Thank you for your patience while we've been offline this morning – now that we're back, we're delighted to announce that our new suite of scheduling and rostering features will be live soon!

Our developers are hard at work on the final stages of our software updates and while we're back online now, not all features are currently available. We recommend you don't make any changes to your profiles or Be Collective data until further notice.

If you'd like to learn more about our new features and how to use them, Be Collective's Help Centre is a great place to start - please click here for more details or get in touch with our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Be Collective will be temporarily offline on the evening of 29 November (UK) / the morning of 30 November (AU & NZ).

This will allow our engineers to carry out essential maintenance before the launch of our exciting new scheduling and rostering features.

This outage is currently scheduled for:

United Kingdom: Sunday 29 November 9pm - Monday 30 November, 1am (GMT)
Australia: Monday 30 November, 8am - 12pm (AEDT)
New Zealand: Monday 30 November, 10am - 2pm (NZDT)

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this outage, and we'll endeavour to make sure full service is restored as soon as possible.

If you'd like to learn more about our new scheduling and rostering tools, please click here.

Be Collective is changing! Later this month we will be updating our platform with class-leading new features which make it easy to manage scheduling and rostering of your volunteers.

To learn more, please click here.

We're very excited to announce that Be Collective now offers the functionality for volunteer managers to create and issue certificates!

This expands on our previous Social Currency module (now called 'Rewards and Certificates') and is a great new way for Be Collective Plus+ groups to recognise the great work your volunteers do.

For more information on how to use our new certificates module, please see the following articles on the Be Collective Help Centre:

How do I create a certificate for my volunteers?

How do I issue a certificate to my volunteers?

At Be Collective, we're committed to providing you with a consistent Search experience across our platform, making it easier for volunteers to find opportunities that interest them.

First of all, we're working on our search algorithms but we won't send you to sleep by explaining how! What we can tell you is that we've recognised how many users enter location into the main search bar (as opposed to the location field on the the search page), and soon our search weighting will be adjusted to ensure these searches generate more appropriate lists of results.

In the meantime, we've added a 'Sort By' filter into the main search, allowing you to sort search results by Relevance, Distance and Newest.

Sharing opportunities with offline volunteers just got easier!

We've added a 'Print' button to all opportunities, and if you click it you'll be given the same set of printing options you'd see if printing a webpage (including 'Save as PDF' if enabled on your device), with the opportunity details cleanly and plainly formatted for easy reading.

The printable opportunity also includes the contact details provided in the opportunity, so volunteers can easily get in touch even if they're offline and unable to apply through Be Collective.

We've listened to feedback from volunteer managers and updated our opportunity builder, making it easier to write compelling opportunity descriptions for your volunteers!

If you're a volunteer manager, you now have helpful hints and examples to support you in writing your opportunity description. We've also made things easier by providing a list builder for specific tasks and responsibilities, which are shown on the social CVs of all approved volunteers.

Any  opportunities you've posted before this update will contain the overview you've already provided, and you can edit the opportunity to add tasks and responsibilities.

For more guidance on how to post an opportunity on Be Collective, please take a look at our Help Centre article here.

Good news for volunteer resource centres, and other organisations – our Opportunities CSV export has been improved to include more data on opportunities you've endorsed.

We've also improved reporting on tagged opportunities. This make it easier to report on opportunities tagged under our recent Covid–19 campaign.

The following new fields have added to this export:

• External organiser – the group providing the opportunity
• External organiser location – the location of the group providing the opportunity
• External organiser postcode – the location of the group providing the opportunity (if provided)
• Campaigns – any campaigns attached as tags to the opportunity
• Opportunity postcode – the postcode of the location where the opportunity is based (if provided)

We're pleased to announce the launch of our new Resource Centre! 

This can be found at becollective.com/resources, and houses useful 'how-to' guides on getting started with Be Collective, whether you're a volunteer or volunteer manager. Soon, you'll be able to find video guides here too!

The Resource Centre sits alongside our Help Centre, which can be found at help.becollective.com and is the place to go for more detailed answers to any questions you have about Be Collective's suite of volunteer management tools.

As always, we're keen to hear from you on any additional resources you'd like to see. We're committed to providing you with the tools you need to make the most of Be Collective.

Our application forms for groups and opportunities have undergone a makeover! The new forms make applications quicker for volunteers, and setting up application forms easier for volunteer managers.

As part of this update, basic details provided by a volunteer as part of their Be Collective profile – such as name, age and contact details – will be included automatically on all application forms. This saves the volunteer time they'd have previously spent entering these details again, and ensures volunteer managers receive the information they need.

If you have any existing opportunities listed, we advise you to review your existing application forms to ensure fields haven't been duplicated.

For more information on how to customise your application forms, please see our Help Centre article here.