CHAPTER ADMIN GUIDE: PAGE 2: EVENTS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click any topic 

PART I:  (1st page)

I.     HOME SCREEN

II.    DASHBOARD

III.   CHAPTER PROFILE

IV.   LOCATIONS

V.     EDIT USERS

VI.  CAMPAIGNS

VII.  LINKS

PART II:   (2nd page)

V.     EVENTS

• Add Event
• Driver Selection
• Driver Start Location
• Driver Drop Off Location
• Bag Pickup
• Route Map
• Edit Route (advanced)
• Route Update
• Event History

PART III:   (3rd page)

IX.     NEIGHBORHOOD COORDINATOR

There are two types of Events. 

• DONOR/DRIVER EVENTS
• BROWN BAG EVENTS/CANVASSING EVENTS

Every chapter will have Donor/Driver Events.  These are the recurring events where people are donating food on their doorstep for pickup.  

A "Brown Bag/Canvassing" Event is only available if the Site Admin has turned that feature on for your site.    This is a special tool that requires a separate Help Guide.  If you would like to use this feature contact support@Porch2Plate.org.   

Click here; To learn more about BROWN BAG and CANVASSING Events.

This tool allows you to do a few important things;

• Estimate the # of drivers you’ll need for an event
• Select and confirm the drivers for the event
• For each confirmed driver, set their starting point
• For each confirmed driver, select their drop off point

SELECTING DRIVERS:     

This is a multi-step process.    

Step 1:  Estimate how many drivers you will need.   There is some data at the top to help you do this.   Look at the “Donor” section to see the total eligible donors and the status they are currently in.  

“Notify” would mean that they have received a notification, but have not yet responded yes or no.  Notifications go out based on the ‘days before’ settings you defined in your chapter profile.   If “AssumeYes” is turned on for this event you will only see a “notify” status if a specific donor has been set to “require yes”.   You will find more information about “AssumeYes” further down this page.   

“Yes” is the # of donors that are “Assumed to be yes” or have said they are a “yes”.  

“No” are the # of donors that have said they cannot participate this time.  

Note; you have the same information for drivers, at the start you will have a 0 under every column except “total eligible drivers” since you have not yet sent out any notifications.  

The first thing to decide will be the ‘driver to donor ratio’, or to say it another way “how many donors for each driver?”.  For example, if you are in a city with donors close together one driver for 25 donors is about 90 minutes of work.   As things spread out, it might be that 15 or 20 donors requires the same 90 minutes.  

The second thing will be predicting the number of donors for the day of the event.  10 days from the event is more guesswork, the day or two before the event makes it easier to have a more accurate figure.     When you set up the event you decided to either use “AssumeYes” or “Donor must confirm”, this is going to make a big difference in the calculation.   

• ASSUME YES:  “Assume Yes” assumes that all donors participate unless they say “no”.   This usually results in about 95% of donors with a “yes” because either they are going to participate or because they did not get around to saying “no”.  The actual % of donors that will have a bag typically range from 70% to 80%. .   As you gain experience with your donor base you can use the “Donor History” report (under ‘reports‘ drop down) to turn on “require yes” for donors that often do not leave a bag out.   This means that donor will not be assumed to be yes, they must state yes/no.  In other words, they are “Donor must confirm”.  We recommend to use “Assume Yes” and to monitor results to identify those donors that often forget.  
• DONOR MUST CONFIRM:   If you are asking each donor to answer yes or no, you will end up with a more accurate donor count, but you will also have a number of donors still in “notify” status, meaning they received a notification and did not respond yes or no.   You can manually change them to yes, call them, or leave them off the route because these donors will not be routed.

Notify, Yes, No, Not Needed, and Confirm are the different status’s for each driver.   

Confirmed Driver Doors;  this is a calculated field that takes total donors that have a status of  “yes” and divides by confirmed drivers.   The general idea is to get this figure close to 25 as the event date approaches.    To understand this value, please consider the following;  

• Let’s use an example of 100 total eligible donors,.
• When you are a week or two away from the event date, it’s likely very few donors have responded yes/no to the notifications email.    So your “yes” may say as many 100 donors.   You probably would then target 4 drivers.
• As you get closer to the event some donors will change their status to “no”, as that happens your target may drop to 3.    There is no ‘one way’ to do this, but after an event or two you’ll find a way you favor.  

Step 2:  Send Notifications to a few more drivers than you think you need.   Let’s stick with the example of “100 eligible donors”, which could mean 4 drivers.   You might want to notify 4.   A “notify” is to ask, “can you drive?”.      

You therefore should then click the notify box for 4 drives, and then click “Send emails”.  This sends a notification to those 4 drivers.     

