Customer Support

You can save time by eliminating emails and phone calls with your group leaders while also increasing group retention and onboarding rates. The steps below will allow your group leaders to:

• View a list of events catering specifically to groups.
• Answer additional questions about their group.
• Register their group for a group activity.
• Indicate the number of group members attending.

While it may take a little time to set up, the result of this process will provide a unique and more efficient experience to group leaders while potentially increasing the information you’re gathering about your groups and group members. In short, group leaders will answer questions about their group and sign up their group for an event. An administrator will then convert that registration to a user group reservation on the event and provide a landing page for the rest of the group members to complete their individual registrations.

Step 1. Create the "Group Leaders" user group.

In order to provide a different user experience for a group of users, they will need their own user group. User groups can allow you to change the questions in a user’s volunteer application, change which events the user can see and sign up for, change how you communicate with and report on groups of users and even change what your site looks like for a group of users.

To create a "Group Leaders" user group:

1. Navigate to the User Groups page and click Create New User Group.
2. Enter “Group Leaders” into the User Group Name
3. If you want this group to exist as a sub-group under an existing user group, select that user group in the Parent User Group field (e.g., you might place it under your “Volunteer Groups” user group).
4. Click Save.

Step 2. Create Configurable Forms questions for the “Group Leaders” user group.

If your organization has an Enterprise-level VolunteerHub site, or if your organization has purchased the Configurable Forms feature, you can create special questions for your site’s volunteer application that only group leaders will see. This will allow you to capture information about new groups expressing interest in volunteering without having them fill out an external web form and manually entering that information later. This step is key if you want to eliminate manual communications with new group leaders.

To create Configurable Forms questions for the “Group Leaders” user group:

1. Navigate to the User Groups page and click on your “Group Leaders” user group.
2. Click User Form in the bar below the group name.
3. Click the orange Add Question button and choose Create New Question.
4. Select a Question Type (e.g., “Text”).
5. Enter a Question Name for your question (e.g., “Group Name”).
6. Enter a Prompt for your question (e.g., “What is the name of your group?”).
7. Check the Require a response to this question box if the question should be required.
8. Click Save.

Keep in mind that group size often varies from event to event. Therefore, you do not need to create a question to ask the group leader for his/her group size, since this is something they will be prompted to provide when signing up for each event.

Step 3. Create a “Group Leaders” landing page.

Providing a new landing page for group leaders can significantly improve their user experience by reducing the amount of time it takes them to find an available group activity as well as eliminating the need for them to contact you to determine which activities are available and will fit their group size. In addition, this can increase the number of groups your organization can onboard, as the inability to find eligible group shifts can actually deter new groups from expressing interest.

To create a “Group Leaders” landing page:

1. Navigate to the Landing Pages page and click Create New Landing Page.
2. Enter “Group Leaders” into the Name
3. Enter “groupleaders” into the Link
4. Select the “Group Leaders” user group in the User Group field under the Behavior section.
5. Select the "Group Leaders" user group in the first Workflow option.
6. Verify that Social Media is turned off by checking the Override the default look and feel box and ensuring the Social Media box is unchecked.
7. If desired, customize the Messages section to ensure the information in each message pertains to group leaders.
8. Click Save.

Step 4. Reserve group activities for the “Group Leaders” user group.

Reserving group activities for the “Group Leaders” user group will allow your group leaders to access those events in the new landing page as well as indicate the number of attendees for each event.

To create a reservation for “Group Leaders” on an event:

1. Navigate to the Events page and click on the name of the activity you want group leaders to be able to register their group for.
2. Click the Add Reservation button.
3. Select “Group Leaders” from the drop-down at the bottom of the page.
4. Click Register User Group.
5. Toggle Reservation Overflow to On.
6. Change the Default Maximum Party Size from 1 to the maximum group size for the event. For example, if the event has 100 slots and you want groups of no more than 20 to register, enter “20” here. If you want a group to be able to fill the entire event, enter the same limit you put for the Event Slot Limit in the event’s Edit page.
7. Click Save.
8. If individuals should not be able to register for this event, toggle Reservation Overflow to Off within the Unaffiliated reservation settings. To allow individuals as well as groups to register, leave the Unaffiliated section as is.

