I have an idea
Create a private draft, add the need, location, timeframe, and help wanted, then make it public only when you are ready for collaboration.
Community workspace user guide
Turn a community idea into organized, shared action.
Use this guide to create an idea, invite the right people, coordinate a project, and share progress without exposing private workspace information.
Start here
Choose the path that fits your role.
I represent an organization
Create a profile, invite authorized teammates, and decide who may represent the organization in ideas and projects.
I want to help
Browse public needs and volunteer roles, submit a response or application, and track invitations and service from your dashboard.
1. Account and dashboard
Your dashboard is the private starting point.
- Create an account or sign in, then open My dashboard.
- Use Your community collaboration to find ideas, organization profiles, and project workspaces connected to your account.
- Review organization and project invitations before accepting. An invitation does not grant access until it is accepted.
- Use notification preferences to choose in-account notices, optional operational email copies, and the community categories that are useful to you. Community email is off by default and is separate from newsletters.
Your account email and private contact details are not placed on public idea or project pages.
2. Organizations
Create a profile and control who can represent it.
Create or edit the profile
Add the organization type, description, service area, capabilities, interests, public contact details, and an optional logo. Choose private or public visibility deliberately.
Build the team
From View team, an owner can invite members, assign owner, admin, or member access, and separately decide whether a person may represent the organization. Invitees accept or decline from their own dashboard.
Understand verification
A public profile is not automatically verified. Only a platform administrator can apply the verified status after reviewing the required evidence.
3. Ideas and projects
Develop the concept privately, then open a workspace.
Create and edit an idea
- Select Start an idea from the community page or dashboard.
- Describe the idea, the need it addresses, location, timeframe, and help wanted.
- Keep it private while drafting, or make it public when ready for responses.
- Return to your dashboard and select Edit idea whenever you need to revise it.
Convert it to a project
- Open the idea and choose the project conversion action available to its owner.
- Confirm the project description, service area, target dates, visibility, and optional lead organization.
- Open the new workspace from your dashboard. The original idea remains connected for history.
Account or ownership changes
There is no self-service ownership transfer. If an idea or project belongs to the wrong account, use the contact form. Include the current account, destination account, and item title. Support must verify both the requester and the destination before changing ownership.
4. Project workspace
Coordinate the work with role-based access.
Members and participating organizations
Invite people into project roles and invite organizations through their authorized representatives. Pending invitations reveal no private workspace content. Organization representatives can ask questions before accepting.
Needs, offers, and tasks
Post structured resource needs, review private responses, move responses through their status steps, and assign lightweight tasks. Only make a need public when the wider community should see it.
Calendar event
Link an existing event or submit one from the workspace. Linking a project does not change the event owner or silently grant event-edit access.
Updates
Publish updates for internal participants or the public. Public updates appear only when both the update and parent project are eligible for public display.
5. Volunteers and community partners
Respond, apply, and keep service records accurate.
Respond to a need
Open a public need, sign in, and respond personally or through an organization you are authorized to represent. The response message and your identity remain private to authorized organizers and administrators.
Apply to volunteer
Review the role, dates, location, skills, and requirements before applying. An application is not an automatic qualification, background clearance, or acceptance.
Track service
Authorized coordinators can record service, volunteers can review their own history and request corrections, and verified records can be downloaded as an operational CSV.
6. Planning money and reporting impact
Use workspace records for coordination—not financial certification.
Budget
Finance-authorized roles can track estimated budget, confirmed funding, actual expenses, and projected remaining need. These are private planning records, not bank or accounting records.
Contributions
Record monetary or in-kind support for planning and optionally approve a contributor name for public recognition. Values and private contributor details never appear in the public recognition view.
Impact
Record outcome metrics with a source note, confirmation status, and visibility. Only confirmed public metrics on an eligible public project appear on public project, organization, and impact pages; private source notes stay private.
7. Privacy and current limits
Know what the workspace does—and does not—certify.
- Public visibility is opt-in. Check each idea, organization, project, need, volunteer role, update, contribution recognition, and impact record before publishing.
- Private messages, applications, contact details, source notes, budgets, contribution values, and service evidence are limited by role.
- Do not upload background checks, identity documents, tax forms, grant evidence, or other sensitive verification files. The workspace does not yet provide the approved storage and retention controls for them.
- Service records and CSV downloads are operational records, not formal certificates.
- Budget, funding, expense, and contribution entries do not move money, prove payment, create a charitable receipt, establish tax deductibility, or provide fiscal sponsorship.
- Organization profiles and project impact statements are not grant certifications or independent audits.
Questions, corrections, suspected misuse, and account ownership requests can be sent through the contact form.
Ready for the next step?