The Volunteer Recognition feature allows you to assign point values to your events as well as drive volunteer participation through competitive leaderboards in VolunteerHub.

The Volunteer Recognition feature is included with all current Enterprise plans at no additional charge. If you are interested in adding the Volunteer Recognition feature to your site, please contact [email protected].

This article covers each of the following topics:

Adding a Points Message to Landing Pages

Once you have access to the Volunteer Recognition feature in your VolunteerHub site, you will start by building your Points Message in each of your landing pages. The Points Message is a customizable rich text field where you can explain to volunteers how your organization is using the point feature. This page appears to volunteers when they click their name in the navigation bar and choose My Points or click on the point value beside their name at the top of the site (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Volunteers can track their points and view the leaderboard from the My Points page.

To update the Points Message in your site, log in as an administrator and select the Landing Pages tile from the main menu. Then, to the right of the default landing page (or other desired landing page), click the ellipsis (...) button and select "Edit Landing Page." Then, scroll down to the Points Message field at the bottom of the Messages section (Figure 2). Use this rich text field to explain to volunteers how they can gain points and, if applicable, how they might trade those points for prizes with your organization. 

Figure 2. Define a Points Message that will appear on the My Points page of volunteers' profiles.

If you have additional landing pages that override the messages of your default page, repeat the above process for each.

Applying Point Values to Events

Each event you build can have an optional point value associated with it. Volunteers will be granted the defined number of points automatically each time they receive hours for an event with a point value assigned.

To assign a point value to an event, simply build a new event or edit an existing event and enter the number of points you'd like to grant volunteers each time they participate in the Point Value field just below the Event Group field, then click Save (Figure 3). When associating a point value with a Recurrence Template, a volunteer will receive the defined number of points each time they volunteer for an instance of the template. You may also unlink point values on specific instances to change the value for a specific date without changing the point value for all instances of the template.

Figure 3. Assign a point value to your events in VolunteerHub.

Remember that points are awarded for event participation automatically once the volunteer receives hours for the event. If you are using OnSite/Kiosk or QR codes to check volunteers in electronically, this will happen automatically once the volunteer checks in or out (depending on your Hours Tracking Mode option in the Settings > Site Settings page). If your organization does not use OnSite/Kiosk, you may grant hours and points automatically upon event registration in that field instead.

Once you've added points to your opportunities, the point value will be visible to volunteers in your event postings within your VolunteerHub site as shown below in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Volunteers can see the point value associated with each event.

Adding Points for Users Manually

An administrator can grant and remove points manually from a user's profile at any time by navigating to the user's account and clicking on the Points tab (Figure 5).

Figure 5. View points for a specific user on the Points page.

From this page, you can add points manually for activities not associated with volunteer events by following the below steps (Figure 6):

  1. Click Add Points
  2. Enter the date as of which the volunteer should receive the points in the Date Awarded field.
  3. Enter the number of points you would like to grant into the Points field (e.g., "5").
  4. Enter the reason for the points in the Comments field (e.g., "Stayed late to help with data entry").
  5. Click the Save button at the top.
Figure 6. Add points manually.

Deducting Points for Users

You can also deduct points from a volunteer's total within the same Points page in the user's account. Note that this is visible to the volunteer and is typically done when deducting points that have been traded for prizes or items with your organization (if applicable). To deduct points from the volunteer's total, follow the steps below (Figure 7):

  1. Click Add Points
  2. Enter the date as of which the points were removed (e.g., the date they traded points for a prize) in the Date Awarded field.
  3. Enter the number of points you would like to deduct as a negative into the Points field (e.g., "-5").
  4. Enter the reason for the deduction in the Comments field (e.g., "Traded points for volunteer t-shirt.").
  5. Click the Save button at the top.

The deducted points will appear in the points history as shown in Figure 5 above.

Figure 7. Removing points.

Deleting Points for Users

If a user is mistakenly granted points, you can remove the points that were awarded without the volunteer noticing by clicking on the ellipses menu to the right of the entry on the user's Points page (as shown in Figure 5 above) and choosing Delete. This option should NOT be used to deduct points traded for items, as the deletion is permanent and no history of the deleted points will be kept.

Viewing Point Totals in Reports

Two reports in VolunteerHub show point totals. To access the reports, navigate to the Reports page and click on one of the following:

  • User Roster: The unformatted User Roster report includes a "Total Points" column for the total accumulated points for every user included in the report. This total reflects all points awarded to that volunteer for the life of his or her volunteer record in your VolunteerHub site.
  • Points by User: The Volunteer Recognition feature also comes with the new formatted Points by User report, which allows you to pull a list of users along with the total points they received during a specific date range. The report includes filters for date range and user group affiliation as well as options to include points associated with events and/or manually added points.