The Custom Questions tool allows you to collect the information you need from your volunteers. Click through these tabs to learn about the kinds of questions you may need to ask volunteers and how to create them.
3 Places to Add Custom Questions & Why You Should Use Them
Sometimes you want to collect some specific information about your volunteers that isn’t covered in one of our standard forms.
You can add custom questions in three basic areas. (There are some advanced areas where you can add questions, but we’ll worry about that later.) Before we talk about how, let’s look at the three places.
User registration: If you have a question you want volunteers to answer when they register on your site, you can add a custom question in this area. The answers they give will become part of their profile. So this would be information that is broadly about the person, not their interaction with an agency or need. In fact, the answers to these questions are only viewable to the volunteer and the site manager.
Responses: When a volunteer responds to an opportunity, you can add questions to the page where they respond. That information is tied to their response. So this information can be specific to that need. The answers to these questions are also viewable by the agency managers.
Hours: You can add up to two questions to the hour-entry form that volunteers complete when they have finished volunteering. This is a great way to collect data that may change every time a volunteer submits their hours.
What You Might Ask
Since the user registration questions are about the person, you might ask:
What is your tee shirt size?
How did you learn about our organization?
Are you a member of United Way’s affiliated groups?
Or, you might have specific questions that matter to you, like:
Have you ever served in the military?
Do you have any emergency management skills?
Response questions have to do with the need, so you might ask:
Have you worked with this agency before?
Do you require special assistance?
Who is your emergency contact? What is their number?
For the hours questions, you’d typically ask for some sort of feedback on how it went:
How would you rate your experience?
Did this volunteer effort match your expectations?
Would you volunteer with this agency again?
You can even ask volunteers to upload something here:
Please show us a picture of the completed effort.
Upload a copy of the form signed by the supervisor.
How to Create a Question
Setting up a question works the same way throughout the site. This video shows you how to add a custom question in the registration area. The same fields and selections would show up if you add a question in the responses or hours areas.
Custom Questions GCC from Galaxy Digital on Vimeo.
For details, you can read about creating custom questions.
Here are some tips.
When you add Custom Questions to any of the areas, make sure you're being succinct.
Decide early on what details are important for your local United Way. If you create these questions now (especially in user registration) you’ll have more consistent information from all of the volunteers coming to your site.
User registration questions help you get info relevant to the United Way. Response and hours questions can be customized to learn about how your volunteers interact with your agencies.