In-kind donation opportunities are how you ask for things rather than money or time - materials, equipment, space or a service. This guide walks through posting one.
⚠️ Note: The opportunity types available to you depend on how your app is set up. If In-kind donation isn't one of your options, your programme manager may have turned it off.
1. Open the Post Opportunity form
Click your profile in the top right corner, then select Post Opportunity from the dropdown.
2. Choose In-kind donation as the opportunity type
Pick In-kind donation at the top of the form, then choose the category that fits what you're asking for:
Materials - physical items you need, such as stationery, food or supplies
Equipment - things to use, such as laptops, tools or furniture
Space - a room or venue, whether for one event or on a regular basis
Service - professional help in kind, such as printing, catering or transport
Example: For a school careers day, you might ask a local business for space to host the event, or for materials such as stationery packs to hand out to attendees.
3. Link it to an activity
Every opportunity sits under an activity - the wider piece of work it belongs to. Click Search for an activity and choose an existing one, or click Create new activity and fill in the short form that opens.
4. Check the fields that fill in for you
Once an activity is linked, the Host, Beneficiary groups and Cause carry over from it. You can change the host here, and remove a beneficiary group, but to add a beneficiary group you'll need to update the activity first.
5. Fill in the rest of the form
Give the opportunity a title and describe exactly what you need - quantities, sizes, dates, condition, anything that helps someone work out whether they can help. Set a deadline if the items need to arrive by a certain date.
6. Add an image
Add a photo to the listing. Posts with an image get noticed. Pexels and Unsplash are good free sources.
7. Set who can see it
The Privacy section sits near the bottom of the form, and it decides who your opportunity reaches. It's worth a moment's thought: set it too narrowly and the people who could donate may never see it.
All individual stakeholders: Everyone who is a member of your app, whatever individual stakeholder type they hold. It stays inside your app, so connected organisations don't see it.
Custom audience - you choose who it goes to. Choose Select by type first, then narrow it down from there.
The types you can pick from are your app's stakeholder types. As standard these are Client, Supplier, Supported Organisation, Corporate Partner and Subcontractor, but each app can rename them - an admin sets the labels in Admin panel → Settings → Stakeholders, so the wording you see may be different.
Once you've chosen a type, you'll be asked whether to share with everyone of that type or with specific organisations. For example, you might share with all corporate partners, or with one named organisation only.
When you share with an organisation this way, the opportunity reaches that organisation's admins, who then decide who inside their organisation sees it. It stays inside that circle - it isn't published publicly.
You can change the privacy setting later by editing the opportunity.
8. Post it
Click Post opportunity. If you click and nothing seems to happen, scroll back up the form. Any field that still needs an answer is outlined in red with a message underneath it.
If there's no approval step in your app, the opportunity goes live as soon as you post. If approvals are turned on, an app admin needs to approve the post.
What happens with the donation
When you mark the opportunity complete, Goodsted records a donation log automatically, with the person or organisation who donated recorded as the donor. You don't need to log it separately.
Good to know: In-kind donations and Log Donations work together. Turning on in-kind donations switches Log Donations on too, and Log Donations can't be switched off while in-kind donations are still in use.
What's next
💬 Need more help? Contact us anytime at support@goodsted.com.