FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the most frequently asked questions. If you don't find an answer to your question, feel free to contact our helpdesk at info@giveaday.be or to call +32 497 06 01 64. We are available 7/7 during the Corona crisis.

Question 1: How to start as a municipality?

You can find all the information about launching a local help platform in our Toolbox for organizing neighbourhood Corona assistance. The toolbox is provided for inspiration by the participating municipalities and Give a Day and all the documents it contains are freely available for reuse.

Question 2: Do you have suggestions to strengthen communication and to reinforce the link with other groups?

Corona help is best organized centrally by the municipality because local authorities are in the best position, in close cooperation with civil society, to proactively gather and coordinate requests for help. Active communication from the municipality is therefore very important. In our toolbox, you can find some tips and examples of other municipalities that can be reused.

Question 3: Is there an online form for citizens who need assistance?

We recommend that the registration process for those seeking help is as accessible as possible in order to reach citizens who are not familiar with digital tools. Provide at least a telephone number and an email address. Optionally, you can choose to put a form on your municipal website and refer to it on the help platform via a hyperlink.

You can also use the Impact Days form so that everything can be managed and matched systematically in the Impact Days back office. As soon as someone who needs help has typed his/her postal code, the list of vacancies that you have added to your page will appear. Make sure to try it out yourself! You can use the Impact Days help form as follows:

• Step 1: Copy this URL: https://www.impactdays.co/assistance/.
  
• Step 2: Go to "Manage homepage" in the admin panel.
  
• Step 3: Add this third option as a hyperlink in the help text, next to phone number and email address. You click on the pencil and the place where the link will appear in the text.
  
• Step 4: Click on the icon with two chains.
  
• Step 5: Enter first the text "Fill in the help request form" and then the copied URL.

You can also put this URL https://www.impactdays.co/assistance/ on your website. Requests for help are registered in the admin panel under "Requests for help". You can add fields to your back office in "Settings".  E.g. free text, date or Yes/No question. For example, you can add a 'Matched' column with such a Yes/No question.

You can manually add help requests received by email or by phone via the red "Add help request" button under "Requests for help".

You can export the help requests.

Question 4: What about insurance?

This varies across municipalities, regions and countries. If no insurance is explicitly provided by the municipality or your region, make sure volunteers have a civil liability insurance (family insurance) and accident insurance. This way, they are covered in case of damage to third parties or to themselves.

Question 5: Who is Give a Day?

Check out our page for more information on our social mission and the description of our team of solidarity champions. Together with you, we change the world for the better!

Question 6: Can we ask for new features as platform administrators?

At Give a Day, we believe in co-creation. None of our platforms are built or upgraded without the direct input of the user. This is no different for this website. In order to streamline all developments and suggestions for extensions, we use an online feedback tool. Fill in your suggestions and upvote the things that you think are most important. We take every input into account for further development if it adds value for all participating municipalities and continues to guarantee the functioning of the platform. We look forward to your suggestions!

Question 7: How do I add a hyperlink?

You can add links to a website (URL) as follows:

• Step 1: Click on the pencil in the text box where you are going to place the hyperlink.
  
• Step 2: Click on the place where you want the hyperlink.
  
• Step 3: Click on the icon with two chains.
  
• Step 4: Type the name e.g: "Fill in the form".
  
• Step 5: Type the address in the following format: "https://www.YOURURL.be". Don't forget the https://.
  

Question 8: How do I add an email address?

You can add email addresses as follows:

• Step 1: Click on the pencil.
• Step 2: Click on the place where you want the email address.
• Step 3: Click on the icon with two chains.
  
• Step 4: Type the name e.g: "Email us"
• Step 5: Type the email address in the following format: "mailto: YOUREMAIL@YOUREMAIL.COM". Don't forget the mailto:.

Question 9: How do I add documents that users can download?

You can add documents as follows:

• Step 1: Put your documents online so that you have a unique URL. E.g. on a Dropbox or Google drive.
• Step 2: Right-click on e.g. Google drive online and press "Get shareable link" and copy it.
• Step 3: Follow the steps in Question 7 to add a URL.
  

Question 10: How do I change the order of the vacancies and the number of volunteers that we are looking for?

You can modify the order of the vacancies as follows:

• Step 1: Click on "Settings platform" in the admin panel.
  
• Step 2: Under "Display number of volunteers", check the box "Show the number of registered volunteers".
  
• Step 3: Go to "Vacancies" in the admin panel and click on each vacancy.
• Step 4: In the information about the vacancy, which has to be filled in first, indicate the highest number where "0 of 1 places occupied" is shown. The vacancies are automatically ranked according to the number of registered volunteers/number of wanted volunteers. If something always has to be in the first place, you indicate e.g. 1000 places and 900 for the second vacancy, etc.
• Step 5: Go back to "Settings" and uncheck "Show the number of registered volunteers" again if you don't want to visualize it.

