So, what are missions?

On Volunteero, missions refer to any volunteering activities or tasks that you want your volunteers to do. Your organisation can create and list 'missions' on the Volunteero app, which your existing volunteers can take control of claiming and completing all in one place!

Once you have mission templates and client data points within your account, you can get started with creating missions for your volunteers to claim! You can also pre-assign volunteers to missions from your management dashboard.

Missions can be customised in lots of ways to allow for:

Use the links below to jump straight to the section you wish to learn about.

Follow the steps in this article to learn how to customise your missions for maximum impact!

First up, head to the 'Missions' section on the left-hand side of your management dashboard and click '+ Mission'.

Once you have clicked '+ Mission', you'll be prompted to select your mission template.

Mission Template: Reflects the type of volunteering activity. This functionality allows you to customise settings, including location, phone calling ability, etc. For more information on setting up your mission templates, please view this article.

Client: Who, what, or where is your mission for? This might be a person, your organisation, an event, department, project, or location. This helps your volunteers understand who or what the mission supports. For more information on client profiles, please view this article.

Mission Priority: This setting controls how high up a mission appears in a volunteer’s available missions list. High-priority missions will always be shown above those marked as normal priority.

Volunteer limit: Here, you can decide how many volunteers can join a mission. You can adjust this later if you want to open it up to more people. Once that number of volunteers has been approved, the mission will no longer appear in the available missions list for others. This way, you’ll always get the right number of volunteers involved.

If an approved volunteer leaves, their spot will open up again. If that takes the mission from full to having space, it will automatically become visible to other volunteers.

👉 If you’re using shifts, remember that each shift has its own limit. The mission limit should reflect the total number of volunteers who could be involved during the time the mission is visible. Full info on shift building here.

Mission description: This is where you can give volunteers everything they need to know about the client, the task, and what’s expected of them. It’s always a good idea to remind them to submit reports in the description. If you have any useful links (like video call links or policy documents), pop them in here too; they’ll be clickable, so volunteers can open them straight from the app.

We recommend making the most of rich text and media. Your mission descriptions should be clear, engaging, and inviting!

Tip: If you’ve got general information you want to use across all missions of the same activity type, add it to the mission description at the template level. That way, it will automatically prepopulate every time you reuse the template, saving you from having to copy and paste the same details again and again!

Details for approved volunteers: Provide extra detail to approved volunteers only.

This section may be applicable where there is extra sensitive information that you want to remain hidden until a suitable volunteer has been assigned or approved for the mission.

Mission schedule: This is not relevant for some missions. If your mission has a specific time and date or even a date range, leave this blank, as you will have a chance to specify that in a later step. This is more useful where it is general information, often regarding a client's schedule, or where it is an ongoing mission type, but you have some information around timing you'd like to add. For example, "Mrs Jones would like befriending calls at the weekends, ideally.

Archive mission when complete - Volunteers can complete missions when they have done what is needed. This option means that the mission will automatically archive. Don't worry, you can restore a mission, but this just helps you keep a clearer picture of what missions are still live and those that are complete.

This is a good option to use after you are comfortable with the platform, and great for events and one-off tasks such as gardening, shopping, etc.

If enabled at the mission template level, you can add a checklist for your volunteers to see on the app. Ensure you give enough detail in each item for the volunteer to complete the mission. For example, if it is shopping items, then it is best to include brand, size, etc.

If you have enabled the mission location toggle on the mission template, then the address will automatically pull through from the client’s profile. If you’d like to use a different location, just uncheck the box below and enter the address manually. This can be helpful in situations where the client is staying somewhere else, or if the mission is taking place at a different venue than the one listed on their profile.

Visible from/until - These settings control the time period when the mission will be visible.

In most cases, you don’t need to set a “visible until” date; missions can stay live until they’re completed and then archived, which makes the end date unnecessary.

That said, if your mission is tied to a specific event or date, it’s a good idea to set a “visible until” date so it doesn’t remain visible once the opportunity has passed.

Groups - See the groups article for full details about the use of groups. In short, who would you like to be able to see this mission and what group would you like it to be reported under? The mission will only be visible to volunteers with the same group tag.

Restricted discovery - If you don’t want the mission to be visible in the app (for example, if you already know which volunteer you’d like to assign manually), you can restrict discovery so no one else sees it, regardless of group settings.

Restricted missions will show a padlock icon on your staff dashboard.

That said, we still recommend assigning the mission to a group for reporting purposes. This way, the volunteering hours and insights will still be linked to that group.

Mission timeframe - If the mission is ongoing (for example, befriending or mentoring), you don’t need to add an end date here. These types of missions often continue indefinitely, with interactions arranged weekly or monthly between the volunteer and the client.

If the mission should ideally be completed within a certain period (for example, a shopping mission that needs to be done next week), you can use the timeframe setting to let the volunteer know that range.

Worth noting: volunteers will not only receive push notifications or email reminders for this event (depending on their notification preferences), but they can also easily add it to their personal calendar using the button in the app.

Let the volunteers suggest edits for the mission - This is particularly handy with befriending, where a volunteer may learn some important information about a client that a future volunteer should know. This feature will allow volunteers to suggest edits to the mission description and schedule. You'll be notified when a volunteer submits a suggestion.

Mission approval - This setting means volunteers will need to request approval for missions, and staff can then approve or reject these requests in the staff dashboard. Until a volunteer is approved, sensitive information such as the mission location and the call client feature will remain hidden. They will, however, still be able to see an approximate distance to the mission.

Please note that the mission description and schedule are visible to volunteers who are not yet approved, so be conscious that the information you include is accessible. However, it will still only be visible to volunteers in the same group as the mission is in.

Mission approval vs. shift approval: If you’re using the shifts feature and plan to set approval at the shift level, you may not need to also set approval at the mission level, since you can already decide who to approve for each individual shift.

That said, you might choose to have approval at the mission level instead (for example, to check whether volunteers are qualified), and skip it at the shift level.

If you do decide to require approval at both levels, just keep in mind that this creates extra admin for you and may make the app experience less smooth for volunteers.

New reports are private by default - This means that if a volunteer submits a report, it will not be visible to any other volunteers on the mission or any who may join that mission in the future.

Toggle this off if you'd like volunteers to have the opportunity to reach each other's reports.

(Please note, the volunteer can still always mark their report as private before submitting, meaning only a staff user can view it)

View other volunteers on the mission - When this is toggled on, volunteers will be able to see who else has joined the mission. This can be a great way to encourage sign-ups, especially if they notice a friend is already taking part!

If you require any further assistance, please use the support chat to ask a question to our friendly support team. We will be happy to help!😊