An opportunity is a vacancy for a volunteer role. This starts with the role profile, manager and team needed for any user to exist on Assemble. Then includes logistical/management information such as geographic location, the number of applicants required and duration for the advert to be shown.
Opportunity types
By default, opportunities are published for the current organisation and public for all users. The steps below run through this default scenario in the opportunity wizard.
It is also possible to publish an opportunity for an external organisation, restrict access to existing volunteers (see step 3, target audience) or mark an existing opportunity as unlisted which is only accessible through a direct link (see Managing opportunities).
1. Opportunity details
'This opportunity is…' allows you to switch from recruiting for your organisation to recruiting for an external partner organisation.
Opportunities are advertised on the public portal of Assemble, where potential applicants can search and apply for relevant volunteering opportunities. This is normally accessed via a link or button on SSAFA’s website.
If you can't see the relevant role profile, please speak to your Assemble administrator to make sure that the role is set to be recruited to and is visible to the team that you are part of.
'Supplementary title' allows you to customise the opportunity title. This may be the department, function, group or community that the opportunity is with and is helpful for both potential applicants and managers. You may have multiple opportunities from the same role profile eg Shop Volunteer or Office Volunteer. Adding the supplementary title of Paisley or Finance would show the opportunity as being for Shop Volunteer (Paisley) or Office Volunteer (Finance). This only affects the display of the the opportunity title and the supplementary title will not be added to their user record.
NB Do not add brackets - this is already done for you. If you leave the field blank, these will not be displayed.
'Opportunity description' is the long advert (like the narrative description) and is defined in the role. This is shown to potential applicants in the role detail page. If you have the appropriate permission, you will be able to edit this but normally only the administrators will have access to change the approved text.
'Opportunity advert' is the short advert text defined in the role and displayed on the opportunity card when a potential applicant is shown the results of their search. Again, you will only be able to edit this with the appropriate permission.
'Applicants will be a part of:' is used to set the team the applicant will be assigned to if recruited.
'Opportunity manager:' defines who will manage the applicant if recruited (radio button) and allows additional supervisors to be assigned to assist with the recruitment process.
Supervisors will be notified of updates and able to clear all other steps, but the final decision to recruit would remain with the manager who will be directly in charge of the applicant set by the radio button.
'Location' Google and address book search field. Set the geographic location or region where the opportunity will be based. This is used to drive the location based search on the website. Selecting the item from the list will set it, the update button need only be used when changing an address.
2. Role details
Select 'Ongoing' if the opportunity is expected to be more than a year, 'Specific period' if it's a few weeks/months or 'One-off' if it's one or two days.
| Ongoing |
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Ongoing is the default option and is by far the most commonly used type of volunteering opportunity. Once a volunteer starts they are likely to continue until they choose to leave, so there's no end date. 'Please enter the start date for this role' Set the start date, either for a future date where a role has a specific start (for example, when a new store opens) or today, which will allow a start date of whenever they complete the recruitment process. Unless you specifically need a set start date, you will normally leave that to be today's date. Note the start date here is unrelated to the advert start/end dates, which are configured later. |
| One-off |
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A one-off opportunity is designed to recruit volunteers to support a specific event, like a cheer-point at a marathon or a street collection. This can include multiple locations, time slots and dates, after which you can close the role. Volunteering for these opportunities may be automatically linked to an activity (set in 'Activity Type') and counted in an organisations volunteering outcomes. Applications for one-off opportunities will create the specific role on a volunteer's record. If you don't need existing volunteers to have another role added, you may prefer using Events to ask existing volunteers to help. When creating a one-off opportunity you can only enter the first time, date and location through this opportunities wizard. Additional slots may be added by editing the opportunity once created. See 'Managing opportunities' for details. 'Please enter the start date for this role' Sets the start date for the first 'slot' of the opportunity. 'Please enter the end date for this role' Sets the end date for the first 'slot' of the opportunity. (Not the whole activity. So for a weekend event where the first slot was Saturday AM this would be Saturday's date.) 'Start time' Sets the start time for the first slot. 'End time' Sets the end time for the first slot. |
| Specific period |
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Specific period opportunities can be either date based, with a defined start/end date such as a project start and finish date, or time based where X weeks or days is required from the start date, which allows for a rolling start date. 'This opportunity is for' As default, the duration option is shown. Click Enter start/end date instead if you want to specify actual dates. If set in the future the role and Assemble access if this is the first/only role will not start until the set date. |
'How many volunteers do you want?' When the required number of volunteers have been selected and are in or past the Checks stage, the advert will show as 'Full up' and no further applications will be accepted. If someone is subsequently not taken through to be cleared to start, because they withdraw their application or you decide they're no longer suitable for the role, the opportunity will be reopened.
'How many applications do you want?' When the required number of applications has been submitted, successful or not, the advert will show as 'Full up', regardless of whether or not they are selected or cleared to start. By default, this is set to be four times the number of volunteers you need. To receive more applications simply increase this to the level you want.
NB If you have ongoing recruitment needs, perhaps with a continual flow of volunteers leaving and joining (eg in a shop) make sure that you set the number of volunteers required to a suitably high number to avoid the opportunity expiring due to numbers reached.
'Please select the days and slots this role will be undertaken' Used to help filtering potential applicants find roles that they can do. It has no impact on when the volunteering takes place and is merely there as a search tool for applicants. Clicking a heading will select/clear the entire row.
3. Advert
'Start date' Sets from when the advert should be shown. If you want the opportunity to be published immediately, leave the date set as today.
'End date' Sets when the advert should be automatically hidden. Opportunities cannot be advertised for more than 6 months at a time, to make sure that there are no out-of-date opportunities being advertised, which can be very frustrating to applicants. Adverts can easily be extended and the opportunity manager will be notified when this is required.
Adverts will be automatically removed (or initially set as full) when the advert end date is reached or when the required number of volunteers or applicants is reached. You can also manually take an advert offline at any time.
'This advert is for' allows an advert to be public (default) or internal which is restricted to logged in users. Internal adverts will therefore only be visible to existing volunteers who have first logged into Assemble, then returned to the public site typically from their Home page.
'Advert image' Select an image from the available options for the specific role profile.
4. Summary
Final review of entered data. Clicking 'Create' will publish the advert online and will list the opportunity in the opportunities management page.