Following feedback from a number of our users, we've made updates to the group types that can be selected on our platform.

These changes have been made to improve the clarity and consistency of our group types, and to ensure our platform reflects current terminology across all regions.

 Our new group types are as follows:

• Business (previously: Corporate/Business)
• Charity/Not-for-profit (previously: Not for profit)
• Club/Community group (previously: Community group)
• Education provider (previously: Education)
• Government/Public sector (previously: Council)
• Volunteer services & centre (new group type)

If you already own or administrate a group on Be Collective, you do not need to do anything – our new group types have been applied automatically to all existing groups, replacing the old group types as shown above. For example, if your group was previously used the 'Not for profit' group type, it is now a Charity/Not-for-profit.

Group types can be selected when you first create a group on Be Collective, or through our group editor. To learn more, please see the Help Centre articles linked below:

How do I create a group?
How do I edit my group?

If you have any queries or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com. 

Following feedback from a number of our users, the Elderly & Aged Care cause has been removed from our platform. All existing selections of this cause have been transferred to the Older People cause.

This change has been made to maintain clarity and consistency across our list of causes, and to ensure our platform reflects current terminology.

Causes can be selected against users, groups, opportunities and events. To learn more about how causes can be used in Be Collective to facilitate connections between volunteers and volunteer organisations, please see the Help Centre article linked below:

Causes explained

If you have any queries or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com. 

We're excited to announce the latest enhancement to our custom fields feature, which now allows you to export your group's custom fields data!

How do I export custom fields data?

As a Be Collective group manager, you can export your group's data through the Reports and Exports tab of your group management page, under Export data.

Simply select the Custom fields export type then click Download data to export your custom fields data in CSV format, which can be opened as a spreadsheet for analysis.

Long-time Be Collective users will notice we've also improved the entire data export interface, making the export process quicker and more intuitive. We've also added links to relevant Help Centre articles for each export type so you can easily learn more about what each export file contains.

More information on how to export your group's data can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions or feedback on Be Collective's custom fields functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

We're excited to announce that we've already enhanced our new custom fields feature with a data import wizard! This makes bulk uploads of data for your existing members to your group's custom fields quick and easy.

How do I upload custom fields data?

An upload template file is provided for your convenience with your group's custom fields and members already included. To begin, simply download this template, add the data you'd like to import, save as a CSV file and upload this file in the first step of the import wizard.

The second step of the import wizard gives you the opportunity to match the columns in your data file to your custom fields. This is particularly useful if you choose to upload your own data (for instance, an exported file from another platform) Any columns that match the names of your custom fields are matched automatically.

Once you've matched your file columns, you can then verify your data. This allows you to correct any errors immediately instead of updating and re-uploading your data file. Once you've verified your data, all you need to do is click 'Next' to upload it!

More information on how to upload data to your custom fields can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions or feedback on Be Collective's custom fields functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Great news for volunteer resource centres, and any group with lots of partners - Be Collective's partnerships table is now searchable!

Searching the table is easy - you'll now see a search box above each tab of the table, which you can use to search the partners in the open tab of the table by group name.

The Group and Request Date columns in all tabs of the Partnerships table can also be sorted by clicking on the column header.

More information on how to search your group's partners can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions or feedback on Be Collective's partnerships functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Be Collective's messenger has recently been updated to make it more clear when you're sending messages to more than one recipient.

When you're in a conversation with any set of Be Collective users, a Group chat icon is now shown above the chat box. This appears in the following scenarios:

- a conversation with more than one Be Collective user
- a conversation with all members of a Be Collective group
- a conversation with all volunteers assigned to an opportunity

The text box also shows exactly who your message will be going to, e.g. 'Write a message to The Community Gardens group ...'; 'Write a message to Sara and Amie ...'

This can be a helpful prompt if you're in a conversation with all of your group members and would like to reply to only one member in that conversation. In such cases, you can start a new conversation with that group member only, instead of posting in the group chat and messaging everybody!

More information on how to use Be Collective Messenger can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions about Be Collective's messaging functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Great news for volunteer managers - one of our most requested enhancements has just been released!

You can now include free text and hyperlinks in your application forms, for both group membership and opportunities, using the new Paragraph field in the Be Collective form builder.

Selecting this field opens a text editor within your form. This can be used to can add any text that doesn't fit into a question, such as an introduction or instructions on how to complete your application form.

You can also add a hyperlink to any text entered in the Paragraph field, so you can now easily direct volunteers to any external webpages or documents you'd like them to view before submitting their application.

More information on how to use our Paragraph field can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here. You can also find out how to add a hyperlink here.

If you have have any questions about Be Collective's form building functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

We've made some improvements to the Opportunities table shown to volunteer managers, allowing you to see the status of opportunities easily from the table view. The table now includes the following fields:

• Application Status – this will show if the opportunity is open, closed or paused to new volunteer applications.

• Application Closed Date – this will show when the opportunity is/was set to be closed to volunteer applications.

To make room for these columns, we've removed the Credits column from this table. Credits can now be found by clicking Manage under an opportunity shown in the opportunities table – the number of credits offered is then shown in the opportunity preview on the right-hand side.

For more information on opening, closing and pausing opportunities to applications, please see our Help Centre article 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.