Measurable Impact: what are Activity Reports and how do they work?

Activity reports close the loop for organisations. It gives organisations the ability to not only find volunteers through the platform but also to measure the impact they are making with the help of those volunteers. It can generate valuable data and insights while providing transarency. Also see: Data and analytics for organisation admins and team leaders.

What are Activity Reports?

The purpose of Activity Reports are twofold:

1. to track user participation in activities / opportunities, and

2. to register hours of users, activities / opportunities, organisations and entire platforms.

An Activity Report (can) track(s) the following information:

• Activity: the title of the activity.

• Organisation: the organisation the activity was done for.

• Summary: a short summary about the activity.

• Dates: when the activity was performed.

• Hours: how many hours the activity took.

• Documents: any documents linked to that activity.

Hour registration

It is mandatory to add the number of hours to any Activity Report. In some cases it is calculated or generated (based on historical data), but it can always be overridden by the organiser.

How does the feature work?

Activity Reports can be created for any type of opportunity / activity in 2 ways:

1. Automatically by the system: the creation of activity reports is directly linked to the status of applications. This automation significantly reduces the administrative burden and provides a more accurate, "real-time" view of an organization's or platform's impact.
   1. When an application is no longer "accepted" (e.g., "rejected" or "pending"), we automatically delete all raw, system-generated activity reports. This keeps your reports organized. Manually edited reports are always retained. 
   2. If the hours cannot be calculated exactly the system provides an estimate based on historic data. This number can always be adjusted by the organiser.
2. Manually by volunteers: when a user wants to add an Activity Report to its profile they can click on the “Add activity” button. This way, users are able to create 3 types of Activity Reports:
   1. Deed: attaching them to a particular deed on the platform (informing the organisation for verification)
   2. Organisation: attaching them to a particular organisation on the platform (informing the organisation for verification)
   3. External: creating fully external Activity Reports (this will remain unverified forever).

Valuable impact measurement with minimal effort

If no precise estimate of hours is possible, we estimate the number of hours based on averages across all of our platforms. This makes the data generated valuable and comparable.

Without activity reports, it is impossible to get a useful picture of the impact made, because there is simply far too much data missing. However, there are still two caveats to the data generated:

• Missing data: if applications are not set to match (accepted), the impact is also not measurable. So part of the actual impact will always remain invisible.
• Unconfirmed impact: if activity reports are not updated and confirmed, the impact will remain an estimate of hours. Thus, part of the measured impact will always remain incomplete.

By automating the creation and deletion of activity reports based on application status, we generate the most complete picture of the actual impact with minimal effort, despite the above caveats.

Where can Activity Reports and Impact Hours be found?

Activity Reports show up in different parts of the platform. As organisation admin, you can find Activity Reports and Impact Hours in 4 places..

• The “Activity reports” tab on the opportunity page shows all reports tied to that specific opportunity.

  • This is where organisation admins and moderators can edit or confirm that Activity Report.

    • When changes are made the Activity Report will need to be confirmed again.

• The “User” table in the data view has an Impact Hours column that contains the sum of all the Impact Hours of the given user (confirmed versus total). It also has a link to all the Activity Reports of that specific user.

• The “Organisation Activity Reports” table in the data view shows all Activity Reports tied to the organisation’s opportunities.

• The “Member Activity Reports” table in the data view shows all Activity Reports tied to the organisation’s members.

You will also find information about them in the organisation analytics section.