What are Activity Reports and Impact Hours? How does the feature work? Where can Activity Reports and Impact Hours be found?
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 and Impact Hours?
The purpose of Activity Reports are twofold:
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to track user participation in activities / opportunities, and
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to measure the impact (hours) of users, activities / opportunities, organisations and entire platforms through volunteering.
An Activity Report (can) track(s) the following information:
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Activity: the title of the activity.
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Organisation: the organisation the activity was done for.
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Summary: a short summary about the activity.
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Dates: when the activity was performed.
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Hours: how many hours the activity took.
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Documents: any documents linked to that activity.
Impact Hours
It is mandatory to add the number of hours to any Activity Report. Those hours are considered Impact Hours. Hours spent to make impact. In some cases it is calculated or generated (based on historical data), but it can always be overridden by the organiser.
IMPORTANT: only hours for volunteering opportunities will count towards the “Impact Hours” statistic. Workshops, trainings, events etc. are excluded. The number of “Impact Hours” shown on the user’s profile or in the data tables differentiates between confirmed versus total hours.
How does the feature work?
Activity Reports can be created for any type of opportunity / activity in 3 ways:
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Automatically by the system: when an opportunity has a starting date in the past (max. 1 month) and an accepted application it will create an Activity Report for that application.
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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.
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On demand by organisers: when an opportunity doesn’t have a starting date the organiser can generate Activity Reports for any accepted applications by hitting the “Create missing Activity Reports for all accepted applications” button. See: As an organization admin/moderator, how can I generate Activity Reports?
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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.
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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:
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Native: attaching them to a particular deed on the platform (informing the organisation for verification)
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Visiting: attaching them to a particular organisation on the platform (informing the organisation for verification)
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Foreign: creating fully external Activity Reports (this will remain unverified forever).
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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..
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The “Activity reports” tab on the opportunity page shows all reports tied to that specific opportunity.
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This is where organisation admins and moderators can edit or confirm that Activity Report.
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When changes are made the Activity Report will need to be confirmed again.
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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.
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The “Organisation Activity Reports” table in the data view shows all Activity Reports tied to the organisation’s opportunities.
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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.