What is an Activity?

An Activity represents a specific, real-world piece of work being delivered to create positive impact. It sits between a broader programme and the individual opportunities that enable people to participate. While an opportunity is a call for participation, an Activity represents the actual delivery - the event or the work itself.

Each Activity has its own dates, a designated host, and can have multiple opportunities linked to it. It also brings together volunteer hours, donations and engagement data in one place: the Activity page shows aggregate metric cards for Total Volunteer Hours, Total Participants, Total Funding Received and Total In-Kind Donations, alongside a Donations tab listing the individual donation logs behind those totals - making it the central record of what is being delivered on the ground.

An Activity's dates are the window you're delivering and reporting within - they don't have to be a single event day. The actual event date and time live on the individual opportunity, so that detail isn't lost even when the Activity's dates span a longer period.

For example, a charity shop that runs all year and has volunteering logged against it throughout would be set up as one Activity running January to December. A one-off event, like a single careers fair, is just that one date.

Because volunteer hours and donations are logged against the Activity, they're limited to its dates - the date picker on the log forms won't let you pick a date outside the window. If you need to log prep or wrap-up time that falls outside it, widen the Activity's dates first; logged dates don't move on their own. If you'd rather keep that time separate, set up a second Activity for it.

On Activities that span a date range, the Activity page also has a date filter, so you can view the metric cards for part of that range - January's numbers within a Jan-Dec Activity, for instance - without changing the Activity's own dates. Single-date Activities don't show a filter, since there's nothing to filter.

Activities group related work into a single record. Instead of having scattered opportunities, hours, and other measures sitting in isolation, Activities pull everything that belongs to one piece of work into one place. This gives you:

When you post an opportunity, one of the first things you'll see is a Link to Activity field. This is intentional - and understanding why helps clarify how the two relate.

An Activity is the real-world work. It's the event, project, or piece of delivery that is actually happening - a community garden day, a careers fair at a local school, a mentoring drop-in. It describes what is being delivered.

An Opportunity is a call to action. It sits within an Activity and invites specific people to take part. Its title should describe what you're asking someone to do, not just name the event.

This is where the most common confusion comes in: many users give the opportunity the same name as the event, when the opportunity should actually be calling out the role being asked of the volunteer. The result is a list of opportunities that reads like a list of events - and participants can't tell at a glance what they're being asked to contribute.

Naming opportunities: lead with the action

A good opportunity title makes the ask obvious. Lead with the task or role, then name the event - a volunteer scanning the home page should be able to read the title and know what they'd be doing. Compare:

The task or role tells the volunteer what they'd be doing. The event reference tells them where it fits. The linked Activity then captures the full delivery picture behind the scenes.

The Activity name isn't shown on the opportunity card yet, so it helps to include a short reference to the event in your title alongside the role.

When you open the opportunity form and see the Link to Activity field at the top:

Naming things this way keeps your records clean, helps participants understand at a glance what they're signing up for, and ensures your reporting reflects the work being delivered - not just a list of similarly named entries.

Use multiple opportunities when a single Activity has more than one volunteer role, time slot, or session. Each opportunity is a separate sign-up, but they all sit under the same Activity, so hours, participation, and reporting roll up together.

Three common patterns:

If your Activity needs volunteers for different roles, post one opportunity per role. Volunteers see a clear sign-up for the role that fits them, and you can set a different capacity for each.

Example - Foxfield Primary Careers Day (Activity), with three opportunities under it:

If you're running morning and afternoon sessions of the same event, post each session as its own opportunity. Volunteers can sign up for one or both.

Example - Community Garden Cleanup, 20 June (Activity), with two opportunities under it:

If your Activity runs across multiple dates - a series of food bank shifts, weekly mentoring, a multi-week programme - post each date as its own opportunity. The Activity acts as the container, and each opportunity is a single date a volunteer can sign up to.

Example - Greenwich Food Bank - May Support (Activity), with three opportunities under it:

Hours logged on any of these opportunities roll up to the parent Activity, so your reports show the full delivery picture without you having to combine numbers manually.

👉 Ready to post an opportunity to engage your stakeholders? See Posting an opportunity and linking it to an Activity for the step-by-step guide.

💬 Need more help? Contact us anytime at support@goodsted.com, we're happy to assist!