Deferred

Calendar Location: Change the location of Opportunities Calendar,

Calendar Location: Change the location of Opportunities Calendar, placing the calendar within the opportunity page. Easy to see, easy to print.


Issue:

  1. Right now the calendar for date-specific volunteer opportunities is in upper right-hand page of website (easily missed) and Events calendar, more prominent location, are in the left-hand side menu along with Opportunities, Agencies, etc. The emphasis should be on Opportunities more so than Events.
  2. Many agencies and volunteers think events are date-specific volunteer opportunities.  How might help clarify.
  3. Printer version: Have printer option for online calendar opportunities (similar to results of opportunity search).  Include contact information included on the printed copy.

Benefit: The goal is to connect people to volunteering.


 


1 person likes this idea

Hi, Kathleen!


Thanks so much for your feedback on the calendar. We've had similar enhancement requests, so I'll let you know what's been discussed and decided up to now.


1. I'm not sure what you mean by the Events calendar being in the left-hand menu. If you click on Events, you'll get a page that looks very much like the Needs page--various "cards" (or rows, depending on your selected view) showing the available needs and events. The calendar in the top right-hand corner shows all date-specific needs and events, not just needs. Are you not seeing events on that calendar?


2. I'm so sorry people are confused by the terminology! In our agency training, we try to make it very clear to agency managers that needs/opportunities are volunteer opportunities while events are other nonprofit happenings that are being publicized. You might consider sending a message to your agency managers who are getting confused, and making sure they're clear on the terminology. If they haven't been through a training or they need a refresher, you can suggest that as well. As for users being confused, you might set up a spotlight stating, "Sign up for volunteer opportunities here!" and another for "Learn about nonprofit events in our community!" I'm not sure if you would have the spotlights available for that, but it's an idea. Another option is to request an override of the words "event" and "opportunity" to words that your users might find more descriptive and helpful.


3. This has been requested before, but it hasn't been something we can do, for a couple of reasons:


- Many opportunity and event titles take up more space than is available in a printed calendar square. What makes that online calendar so helpful is that people can click on a partial title to view the entire need or event. On a print version, a partial title would not be helpful, and there isn't room for a full title.


- There's no easy way to include everything for dates on which more than four needs/events occur. For such dates, the online calendar has a handy "View More" button, which we can't have on a print version.


If someone wishes to print all needs that occur on a certain date, they can run the filter for that date and then click the Print button. At this time, however, we cannot offer a print version of our calendar of needs and events.

I'm finding some old posts to vote for... tell me if i should add a new post or if my comment and vote on this post from last year will move it back up to be seen by others to consider again as we're looking at product suggestions. 


This is a huge issue for us as well! When you click on the "Events" block on the left it only shows events, in that card format not opportunities. The calendar does show both events and date-specific opportunities. We would love for that block on the left toolbar that now leads to events would instead lead to the calendar - both events and needs are there. Or if it would be easier for developers to allow sites to simply delete that block so "Events" is not a required part of the site, we could take advantage of the great option that you give us to have more "Spotlights" on that toolbar. We had one initially to lead to the calendar, but it only confused folks and looked like we didn't know what we were doing to have both the "events" link as well as a calendar link. 


Thanks! Molly Callaway - www.montgomeryserves.org. 

Hi, Molly, thanks for your feedback. No need to add a new post, as we get notified anytime someone leaves a comment on an old one. It's best to (1) vote and then (2) leave a comment about your specific use case, or outlining your suggestions--pretty much what you've done here. Thanks! I'll add your notes to the original enhancement suggestion and will bring it back up at our next meeting!


Nina

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