What is an Activity?
Learn what Activities are, how they group your delivery work, opportunities, and volunteer hours into one record, and when to use them for cleaner reporting.
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, engagement data, and soon donations and other measures in one place, making it the central record of what is being delivered on the ground.
Why Activities matter
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:
A clearer picture of delivery - one record per piece of work, not a collection of disconnected items.
Less repeated admin - cause, host, and beneficiary groups set at the Activity level flow down automatically to linked opportunities, so there's no need to re-enter the same details.
A foundation for reporting - Activities are what opportunities, hours, and (soon) donations and measures all attach to. Setting them up cleanly now means your reporting is ready as new features land.
Activities vs Opportunities: what's the difference?
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:
Example Activity titles | Example Opportunity titles |
Community Garden Open Day | Help plant beds at garden open day |
School Careers Fair | Share your career story at careers fair |
Annual Wellbeing Drop-In | Support visitors at wellbeing drop-in |
Youth Coding Workshop | Mentor at coding workshop |
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.
What this means when you're posting
When you open the opportunity form and see the Link to Activity field at the top:
Check if the Activity already exists. If the work has been set up on the platform, select it from the list - your opportunity will inherit the cause, host, and beneficiary details automatically.
If not, create the Activity from within the form. Name it after the real-world work itself (the event, project, or piece of delivery).
Then name your opportunity around the action. Think about what you actually want people to do, and let the title say so clearly.
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.
Posting more than one opportunity under an Activity
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:
Different roles within the same event
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:
Trade demonstrator at careers day - carpentry, electrical, or plumbing, 10:00 to 12:00, 4 spots
Talk presenter at careers day - 13:00 to 14:00, 2 spots
Event helper at careers day - 09:00 to 15:00, 6 spots
Multiple sessions on the same day
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:
Morning shift at garden cleanup - 09:00 to 12:00, 15 spots
Afternoon shift at garden cleanup - 13:00 to 16:00, 15 spots
Recurring sessions across a longer Activity
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:
Take a part in Foodbank shift, First session - 3 May
Take a part in Foodbank shift, Second session - 17 May
Take a part in Foodbank shift, Third session - 24 May
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.
What's next
👉 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!