process is how you manage recruitment at your organization. You can choose whether you want new candidates to apply directly for your opportunity or get redirected to a general registration form. For more information, you can read How do I organize volunteer recruitment on Vome?
4. The screening checklist is a method for you to manage the screening process of this opportunity. Once a volunteer applies for the opportunity or gets assigned by an admin, they will be able to view the opportunity's unique screening checklist. For more information, you can read How does the Screening Checklist work for my opportunities?
A screening checklist can include form uploads, interviews, training sessions, orientation, etc.!
5. Building your schedule is one of the more important aspects to consider when creating a new opportunity. When you create shifts (ex: Tuesday 2-5PM, 5 spots available), the shift (or batch of shifts) must be associated to a single opportunity. For more information, you can read How does Scheduling work on Vome?
Only volunteers who are approved for this opportunity will be able to view and reserve spots to it's associated shifts, unless you've enabled a public shift calendar on your form!
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