Question 11: Can I upload two logos for the header?

In this case, it is best to merge the two logos into 1 logo (e.g. in Paint). You can then upload them together clicking on the pencil of the logo.

Question 12: Can I add new administrators later?

After creating the platform, you can add new administrators as follows:

• Step 1: Click on "Administrators" in the admin panel.
• Step 2: Click on the red button "Add Administrator".
• Step 3: Add the email address, password and save.
• Step 4: Communicate the password to the new administrator discreetly (preferably by phone).

You can always change an administrator's password by clicking on the email address in the list. You can always remove an administrator by clicking on the bin.

Still having troubles? Sometimes, it helps to delete the administrator and add him or her again.

Question 13: Can I change the banner and text colours in the main header?

The colours of the banner and the text in the header can be changed as follows:

• Step 1: Click on "Manage homepage" in the admin panel.
  
• Step 2: Click on the pencil in the header.
• Step 3: Add the header text there and choose the colours that match your house style. This is possible for both the text colour and the banner colour.

Question 14: Is it normal that sometimes we don't see all the saved vacancies?

If you are working with several admins at the same time, you may not yet see each other's saved vacancies. This is because your 'cache' is lagging behind. Refresh your cache by pressing the CTRL and F5 buttons a few times at the same time.

Question 15: How can I expand or change the fields that volunteers can fill in?

You can change the fields that a volunteer is asked to fill in as follows:

• Step 1: Click on "Settings volunteer registrations" in the admin panel.
  
• Step 2: Indicate the registration fields that you would like to have. Additional information is a free text field.
• Step 3: If you need a new category for the registration field, select "Volunteer categories". Fill in an ID number e.g. 1, 2, 3,... and under "name" the categories that the volunteers can see and select.
  

Examples of categories:

• Name of a district, neighbourhood or district to which a volunteer belongs
• The type of registration: i.e. organization, individual volunteer, etc.

Question 16: Do I receive an email as a platform administrator when someone registers?

To avoid flooding the mailbox of your Corona helpline with automatic emails, we have decided not to send an email to the administrators when new volunteers register. However, the volunteer does receive a confirmation of his or her registration. This email template can be customized by clicking on "Email Template" in the admin panel. There you can fully customize the subject line, the email itself and add dynamic fields.

Question 17: Why can't I click on the URL that I have just added in the text?

As long as you are in edit mode, you can't click on a URL that you have added. To do so, you need to view this page as a user. You can view your page as if you were a volunteer by clicking on "View homepage" in the admin panel.

Question 18: We already have an existing pool of requests for help and/or volunteers. What do we do now?

No problem at all. Send us your Excel file with the data and we will upload it into your database for you. This way you can save a lot of time by centralizing everything neatly and making the coordination easier.

Question 19: Once the platform has been created, how long will it take for the platform to be validated and go live?

From the moment that you click on validation, we will validate your platform within half an hour. You will receive an email as soon as that is done. Feel free to let us know if it takes too long via info@giveaday.be

Question 20: How does the matching work?

In order to respect privacy and guarantee security, the matching is done manually by the municipality. As soon as you receive a request for help, you can look for a volunteer in the back office. You then inform him or her and exchange the necessary information.

Question 21: Can the platform also be multilingual?

In the admin panel, click on "Settings platform". You can currently select French, English, Dutch and German. 24 other languages will be available within the week: all European languages, Russian, Japanese, Hindu, Arabic, Bengali and Chinese. Don't forget to complete the texts in the other languages. Your own text will not be automatically translated. You do this yourself by putting the language toggle on top of the other language in edit mode by clicking on "Manage homepage". Afterwards, you will see that you have to add the texts in the new language.

Question 22: We are experiencing problems with the website, why?

99% of bug reporting is due to the use of the browser Internet Explorer. This is a very outdated browser, which does not support JavaScript very well. The debugging and 'dirty' coding to circumvent this took 1/3 of our development time. Since only 3% of the website visitors still use Internet Explorer (and it keeps declining), we decided not to support it anymore. In this time of crisis, we prefer to add more urgent functionalities, rather than spend time on the compatibility of highly outdated browsers. Our apologies. If you want to make use of all the functionalities of this website, we advise you to use the following browsers that do support JavaScript:

• Google Chrome (Preferably)
  
• Microsoft Edge
• Safari
• Firefox
  

Additional information 

You can find an English manual PDF here: English Manual - This manual explains step-by-step how to use the platform.