The first thing to consider when creating a Virtual Volunteer Opportunity is how you want to manage it.

• Do you just want to distribute information about what to do and how to get involved?
• Do you want to schedule the volunteer to perform or complete the virtual opportunity by a specific date?
• Do you want to track whether or not the volunteer actually completed the virtual opportunity?
• Do you want to award hours of service to the volunteer for their or your own metrics?
• Do you want volunteers to be able to search for Virtual Opportunities on your site, separate from location-base opportunities?

HandsOn Connect offers a lot of flexibility in how you can manage Virtual Volunteer Opportunities.  In this series of articles - we'll start with the most basic way to do this, and offer ideas about how to more deeply manage and track virtual volunteerism, if that's your objective.

Let's start with a basic way to list a virtual volunteer opportunity.  For this example we'll choose to create an opportunity where volunteers are asked to knit blankets at home, and send them to our Volunteer Center, where we'll then donate them to local shelters.