GivePulse 101: How to Recruit Volunteers

The Center for Community Engagement
January 9, 2024

This is the second article in a series focused on navigating GivePulse, OHIO's community engaged-experiential learning platform.

Are you a nonprofit or community organization interested in getting your events and opportunities in front of OU's students, staff, and faculty External partners interested in recruiting OU volunteers have 3 ways that they can share their events with our network that range from adopting GivePulse as a free volunteer and donor management platform for your organization to submitting one-off events as needed to our listing. 

Options for Engaging with Ohio University:

  1. Create a free account for your organization that can be used to support all of your volunteer and donor engagement, with OU as well as the general public 

Organizations interested in using GivePulse as an all-in-one engagement platform can create their own organization account to post and manage events, fundraise, and develop a CRM database. By affiliating their account with Ohio University, organizations can automatically share any opportunities they post for a general audience into OU’s listing where all students, staff and faculty are directed to find opportunities. 

This creates an efficient one-stop-shop for organizations to coordinate volunteers and donors, and track event records, participation data, and other organizational outcomes. Organization pages and posts are publicly accessible, and thus can be used to engage the general population in your work, as well as the OU community.

To create an account, schedule time with the Center for Community Engagement via the link below.

  1. Use the ‘Submit Event’ function 

For organizations engaging less frequently with Ohio University, the ‘Submit Event’ option allows a user to request a one-off opportunity to be posted within OU’s opportunity listing. Events submitted in this manner will need to be approved by the OU platform administrator before they are published. Events posted in this way are not connected to an organizational account, but the submitter will be able to access the list of registrants and other event data. 

A screenshot of OU's Givepulse homepage with the Submit event button circled in red
The Submit Event button is on the right side of our homepage at ohio.givepulse.com

  1. Work with the Center for Community Engagement to post an opportunity with an external redirect to your existing volunteer management system or an email address 

The university’s subscription allows internal administrators to post events that drive users to an external link through the registration button. This option is mutually beneficial for organizations with satisfactory existing volunteer management processes in that the university is still able to track the user’s participation, and they are driven seamlessly into the partner’s existing system in an undisruptive manner. 

Due to limited staff capacity within the Center for Community Engagement, we are unable to support this option for every unique opportunity, however it is ideal for volunteer opportunities that are posted as open opportunities without a time frame (such as an open call for volunteers) or opportunities with pre-determined shifts that are scheduled out over the course of a semester. Reach out to us at communityengagement@ohio.edu.

 

Want to learn more? Follow this blog series for more tips and tricks! And, The Center for Community Engagement can help you navigate the platform for the first time, and strategize how it could best support the needs of your organization or unit: Schedule a Tutorial