Actions: turn plans into volunteer tasks
How to create volunteer actions, how volunteers sign up and execute them, and how progress flows into the CRM, badges, and leaderboards.
On this page
An action is a bounded unit of organizing work: a canvass shift, a phonebank session, a text-bank batch, or an event check-in assignment. Actions live at Actions in the workspace sidebar. They give each piece of field work a scheduled window, a volunteer cap, and a live metric stream, and they write results back to your CRM, badges, and leaderboards automatically.
Creating an action
Click New action. Every action needs a type (canvass, phonebank, text campaign, event check-in, data entry, or general), a scheduled window, and a maximum volunteer count. Most types also accept a scoped resource: a walk list for a canvass, a call queue for a phonebank, a text batch for a text campaign, or an event for a check-in assignment. The scoped resource controls what each volunteer sees: they get their slice only, not the full list.
Save as a draft while you are still setting up. Change to published when the action is ready for volunteers to see.
Lifecycle
Actions move through four statuses: draft, published, active, and completed. The first transition is manual (draft to published). After that, the platform handles it: at the scheduled start the action becomes active; at the scheduled end it moves to completed. You can also cancel an action at any point before it closes.
Signups and execution
Once published, an action appears in the volunteer's discover feed. A volunteer signs up with one click. The system enforces one signup per volunteer per action, so duplicate signups are blocked. After signing up, the action appears in their list of assigned work.
When a volunteer opens an active action, they see the execution view for that type: their walk list, call queue, text batch, or event. As they work, the system captures metrics automatically (for example doors knocked, calls made, and texts sent), updating in real time as the shift runs.
As a lead or organizer, you can open the lead dashboard for a running action and see the full roster alongside live metric totals for the whole action.
How results flow downstream
When an action completes, three things happen in parallel:
- CRM. Every volunteer's signup and completed-action activity is written to their contact timeline. Your org's contact list stays current without a manual import.
- Badges and leaderboards. Badge evaluation runs for each volunteer based on their work, and leaderboard standings update to reflect the shift's contributions.
- Notifications. Volunteers receive a thank-you when the action closes.
Why this matters
Actions give every organizing tool (canvassing, phonebanking, texting, events) a shared signup, assignment, and reporting layer. You set up a shift once, volunteers sign up in one place, and the results land in your CRM and leaderboard without a manual step in between.