Volunteering
How volunteer signup works today, and how much of it can live on the site
Volunteering is one of the site's core tasks. Individual signup runs on VolunteerHub, MOWP's own account at mowp.volunteerhub.com, linked from six pages. Group and corporate requests go somewhere else again, to a Microsoft Form.
The current setup
Browsing is open. Anyone can look at the opportunity calendar and open a specific session — date, location, places left — without an account.
The wall is at signup, which hands the visitor to a third domain, id.bettergood.com, VolunteerHub's identity service. So the path is mowp.org, then VolunteerHub, then their login, then back to VolunteerHub. Two of those three are outside MOWP's control, though the VolunteerHub pages do carry MOWP's logo and copy.
The options
| Option | Possible | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| List opportunities on the site | Yes | VolunteerHub has a read-only API, included with any administrator account. Dates, locations, descriptions and remaining places |
| Brand the VolunteerHub pages | Yes, and already done | The registration and calendar pages carry MOWP's logo, intro copy and current needs. Editable by MOWP's VolunteerHub administrator |
| Embed their calendar in a page | Yes, but no better than the API | An iframe embed exists. It gives their markup instead of ours, for the same data the API returns |
| Embed signup itself | No | Signup redirects to their separate identity service, which won't run inside an iframe |
| Take signups on our own form | No | The API is read-only. Nothing can create a volunteer or book a place |
| Let someone register interest without an account | No | An account is required to say you want to help. There's no option to leave an email address and be contacted |
Show opportunities on mowp.org, fed from VolunteerHub, and hand off when someone commits to a specific session. Same shape as the donation recommendation: browse here, transact there.
Group requests
Group and corporate volunteering requests go to a Microsoft Form rather than to the site. This one the site can take itself: it's a handful of fields, and the contact and meal request forms already store submissions in the CMS, email staff, and screen out spam.
Whether anything downstream depends on the Microsoft Form: a shared inbox, a spreadsheet, or an automated flow. Replacing a form is straightforward; replacing a process built around one isn't.