About Adding Fields

Thanks a lot for the kind words @pscjwilliams. It’s always great to hear our plugin is helping organizations better mobilize their volunteers.

Unfortunately, I don’t have great news for you in regards to the customizations you asked for. The system doesn’t include the ability to add custom fields to the interest form. We’ve had organizations set something like this up in the past, but they’ve required custom coding. If the custom fields are critical to your organization my best recommendation would be to work with your web developer to utilize a tool like Gravity Forms, then code it to integrate with the volunteer system. If that isn’t possible then it might be worth looking at using a different plugin entirely to allow your potential volunteers to express interest.

In regards to tagging volunteer opportunities, the situation is similar. There is no tagging system within the plugin, but it is possible with custom coding. I’d recommend discussing this with your web developer to see what’s possible.

I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you for the quick response.

I’ll play with the coding and see if I can figure it out (wish me luck)

Another quick question… can I get a list of all the opportunities. It seems to display them in a page at a time. Can that be quickly changed to “all” at once?

Again… https://www.thebigserve.ca

Good luck with the coding. It will require a decent knowledge of PHP and WordPress coding practices, but hopefully you can figure out something that will work well for you.

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “Another quick question… can I get a list of all the opportunities. It seems to display them in a page at a time. Can that be quickly changed to ‘all’ at once?” To display the opportunities on your website, you’ll need to include the following shortcodes in the page content either through the Visual Editor (pre-WordPress 5.0) or through the Shortcode block (post-WordPress 5.0): [one_time_volunteer_opps] (for one-time opportunities) or [flexible_volunteer_opps] (for flexible opportunities). It’s important to note, you shouldn’t include both types of opportunities on the same page. Please list only one of the shortcodes on each page.

I hope that’s helpful. Let us know what other questions you have.

Since it’s been a week I’m going to mark this request as resolved, but don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.

…just want to piggyback on this thread to say that the inability to add custom fields keeps this plugin from being usable for a lot of groups. Every organization has Something that goes beyond the vanilla Name and Number fields. …my 2 cents.

Thanks a ton for the feedback @sauceyman. We totally agree that the lack of custom fields makes it tough for organizations who need the flexibility. Unfortunately, once you start allowing custom fields you’re getting into form builder territory, which is a massive technical undertaking. Then you’re looking at different field types (text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns, etc.), the ability to order, add and delete them, as well as the flexibility to store that information and display it in a number of different ways.

We’ve considered doing a simpler implementation or possibly integrating with form tools like Gravity Forms, but haven’t been able to find the time to make it happen at this point.

We do really appreciate the feedback. It’s always helpful to know what’s holding back nonprofits from using the plugin. Thanks again.

I understand the complexity of custom forms.

But something as simple as a field that allows a volunteer to “add a note” to the organizer would be SO HELPFUL.

That’s really good feedback @bpasko. It’s helpful to know that even a much simpler implementation would still be beneficial. Thanks for sharing.