📗 Volunteer Projects

Volunteer Projects

A Volunteer Project is an ongoing, skills-based volunteer opportunity where volunteers donate their skills, expertise or pro bono services virtually or in person. You’ll work together to make sure your volunteers meet the milestones that you lay out. Once you 'start' a Project, employees can no longer sign up for it.

Examples of volunteer projects could include mentoring youth, language practice with newcomers, gift drivers, career advice, capacity-building, board work, etc. 

Creating a Volunteer Project Step-by-Step

• Log-in to your Deed Admin profile.
• Go to Manage Deeds > Under Add Deeds, Select New Deed > Project
• Fill out the fields on the form (Project Name, Details, Volunteer Roles, Point of Contact, Applicable categories, Add a photo or use one of ours, Beneficiary Nonprofit, Project site, Milestones, and whether or not you want the event to be public)
  • Project Name - give it a snappy name to entice volunteers
  • Milestones - while optional, if your project has different stages a volunteer must complete, make sure to point them out. Ex. discovery research for website creation, coding work, website reviewed by marketing team
  • Determine whether application approvals are required or not for each role.
• Once complete go to Publish Status > Set to Published > Submit

Volunteer Project Pro Tips

• When creating your project, you can add additional information needed from volunteers such as a background check, mailing address, etc. 
• You can also make this event a featured Deed and it will show up on the homepage. 
• When selecting an image for your project, we suggest a 1350 x 750 px – image size approx 1MB.
• When the project is underway and you're no longer accepting applications, click Start Project. 

How do Applications Work?

When creating a role, first determine whether an application is required or not. The default setting is for applications to be required. To turn this off, click the below checkbox for the relevant roles:

To approve an application, once volunteers have submitted applications, go to the preview page of the project, click Applicants. This will show you who has applied for which roles, and if you asked custom questions you can review the volunteer’s answers before selecting to Approve or Reject the applicant.

When creating a project if you select External Application and direct volunteers to another website to apply, no further actions are handled in Deed. Volunteers will be prompted to return to Deed to log hours only.

Tracking Volunteer Time

Volunteers will receive automated email reminders to log their volunteer hours against the project. Admins and Organizers cannot track volunteer project time on behalf of volunteers.