volunteer preferences
Volunteer Help
Introduction
As a registered volunteer you can update your account details, choose opportunities you want to volunteer for – at any school on your profile; record the hours you have volunteered and sign-up to receive emails announcements about future school volunteer events. Collectively, this information is your personal profile and you should not share your account details with anyone that you do not want to make changes.
To sign-in to your account, you must have completed either an online registration process or submitted a volunteer application to your school or district. You should have created an account username and password, if you registered online, or your school coordinator would have created one for you and should have notified you after doing so.
Account Tab
Update Your Account & Contact Details
Once you have logged in to your volunteer account you will see several tabs you can select. The first tab (left-most) is where you can update your account and contact details. Specifically, you can modify your username, as long as it remains unique in our database. Our system will not allow duplicate usernames. You can also reset your account password. If you modify your password it must be a minimum of 8 characters, contain only letters and numbers and is not case sensitive.
In addition to your account username and password you can also update your contact details on this first tab. This includes your full name, home address, your primary and secondary email addresses, and if your school or district is using our text messaging or voice services you can also update your contact details for these notification channels. If you change names, such as when you marry or divorce, you need to update your profile accordingly. In general, your organization will send you volunteer information by email, but you may receive emergency or other announcements on different channels, as well.
Email – You can include a primary and secondary email address on your account. Often this would mean using your work and personal email accounts. We send any email messages to both, if present on your profile. To receive email messages about volunteer events and school news you must have at least a primary address on your profile.
Phone – If your district uses our voice notification services you will see a section for phone contacts including a home, work and mobile number. You change choose which number to receive emergency messages and which to receive non-emergency messages. If you do not choose a number for these types of communications from your school the system will default to calling your home phone number.
Text/SMS – If your district uses our text notification services you will see a section where you can input a smartphone/pda number for receiving text messages. You will need to select your wireless carrier from the dropdown menu, as well.
Volunteer Tab
Change Volunteer Information
On the volunteer tab you can update your volunteer information, which includes details on your profile beyond your basic account or contact details. Here you can change your affiliation with the school district. For example, if you work for the school district in addition to being a parent of a student you should select ‘Staff’ or ‘District Staff’ so the volunteer services department can use this information to save on running a background check.
On the volunteer information page you can also update your background and disclosure details. If your marital status changes you will need to not only change your contact details on the account tab, but also include any previous names – such as maiden name or previously married names here.
Be sure to SAVE any changes you make on this page before going somewhere else on your profile or signing out.
Change Volunteer Preferences
On the volunteer tab you can also change your preferences. This includes the schools where you volunteer and the opportunity types you want to volunteer for at your school(s).
Every volunteer has a registered school on their profile. In general, this is the central office or volunteer/partner center for your district, but could be the school where you initially registered to volunteer. You typically do not need to change your registered school. Your registered school should also appear on your list of preferred schools, as well.
You can choose the school or schools where you want to volunteer. If you volunteer at the school where your child is enrolled then you will want to update this preferred school list when they change grades – for example from 8th grade middle school to 9th grade high school.
IMPORTANT: The system will not automatically change these school preferences for you.
In addition to your school preferences you can also select the opportunity types you’re interested in. This list is a district-wide list of volunteer activities. Select all that you want, or are willing to assist with at any of your preferred schools. If you are open to work on any activity choose all of the activities on the list and add them to your profile.
Finally, if there are specific activities at one or other of your schools that you volunteer for, such as a holiday carnival or book fair, type these details in the text box available at the bottom of the preferences page. Your school coordinator can search for volunteers based on the text you type in this field and use that to contact all volunteers when a specific event is coming up.
Choose Available Volunteer Opportunities
If a school volunteer coordinator creates specific volunteer events in the system and they match your preferences then they will appear on the ‘Available Opportunities ‘ tab. You can choose from the list of available opportunities, review the date/time and description details and then choose to volunteer for that specific event.
Record Hours When You Volunteer
Once you have selected a specific opportunity to volunteer for it should appear on the ‘My Opportunities ‘page of your Volunteer tab. You can select any of these opportunities and record your volunteer hours online.
NOTE: If your school uses our volunteer kiosk and you sign-in using the kiosk at your school’s front office then your hours will automatically appear on your profile associated with the selected event.
If you have not selected a specific event at a school, you can still record your hours by using the school generic opportunity section of the ‘My Opportunities’ page. Here you can select the school where you have volunteered and then choose the date and time when you volunteered. You can add a comment to indicate the volunteer activity in which you were involved and the number of hours you volunteered on that day.
Again, if your school uses our volunteer kiosk and you sign-in through the kiosk your hours will automatically appear on your profile.
District & Schools Tab
Aside from the Account and Volunteer tabs on your profile you will also see a tab for your district central office and may see tabs for your schools. These additional tabs allow you, as a volunteer and user to select news and information that you want to receive in addition to announcements about volunteer events at your school.
Click on one of these tabs and choose any of the news and information groups you are interested in, and your district or school will send periodic updates by email.
