Reserve and Assign Volunteer Spots

Volunteer coordinators, you now have more coordination power over volunteer spots on POINT. 

Let’s go over some definitions: 

Reserve Spots: Hold a volunteer spot (or spots) for volunteers with POINT accounts. These volunteers then have the chance to confirm if they will be attending the volunteer opportunity or not, though volunteer confirmation is not necessary.

Assign Spots: Designate a volunteer spot to volunteer who may or may not have a POINT account. This gives you, as an admin, the ability to sign anyone up for events. 

Both actions remove an open spot from the event list, allow a volunteer to be checked in, and sends the volunteer reminders before the event.

Reserve a spot for a volunteer 

When you reserve spots for volunteers, you hold volunteer spots for those POINT users or groups of volunteers.

To use the Reserve Spots feature: Go to an event page, click on the “Volunteers List” tab, select the “Actions” orange button and click “Reserve Spots”. 

To reserve spots, choose individual people or reserve spots to be filled by group members. You can only reserve spots up to the amount of spots available. When spots are reserved, this prevents anyone else from taking those spots. You cannot reserve a spot for a shift once a shift has started.

Note: To reserve a spot for a volunteer, they must exist in your POINT dashboard. So either they have been invited to join your organization, they’re an internal volunteer, an external volunteer, or a managed volunteer.

Volunteers then can confirm their attendance to the volunteer event, which will then change their Pre-Event status from “Reserved” to “Confirmed”. 

When reserving spots for a group, group members will be notified by email and on their POINT accounts that a spot has been reserved, group members to confirm (or claim) the spot first will be signed up for the event.

Whether or not a volunteer has confirmed their attendance doesn’t not affect your ability to check those volunteers in at your event. The Post Event Status options “Pending”, “Check in”, “No Show” and “Dismissed” are right there to check in those reserved spots. 

Assign volunteer spots 

Need to add a volunteer to an event last minute? Have an older volunteer unwilling to use technology? The “Assign Spot” feature is here so you can sign anyone up for your volunteer opportunities. 

To use the “Assign Spot feature: Go to an event page, click on the “Volunteers List” tab, select the “Actions” orange button and click “Assign Spots”. 

If the volunteer you’re assigning a spot to has a POINT account, type in the email they registered with on POINT and their account profile will appear. Hit the “+” button to the right of their name and click the orange “Assign Spot” button that appears to sign that volunteer up for the event. You can search and add multiple users during this process. 

To add a user that doesn’t have a POINT account, type in an email address and click “Create Managed Volunteer”, enter their first and last name and then click “Assign Spot” to sign them up. Read more here about managed volunteers.

Note: If you create a managed volunteer, that volunteer only exists in your nonprofit’s POINT database and that person will not have access to a POINT account or their impact for that event. We strongly suggest that all volunteers create a POINT account to increase engagement in future volunteering events. 

After assigning a volunteer a spot, don’t forget to check them in once the volunteer opportunity has started. 

How corporate groups reserve spots

When companies use POINT (Learn more here!), corporate PONT admins can reserve spots for their employee volunteers on public or cohosted nonprofit events.

For example, if a corporate group wants to send their Marketing team to a public event you hosted, they can reserve 4 spots for their group. Those volunteers spots would show up as reserved under the company name on your event volunteer list.

Individuals listed as “Confirmed” under an company name are those employees that have confirmed their event attendance. When corporate volunteers arrive, you can assign those reserved spots to the volunteers that come by clicking the “Assign spot” button and searching for their POINT account by their emails.

Have questions? Need help? We’ve got you. Use the orange chatbox on the dash or email us at support@pointapp.org.