This article is for ReDI System managers. (ReDI stands for Readiness Disaster Intelligence.) If you manage a regular (non-ReDI) Connect platform, see this article on managing Connect volunteer registration. If you are a volunteer who wishes to register for a ReDI site, see ReDI Volunteers: Registering on a Disaster-Response Site.
Your ReDI System registration process is set up to collect the certain types of data from volunteers to help match their skills with specific needs in a disaster. The two primary elements are:
- Basic information (such as name and email address)
- The ReDI (disaster-response) profile
As with other Connect platforms, you may want to collect other types of data from disaster volunteers regarding:
- Causes
- Interests
- Agencies
- Qualifications
This article explains how each of these items affects a volunteer's experience of your ReDI site, and it also explains how you can adjust the registration process so that volunteers can skip one or more steps. The final section in this article offers some best practices for registration setup.
Note: Information entered during registration can be edited in the user's profile at any time.
The Registration Steps: An Overview
By default, the ReDI System registration consists of five main steps: providing basic information, completing the disaster profile, selecting causes, selecting interests, and selecting agencies. As needed, you can add the step where volunteers indicate their qualifications. A final step follows, welcoming the volunteer to the site and stating that a "welcome" email has been sent to them.
All data entered in registration, including custom fields, becomes a part of the user's profile. They can change this information at any time by going to their Edit Profile area.
If you're familiar with the Connect platform, setup, you'll see that most aspects of your ReDI System function similarly to other Connect sites. For example, if you want to add other fields to the Basic Information step of the registration form, you can do so in the User Registration area of your site manager panel.
Basic Information
When a volunteer clicks to sign up for your site, they're taken to a page where they must enter, at minimum, their name and email address. This information provides you with a way to contact the volunteer during a disaster. The email provided is also used for all system notifications sent to the volunteer.
Disaster Profile
The next step in the ReDI registration process is the Disaster Profile. Here the volunteer will enter information that will be especially helpful in time of disaster. This profile provides data that enables you to filter for volunteers with specific skills, experience, or equipment. That step looks like this to the volunteer:
Note: We strongly recommend you include at least the Basic Information and Disaster Profile steps during registration. Some of the following data may not be as essential in a disaster.
Causes
The ReDI System gives you the option to ask volunteers to identify causes that they are interested in. This step is important on the standard Connect site because it helps match volunteers to the agencies or programs that support those causes. This data may not be important to you on the ReDI system, and you have the option to either turn this step off during volunteer registration (see details below) or have the causes feature removed from your site entirely. To have causes removed, contact our Customer Care team.
Interests
The ReDI System also gives you the option to ask volunteers to identify their interests, such as physical labor, food-prep, or technology. This step is important on the standard Connect site because it helps align volunteers with appropriate needs. This data may be helpful to you in the case of a disaster but may not be essential. See details below on turning this step on or off during volunteer registration.
Agencies
The ReDI System also gives you the option to ask volunteers to fan agencies that they are interested in. This step is important in the standard Connect site because it helps align volunteers with agencies. This data probably will not be important to you on the ReDI system during a disaster. See details below on turning this step on or off during volunteer registration.
Qualifications
If certain needs on your site require qualifications (such as a waiver or a license), you can ask your new volunteers to let you know, up front, what qualifications they have. During a disaster, you can then use this information to verify that volunteers meet essential criteria. For example, you can know in advance if a volunteer has CPR certification. See this article for details on managing qualifications.
Skipping Registration Steps
You can choose which steps your volunteers must complete when they register on your ReDI System. Below you'll see how to turn steps on or off and how to allow volunteers to skip steps. You'll also learn what we recommend as best practices.
You can also check out our more detailed article for primary Connect platforms, Your Connect Site's User-Registration Form.
Hiding Certain Steps from the Registration Process
If you hide one or more steps from the registration process, then no new volunteer will see that step when registering. For example, if you've set up your site to skip the "Select Causes" step, the volunteer will go straight from entering Disaster Profile information to the "Select Interests" step.
To hide a step from the registration process:
- From your site manager panel, go to Settings > User Registration.
- Under Adding/Removing Steps area, switch a step to OFF in order to hide it.
- Click Save Options.
If a volunteer wants to enter information later for the skipped steps, they can always go to their user profile later and update those fields.
Allowing Volunteers to Skip All Steps
If you want to include all steps but would like to let your volunteers skip this process at their own discretion, you can change your settings to allow this.
Note: We do not recommend allowing volunteers to skip all steps in a ReDI site.
To turn on this setting:
- From your site manager panel, go to Settings > User Registration.
- Under the Skipping Registration Steps heading, select the Users can disregard steps after providing name and email address option.
- Click Save Options.
Once you've turned on this option, volunteers will see an option to skip steps when they sign up:
If a volunteer skips the steps, they'll be taken to their volunteer dashboard. If they skip the steps while responding to a need, they'll be returned to the need-response form.
Best Practice for ReDI User Registration
Our recommendation is to set up user registration so that they are not able to skip steps, but that they see the following steps in the registration process:
- Disaster Response step
- Select Interests step
- Qualifications step (only if you have active qualifications)
Following those guidelines, your User Registration setup in your site settings would look like this:
Click the Save Options button to save these settings. Now your site is ready to register disaster response volunteers.