Even if you cancel your volunteer opportunities, you can still make a difference in your community (and many volunteers still want to help). So your organization may consider leading volunteers to your donation-based needs. To increase the visibility of donation-based needs on your Get Connected site, we recommend that you use its Spotlight feature to link directly to “in-kind” needs.
How to Group In-Kind Needs
In order to Spotlight your in-kind and donation-based needs, you’ll need to group these needs together. We recommend grouping in-kind needs using the Interests tagging tool. Assigning each need with an Interests label enables you to categorize your site’s needs by “Interest” for more efficient searching and grouping.
To group in-kind and donation-based needs, you’ll want to use the In-Kind Interest label. This label is found in the Interests & Abilities dropdown field when a site manager or agency manager creates a need.
Alternatively, if the need is already created, navigate to your Manager Panel. Select Volunteerism > Needs. Choose the active needs that you’d like to assign an Interest label and select Edit. In the Interests & Abilities dropdown field, select In-Kind.
How to Spotlight In-Kind Needs
Now that you’ve grouped in-kind needs, you’re ready to Spotlight them! To create your Spotlight:
1. Navigate to your site’s front end by selecting View Site in your Manager Panel.
2. In the left sidebar, select Needs.
3. Create a filter: Select Interest in the Filter By dropdown menu.
4. Select In-Kind as your interest and click Search.
5. Copy the URL from your browser’s search bar.
6. You will enter this copied URL in the Spotlight Target URL field.
7. Once you have selected Save, scroll to the top of your Spotlights list.
8. Order your Spotlights by selecting the “Move Up” arrow under the Options column.
Note: The Spotlight located at the top of the Spotlights list will appear as the largest banner on your site’s homepage.
9. To finish, click Save Spotlight Order.
Check out this article for more on creating Spotlights.
Note: The Spotlight Target URL should be copied from the front end (volunteer-facing) of your site.