Item Donations - Best Practices

Under your Meet Jobs or Calendar Event Jobs, you can collect assignments for work shifts and create sign-ups for team members to bring item donations. Depending on your team's preference, there are a few ways to set these up. Read on to learn more!

Item Sign-Ups:

• How to Create an Item Request
• How to Name Your Items
• How to Sort Your Items
• Parent Can Only Bring One of Each Item Requested 
• Allow Parents to Bring Multiples of Each Item Requested
• Have the Parent Bring an Item at a Specific Time

How to Create an Item Request

Item requests are added in each meet or calendar event under the Jobs tab.  To add an item request, click the Actions button and choose “Add Job” from the dropdown menu. 

How to Name Your Items

Once you choose Item Request, you will be asked to name your item. The “Job” is the larger group name, for example, Food Donations.

The “Item Request” is the item you are requesting your volunteers bring:

This is how it will be displayed to your parents:

You can add as much information to the “Shift” name as you would like if you need to provide additional information to your volunteers.  For example, if you add additional text letting volunteers know what to do with the donation:

It will now be visible when they go sign up for an item:

The other option is to add information in the “job” description box:

During the job signup, parents will see an “i” icon that provides this information when they hover over it.

How to Sort Your Items

Jobs / Items are sorted alphabetically, so if you need them in a certain order, you can add a number or a letter in front of them to put them in the preferred order.  

Displays as

Adding a number or letter will sort them:

Displays as 

Parents Can Only Bring One of Each Item Requested 

If you create ONE shift (item) description and ask for multiple donations of this item, such as this example:

When volunteers go to sign up, they can only check the box once, which means they can only sign up for one case of water. (They could sign up for other “jobs” or “shifts” listed, but not more than one of these items.)

Allow the Parent To Bring Multiples of Each Item Requested

If you create ONE shift (item) description and ask for multiple donations of this item, such as this example:

When volunteers go to sign up, they can still only check the box once, but they can check as many of these boxes as they would like to, so, they could bring multiple cases of water.

Have Parent Bring Item(s) at a Specific Time

Some teams prefer to use the “Scheduled by Time of Day” option when creating their job to tell volunteers what time they should be bringing their items.

If you would like to use this method, consider checking the box next to “Do not check for schedule conflicts”; otherwise, parents will be limited to only signing up for one item if it needs to be brought at the same time.

You can create your “shifts” (items needed) in the same manner as described in any of the options above; you can set a time or time range.

Keep in mind that when displayed to parents on the Job Signup page, they will be listed in alphabetical order:

So, if you want them to display in TIME order, you will need to follow the instructions described in How to Sort Your Items.

Now, volunteers will see the items listed by time: