Creating Volunteer Teams

Volunteer Teams make it possible for one person, the Team Captain, to sign-up others for volunteer opportunities.  This creates an easy way for a family to volunteer together (and makes it possible for a parent to sign up children under the age of 13 for age-appropriate opportunities since federal law does not allow accounts on the site for those under 13).

Teams are also used by corporate groups (where one person wants to handle the sign-up of an entire group of employees) and college clubs.

Teams can be created either during opportunity sign-up, or they can be created from the /myteams page in your navigation.

The Teams Dashboard

The Teams Dashboard

The My Teams page lists all the teams you are team captain of, as well as teams where you are just a member.

Create a New Team

1) Team Name-  Every Team must have a name, but it doesn't have to be unique.  If the group you a creating a team for didn't provide you one you can use the name of the Company or Group that they are associated with or if they are a family, then use the " The [surname] Family Team" or something similar.

2) Team description-  This is required, but can simply be something along the lines of "Employees or Members of _______".   If this is going to be a public team then the description is shown with the team and helps other volunteers learn more about the team to see if they are interested in joining so the descriptions should provide more details, such as how often they volunteer, is it intended for residents of a a specific neignborhood or students for a specific school, etc.

3)  Team Privacy- This can be set as "Public" or "Private".  If you are unsure, set it to Private and it can be modified later.

4) Company/ Group Affiliation-  This field is optional,but does have implications in the next section.  If a group or company name is entered in this field then you only need to provide contact information for the other team captains.  If there is no company or group affiliation then you will need to enter at least an email address or phone number for each team member.

5)  Add Team Members-  This is where you list all the team members associated with this team.  If you have not provided a company or group affiliation, you will need to provide at least one form of contact information for each member added.  Emails must be unique, but phone numbers do not need to be.   If an email is provided a notification is sent to the individual with either that:

a) They have been invited to participate in a project as a member of _______ team, and they are invited to confirm their participation and register on the site.

b) If they are already registered, then they receive an invitation to confirm their particpation in the team.

NOTE:  Even if they don't ever confirm their participation in the team, the team captain can still manage them as a member of the team and sign-up that individual for projects that the team registers for.

6)  Age-  This field is only required if the volunteer is a minor, but helpful for all volunteers.

7) Team Captains-   By default, the contact that is creating the team is identified as a team captain.  You can make other  members a team captain by clicking on this box in their row.  Team Captains have the added permission of being able to add members to the team, sign-up the team for volunteer opportunities, modify the team's participation, and edit and modify the team and team members.    An e-mail address must be provided in order to be a team captain. There is no limit to the number of team captains.

8)  20 more +-   Click here to add more rows of team members

9)  When you have completed filling out all the information click "Create Team"

Make sure to confirm that the right number of members were added and that the right members are identified as Team Captains.

The rules above are HandsOn Connect's default team creation rules.  They provide the most flexibility in creating teams.  However, if you wish to change which fields are present in the team signup form, and/or require (or not require) certain fields) the support team can customize the team creation process for you.  Just open a support ticket and explain what changes you wish to make.

Emails are sent to new team members

Each team member you add (where you've included an email address), will be sent an email informing them that they have been added to your team.

2 Comments

Patricia Alger Vlcek

Hello! We don't see the option for private or public when we create teams. Could that be turned on for us?

Larry Deckel

Patricia: The concept of public teams doesn't exist in HOC 3.0. We'll update this article to reflect that. (This screenshot is from HOC 2.0). All teams in HOC 3.0 are private.

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