The Opportunity Submissions feature allows external partners — including nonprofits, companies, schools, and community organizations — to submit volunteer opportunities directly into your Goodworld platform through a guided workflow.

This gives admins a scalable way to collect volunteer projects without manually creating every opportunity or granting outside partners unrestricted backend access.

Opportunity Submissions are especially useful for large volunteer programs, corporate volunteer activations, seasonal campaigns, Days of Caring-style programs, and community-wide service initiatives.

Opportunity Submissions allow admins to create a guided submission portal where external partners can:

Admins remain in control of the full process, including what information is collected, what fields submitters can edit, what permissions submitters receive, and what opportunities are published live.

Start by creating the volunteer opportunity that will act as the parent opportunity for your submission flow.

This parent opportunity is the foundation for the submitted opportunities. It controls the overall structure, settings, and template behavior for the flow.

To begin:

For example, if you are running a community-wide volunteer day, the parent opportunity may be the overall program, while each submitted project becomes a child opportunity connected to that structure.

Once the parent opportunity has been created:

Once Opportunity Submissions are enabled, you can configure the guided submission experience for external partners.

After clicking Customize, you will see the steps that make up the submission flow.

The flow may include sections such as:

Admins decide how the flow should behave and what information submitters should provide.

When a submitter enters the submission portal, Goodworld first checks whether they already have an account.

If the submitter already has an account, Goodworld recognizes them and continues the flow. If not, they are prompted to create one.

The flow can also check whether the submitter is already associated with an organization. If they are, that organization information is reused so they do not need to enter it again.

This helps reduce duplicate accounts and creates a smoother experience for returning partners.

Note: The current flow supports one organization per contact. If a submitter manages projects for more than one organization, they may need to use a separate email address associated with the other organization.

Next, configure the details submitters will provide about the volunteer opportunity.

This information is similar to what an admin would enter when creating an opportunity from the backend.

Depending on your setup, submitters may be asked to provide:

Admins can decide which settings are preset, which settings are editable, and which options should be hidden from submitters.

Opportunity Submissions are designed to give admins guardrails.

You can set baseline values through the parent opportunity or template, then decide which pieces submitters are allowed to override.

For example, you may choose to:

This lets you keep opportunities consistent while still giving external partners room to provide project-specific details.

Admins can decide how submitters provide location information.

You may allow submitters to enter a physical address, or you may configure custom location labels when a specific address is not useful or known yet.

Examples of custom location labels include:

Custom labels are helpful when projects may take place at a company office, rotating site, or location that will be finalized later.

The submission flow allows submitters to designate a support contact for their opportunity.

The support contact is the person who receives replies to automated volunteer messages, such as:

This helps keep your admin team out of organization-specific communications and routes volunteer questions directly to the correct project contact.

Tags are used to categorize submitted opportunities for reporting, filtering, and internal workflows.

Before configuring tag questions in the Opportunity Submission flow, create the groups and tags you want submitters to choose from.

Examples include:

Important: Tags and groups currently need to be created in advance. They cannot yet be created on the fly while configuring the submission flow.

Once your groups and tags are created, you can add them to the submission flow as questions.

For example, you might ask submitters:

When the submitter answers, Goodworld applies the corresponding tag to the submitted opportunity.

These tags do not display as public labels on the volunteer registration page. They are primarily backend tools used for reporting, filtering, and opportunity management. In some experiences, they may also support volunteer filtering through Smart Grid.

In the Additional Details step, admins can allow submitters to configure registration-related settings.

Depending on your setup, submitters may be able to control:

These settings are opportunity-level configurations, not open-ended custom questions.

Submitted opportunities appear in the Submissions tab inside the Opportunities area.

From there, admins can review submitted projects before they go live.

Admins can:

Approval is especially helpful when external partners are submitting opportunities directly into your platform, because it gives your team a final review step before anything becomes visible to volunteers.

Depending on your organization’s workflow, Goodworld can also support configurations where approval is not required.

Opportunity Submissions can automatically assign a role to someone after they submit a project.

To configure this, go to the advanced settings for the Opportunity Submissions feature and select the role submitters should receive.

The default role is typically a limited Project Submitter role.

This role may allow submitters to:

Some organizations may create a custom external volunteer manager role with additional permissions, but we recommend starting with limited access and expanding only when needed.

In the advanced settings, select a Template Campaign to define the baseline for submitted opportunities.

The template campaign controls the default structure and settings for child opportunities created through the submission flow.

A template can define:

Submitters then provide specific details or approved overrides during the submission process.

For example, an admin may configure a template with a locked event date, while allowing submitters to choose their own start and end times.

After configuring the feature, add the submission flow to a custom page so submitters can access it.

To do this:

Once published, this page becomes the link you can share with external organizations.

To review submissions:

Once approved, the submitted project moves into the live Opportunities list.

Opportunity Submissions do not need to be used for every volunteer opportunity.

They work especially well for specific campaigns, programs, or activations where external partners need to submit projects through a consistent process.

Decide what reporting and filtering categories you need before building the form.

This makes the submission process cleaner and ensures submitted opportunities are tagged consistently.

Create a strong template campaign so every submitted opportunity starts with the right structure, settings, and defaults.

Most submitters only need enough access to submit their project and view relevant information. Start with a minimal Project Submitter role unless there is a clear reason to provide broader access.

Tags are easier to report on and filter than free-text responses.

For example, instead of asking submitters to type their project type, provide a structured list such as:

Opportunity Submissions are especially effective for:

If you have questions about Opportunity Submissions, schedule a support call with our success team.