Learn what Opportunities and Initiatives are, how they are different, and how best to use them together.

Definitions

Opportunities

Initiatives

Differences

The Hub

Definitions

An Opportunity is the main feature of VOMO used to track volunteering events and schedules. Opportunities have public-facing sign-up pages for volunteers and internal-facing dashboards for Admins and Organizers to manage. They can have pre-established Serving Dates and Times or they can be Anytime, allowing volunteers to log their own hours. Opportunities are the foundational tool that everything is built on in VOMO.

An Initiative are groups of Opportunities that represent an organization’s programs, locations, and categories of serving. Initiatives have front-facing landing pages to display relevant Opportunities that volunteers can sign up for. They also have internal dashboards where Admins and Organizers can see analytics generated by the Opportunities inside them.

What are Opportunities?

A Opportunity can be a one-time or recurring date volunteer opportunity that a person signs up for to serve as a volunteer. An Opportunity has a date, description, photo, roles and times, links, attachments, etc. associated with it. Organizers and Admins have the ability to create Opportunities on behalf of the organization. Each Opportunity can be accessed by the volunteer from your Hub but it also has a unique URL address that can be promoted in a variety of ways across the internet.

What are Initiatives?

Initiatives are Opportunities that are grouped together. Initiatives are created by Admins and Organizers to feature their organization's programs, departments, big events, locations, etc. making it easier for volunteers to explore what your organization is hosting.

Initiatives will simply have a name, a description, and a photo to best represent the types of Opportunities found within it. Initiatives also have a unique URL address that the organization can use to promote it across the internet.

Opportunities can be added to multiple Initiatives by organizers.

How are Opportunities and Initiatives different?

Remember, an Opportunity is a specific, single, volunteer opportunity that a volunteer signs up for. If the Opportunity is the specific, with tasks and a schedule they commit to, then the Initiative would be the larger program or department that the Opportunity is part of.