Don’t forget that this step will need to be completed for any new group events you add to your VolunteerHub site in the future. Because reservations must be created for each instance of an event, we highly recommend using the Multi-Event Editor to add the reservation to all group activities at once, which will save you a lot of time!

Step 5. Ensure the event is set to notify the Event Contact.

You’ll need to know when a group leader registers his or her group for an event. To receive a real-time notification, simply enable the option Send confirmation/cancellation email to event contact.

To receive this email:

1. Navigate to the Events page and click on the name of the activity you want group leaders to be able to register their group for. (To update this setting for all future instances of a Recurrence Template, instead navigate to the Recurrence Templates page to find your event.)
2. Click Edit in the upper right corner.
3. Ensure the user selected in the Event Contact field is the person/email address you want to receive the notification when a group leader registers his/her group.
4. Scroll down to the Notifications section and check the box for Send confirmation/cancellation email to event contact
5. Click Save.

Step 6. Make the “Group Leaders” Landing Page public.

The final step to prepare your site for the new group leader experience is to make your new “Group Leaders” page accessible. To do this, simply add instructions to your organization’s primary website specifically for group leaders to follow.

For instance, in the Volunteer page of your organization’s website, you will have instructions for Individuals to click on a button to start volunteering (and that button will be linked to your default landing page most times). For groups, on the other hand, you will provide separate instructions stating that members of returning groups should use their group’s specific landing page, whereas the leader of a new group who’d like to express interest in volunteering with your organization should click a special link directing them to the new “Group Leaders” landing page.

So what does this all look like to a group leader?

Once the group leader clicks that link, they’ll first see all opportunities available to groups (i.e., the events you reserved for “Group Leaders”) as well as how many slots are available on each. Next, they’ll create an account and complete the volunteer application, which consists of the User Form within the “All Users” user group in addition to the questions in the User Form within the “Group Leaders” user group since the landing page they are creating their account in has auto-joined them to “Group Leaders.” Finally, the group leader will complete their registration for the event. That registration will include a page asking for the user’s party size, at which point the user can indicate the size of their group.

Step 7. Convert group leader registrations to user group reservations.

Whenever a group leader registers for a group event in your site, your Event Contact will receive an email notification. At that point, you need to return to that event to convert the group leader’s registration to a true reservation, which will segment off the necessary number of slots on that event so that only other members of that leader’s group can register themselves for the event.

Note that this step is only necessary if you intend to track each group member. If you want to track only the group leader and number of participants, you may stop after Step 6.

To build a user group and landing page (for a brand new group only):

1. Search for the group leader’s user account and click on it to view his or her profile.
2. Find the user’s response to your question asking for their group name.
3. Navigate to the User Groups page and add a new user group for that leader’s group. Be sure to select the “Admins Only” option under Membership Control. If group members will be creating accounts and registering upon arrival to the event, check the box for Allow new users to join this group via the kiosk.
4. Navigate to the Landing Pages page and add a new landing page for that leader’s group. Be sure to choose both display events with reservations for that User Group and when any user visits this landing page, add them to the User Group.

To convert the group leader’s registration to a user group reservation:

1. Navigate to the Events page and click on the name of the activity your group leader registered for.
2. Click Add Reservation button and find the group.
3. Click Register User Group.
4. Enter the number in the group leader’s Slots field into the Slots Reserved field for the group reservation you just added.
5. Click Save.
6. Click the ellipsis (...) button to the right of the leader's registration and select "Edit Registration" from the menu that appears.
7. Change the Slots for your group leader to “1”.
8. Click Save.
9. Move the leader’s registration to their group’s reservation. To do this without triggering any confusing cancellation/confirmation emails, click Register A User below the group name, enter and choose the group leader’s name. Uncheck the box to Send registration confirmation email and click Register User.

Step 8. Confirm the group’s reservation.

Finally, once you’ve converted the group leader’s registration to a true group reservation, simply send the leader an email with a link to his or her group’s landing page to confirm their group for the event. Their group members will each register for the event individually within the group’s landing page, and as a result will be tracked as members of the group so you can report on the group’s activity down the road.

Alternatively, you may have group members create accounts and register for the the event when they arrive via the kiosk.  More information on this can be found here.