Selecting a Driver:   You can choose based on any number of methods.   You may already be familiar with some names.   You can also see data related to each driver; how many times they have said “yes” and “no”, for example.     

You can set their “Level”.  This is your classification of the drivers.  By setting one at 1 and another at 4, and then sorting on the “Level” column,  you can put the 1’s at the top or bottom.  This may help you get the ones you want at the top, making it easier to pick 4 good ones.  

But another tip is to ask new people to driver, this is a way to get more engagement from your pool of eligible drivers.  

NOT ENOUGH DRIVERSSco:    This is going to happen from time to time.    We recommend using the Donor History reports to find donors with a high degree of participation.   Send them an email asking them to driver.   (Or call them if you have the time).    Or, you can just message every donor using the “Messaging App”.    If someone agrees to drive, they (or You) can go to their profile and click “Yes I want to Drive”.

You can also bring drivers in that are not part of the Event’s Zone.    For example, you may have other events for other zones, and wish to ask those drivers to drive for this Event.   There is a dropdown to “Add Driver”, which displays all drivers from all other zones.  

You then wait a bit to see who says "Yes, I can drive".    Their status will change to "YES".     

Step 3;  Confirm drivers that have said "yes" by clicking the "confirm" column next to their name and sending those notifications.     You can also notify more drivers if you need, just repeat Step 2.    

STEP 4:  Keep doing this until you have the drivers you need.  

Too many drivers said “yes” or “confirmed”;   This is when you use the “no need“ status column.   "No Need" is when a driver is set to "yes" or "confirm" and you realize you don't' need them.   When you send these notifications they are asked to stand by on a wait list.   Click “no need” next to those drivers name, then “send notifications’.  They can always change their status to “no, I can’t driver” if they don’t’ want to be on a wait 

OPTIONAL TOOLS: 

Override Status;  You may override this process by clicking "OVERRIDE STATUS", when you do this you can then click any status you wish, then "Set Status". This allows you to change any drivers status yourself.  Often this happens if you have spoken to them.  

Select Driver;   there may be a reason that you need to add a driver that is not in the zone. Perhaps it's a driver from another zone that has agreed to drive for you.   As long as they are a registered user in your chapter you type in a few letters of their name (wait a bit, it takes time to build this filter) and you'll see drivers in other zones.  Once you pick one, they are now part of this event and can be notified, confirmed, etc.  

The Event Manager can determine where a driver will start their route.    Typically drivers start their route from one of two places;

• Start from Home;    This simply means the routing tool will find the best route for the driver based on their home address
• Start from a Central Location;   This can happen if you want your drivers to all meet somewhere for special instruction or to pick up supplies (for example, to pick up their reusable bags that they are going to drop off at the donors house).       When this is selected, the routing optimization will start all drivers from this central location.

It might be that most will start from central or home, and others will start the another way.    You can set the "Default" in Chapter Profile, but then in the "Driver Start Location" tab of the Event tool, you can set the start location for each driver one by one.    

“BAG DELIVERY” is for delivering  bags to drivers.   It is a useful tool for chapters that have many drivers, making it more difficult to deliver their bags.   

It works the same as Food Donation Pickups;  the same process is used.   

First;  determine how many drivers you will need, send them notifications and confirm their willingness to participate.  You can also “Override Status” and set specific drivers as confirmed.   

Next;   Determine the drivers start point.   This may be a central location where they come to get the bags that they are going to deliver.  

Finally;  Create the Route, this…

The Event Manager can "create a route" that optimizes the drivers routes.   

Once all choices have been made (sufficient drivers have been confirmed, each confirmed driver has a start and end location, and you are close enough to the event) click "Create Route" in the Event Edit tool.    Note; if you don’t see “Create Route” it can be for two reasons;  1) The Site Admin needs to turn it on (contact info@porch2pantry.org), or 2) you do not yet have a confirmed driver.  

This will take between 1 to 5 minutes, depending on how many donors and drivers are involved.   

The resulting routing is then displayed by clicking "Route Map".  (see image below for examples).  

Once a Route has been created you should click on "Show Route Summary" just below the map to see the data; you can see driver name, # of stops and other data.  It's not accurate in terms of time, but does help get an idea who has a longer route and who has a shorter route.  

We are still developing the best methods to create a route.   It is possible you may see some results that are not desirable.   If you have a problem please contact the SiteAdmin by direct email or use markmdill@hotmail.com.   

There are several tools in the upper left.   By placing a check mark in the box to the left of the driver you can see their route on the map, and by unchecking their route goes away.   The "check" icon shows all routes.  The "x" icon removes all checks.   The ^ icon compresses all the routes so you only see the driver name.   Down in the driver list the "v" icon uncompresses their route so you see each donor.     You can also print the entire set of routes with the print button.

ROUTE UPDATE: 

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