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 text-bank batch, or an event check-in assignment. Actions live under Events in the workspace sidebar: open Events, then Actions. 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, text campaign, event check-in, data entry, or general) and a title. You can also set a scheduled window, a location, and Max volunteers; leave Max volunteers blank for no limit. Most types also accept a scoped resource: a walk list for a canvass, 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.
Choose Save as Draft while you are still setting up, or Publish when the action is ready for volunteers to see. Drafts are visible only to your team; volunteers never see an action until it is published.
Who can do what
Owners and admins can do everything on this page. For anyone else on your team, what they can do follows the permissions in their custom role (see Roles and permissions for your team):
| To do this | The role needs |
|---|---|
| Open the Actions list and an action's page | View actions in the workspace |
| Create an action with New action | Create new actions |
| Publish, start, end or cancel an action | Edit any action in the organization |
| Delete a draft action | Delete actions |
| See every volunteer signed up to an action | Assign and remove volunteers; promote leads |
| Check event attendees in through an event check-in action* | Check a volunteer in at an action |
*The person also has to be assigned to the action; see Running an action. The action's lead can check attendees in without this permission.
In the role editor these sit under Actions. The Organizer template includes all of them, and the Read Only template includes only viewing. Publishing, starting, ending and cancelling all count as editing, so a team member who can create actions but not edit them can save drafts and cannot publish them.
Only a draft can be deleted (Delete on its page). To stop an action that has already been published, cancel it instead.
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. If a sign-up does not go through, the volunteer is told why: the action is full, they are already signed up, or the action is no longer taking sign-ups. Sign-ups close when the action starts.
If you set Max volunteers, an action stops taking sign-ups once every place is taken: a volunteer who tries to join a full action is turned away with a message that the action is full. A cancelled sign-up frees its place straight away. Volunteers can cancel from Volunteering, under My actions, where Cancel is offered on upcoming actions, as long as they have not checked in. A volunteer who cancels can sign up again from Discover while the action is still open.
When a volunteer opens an active action, they see the execution view for that type: their walk list, text batch, or event. Phone banking is being rebuilt: a phonebank action shows its volunteers a notice that calls are paused until the new caller screen arrives, and no calls are made from it (see Phonebank campaigns). As they work, the system captures metrics automatically (for example doors knocked and texts sent), updating in real time as the shift runs.
A volunteer assigned to an action as its lead sees a team panel on the running action with the full roster alongside live metric totals for the whole action. A lead sees this only while their own sign-up is active: if it is cancelled, or they are marked as a no-show, the roster is no longer shown to them. In the workspace, the Assignments list on an action's page shows every volunteer to owners, admins, and team members whose role includes Assign and remove volunteers; promote leads. Other team members, including those who can only view actions, see just their own sign-up there, because a volunteer's details are shared only with the people who manage the 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, 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.