Best Practices, Tips, and Training from AngelPoints

Training Opportunities for AngelPoints Clients
AngelPoints now offers three training session to ensure that your team is using your volunteer management site to maximum benefit. Each session is limited to 25 participants, so sign up today if you haven't already taken advantage of this great opportunity.

AngelPoints Overview for New Managers
This training is recommended for new Event, Group, or System Managers, or anyone who needs a refresher. It covers the basics of using the system, including creating and managing events, using the calendar and File Manager, and validating hours.

To sign up for the next session on September 1, click here.

AngelPoints Group Manager Training
This session provides more in-depth training for Group Managers, including advanced tips for creating and managing events, adding and editing content, and getting the most out of AngelPoints reports.

Click to sign up for the next session on August 19 click here, or for next month's session on September 23 click here.

System Manager Training
AngelPoints training for System Managers is now offered once per quarter. This session covers managing users, understanding access levels, managing site content, tips for designing your site, and best practices for editing content and promoting special events.

To sign up for System Manager Training on September 30, click here.

Save the Date for the State of the Product Call
Join Vice President of Product Stephane Giraudie and the AngelPoints team for the next State of the Product Call on Tuesday, September 15 at 10:00 A.M. Pacific time. During this call, Stephane will share product development news, our plans for the remainder of the year, and give an update from the Ideas Bank. This is also your chance to share feedback about new features and ideas with AngelPoints. Keep your eyes open for your invitation next week!

Tip: Adding "About Page" Content to the Login Page
Did you know you can now link About page content from the Login page? Adding links from the Login page is an easy way to share information about your program with employees who may not have logged in or created a password yet. Please contact your Account Manager if you would like to link About page content from your Login page.

Best Practices and More Tips for Using AngelPoints
AngelPoints Customer Support regularly publishes best practices to both the AngelPoints blog and archives them on the AngelPoints help site. To view the archive, click Help on your AngelPoints site, and navigate to Extras and Examples > Tips and Tricks. Here you'll find:

• How to make your external links open in a new browser
• Guidelines for posting images to your site
• How to hide a published event
• How to use a custom search result link on your home page
• Best practices for launching your AngelPoints site

Using a custom search result link on your home page

What do you do if you have a specific series or day of events that you want your users to be able to find easily without having to search through an entire list of upcoming events? It’s as simple as using the Advanced Search feature to find and create a link that will take your users to a “Results” page that will then list all of your specific events. This is a great feature if you have a group of events that are for a specific department, organization, cause, etc.

The most important thing is to use a unique “Keyword(s)” within your event title, but adding causes and/or skills is helpful too. Let’s say you had several Earth Day specific events, but that the company also has many other non Earth Day events scheduled on that same day. Place the words “Earth Day” in the title of each event. Select an appropriate cause and/or skill and create your events. Now go to the Advanced search page (from the home page), enter Earth Day into the “Keywords” box and set the date (or date range) to the date of your event. Select the causes and/or Skills that you chose when creating the events. Unless all of the events are in the same city and/or state, leave those fields blank. Now run the search. The result should be a listing of just your events. Copy the URL in your browsers address bar and save it in notepad (or any editor).

If you have System Manager access you can do this next part yourself, otherwise you will need to enlist the help of the System Manager to post the link. Edit your home page content to add a comment that makes it clear that this is where to click to find the events they are looking for, such as “Do you want to volunteer for one of our Earth Day events? If so, Click Here.” From within the content editor select the word “Here” then click on the add hyperlink button and paste in the URL you copied earlier. Hit update and you’re done. Now when your users are greeted with the welcome page, there will be a link right there in front of them to take them to the listing of your specified events.

Note: using the causes and skills is not necessary but it is a great way to insure that your search results will continually contain only your events, since the odds of someone else creating an event with the exact same parameters are very slim.

What Every Volunteer Manager Wants to See: Your Event is Full!

We're always excited to announce features that make your AngelPoints site more user-friendly, especially when the ideas come from our most knowledgeable users -- our clients. One such idea is a simple designation to let users know that an event is full without having to click through to the event's detail page. Thanks to your feedback, we've now added "event full" information to event listings to improve your volunteers' experience.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.



Motivating Employee Volunteerism During Tough Economic Times
AngelPoints is pleased to spread the word about a very timely research project by LBG Associates and the LBG Research Institute, and invites your company to participate. This study is designed to help companies make crucial decisions to bring their volunteer programs more in line with today’s economic realities -- and employees’ needs and desires -- by answering the following questions:

• Are employees more driven to volunteer during this recession, or are they so depressed that they are in a state of inertia?
• Are employees not using workday-based programs, such as skills-based, pro bono, or paid time off, for fear of losing their jobs?
• How are companies successfully motivating employees to volunteer during these tough times?

How can you help? Click here for details on how to participate in the study. Participation involves answering a short online survey and providing access to employees for their input.

See You at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service
To all of you who are attending the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco this week, welcome to our neighborhood. We look forward to an fantastic week of presentations and opportunities to meet with you, including our client gathering on Tuesday evening. We'd also like to wish good luck to all of our clients who will be presenting at the conference, and provide a special thank you to Anna Hennes of Cerner, who will be presenting about AngelPoints in the Technology for Managing Corporate Volunteer Programs panel on Tuesday morning.

Follow Us on Twitter
Do you like your news in small doses? AngelPoints is now on Twitter. Follow us for quick updates, resource links, and all the rest at http://twitter.com/angelpoints.