How to Post an Event on POINT:

Students have access to the POINT app so that they can find and sign up for volunteering activities with charities around your city. School admins can also post events for your students to find. Have an NHS service event? Trash cleanup around the school grounds? PTO needs help with their fundraiser? Take 5 minutes to post on POINT and push a private event to your students! You can track signups, no-shows, and easily organize and remind your students about the event.

**Important note**

You also have the ability to post a public event on POINT that shows up to everyone who has downloaded the app. This is great for community events that your school hosts, but not so great for events for which you want only your school’s students to volunteer. ALWAYS double check your privacy setting before posting!

Ready for the step-by-step?

1. Navigate to the “Events” tab and click “Create Event”

2. Fill in all the pertinent information. The event form is pretty similar to what you’d find on Facebook or EventBrite, but we’ve got a few key features:

• Add information about parking/what door to enter. Do this in the “What should volunteers know about the location?” section. This is huge. Even if the event is at school, certain doors may be locked after hours or on weekends, so this section reduces confusion and helps volunteers make the most of the opportunity. (We all know what it’s like to be lost even when you think you’re in the right place–it’s the worst.)

• Pick a cause for each event. Feel free to choose a couple different causes that best represent your volunteer event! For example, if you are hosting a canned food drive for a local food bank, you could pick “food,” “poverty,” and “health.” Students can filter events by cause, so this is key to helping your event be seen in their feed.

• Describe what volunteers will do. Make sure you make your description includes all possible volunteer duties. If you will be providing your students/volunteers with food, coffee, or a T-shirt, you can put that here as well.

• Double check the privacy settings for each event. You can create events for your community, the full student body, or a specific group or club. Community members see events if they are public, and only your school sees private events.

• Invite the whole school or select a group. Make sure you choose the group for private events. Will it be available to the entire school or just to a specific grade or club? If it is or a select group, you can create the event within the group page or use the main event template but only invite a specific group. POINTer: You have to create a group first, then you can invite them to events. Find out more on creating groups here. 

• Highlight the specifics. If your event needs any of the following, be sure to mark the corresponding option on the event template: a background check, signed form, or specific training.

3. Hit “publish” and your event will show up on the app! (We’re just as excited as you are!)

4. If this is a recurring event, make it a template by checking the box that says “Do you want to make this a template?”. Now, instead of typing in the same information every time, just navigate to “Event Templates,” change the dates and times, then hit “Publish”.

5. You can monitor who has signed up for your event by navigating to “Events,” clicking your event, then selecting “Volunteers.”

6. Make sure you check in your student volunteers when they arrive. POINT seamlessly tracks volunteer hours, but we do need to make sure they *actually* showed up. Bring your laptop or tablet to an event and simply click “Check in” next to a volunteer’s name when they show up. POINTer: If you can’t bring a device to the event, you can verify/adjust hours on the dashboard after the event. 

7. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to use the chat box in the lower right  corner of our website, pointapp.org. This goes straight to the POINT CEO’s phone. For real. She can answer anything and everything.