What to Do If You Have to Cancel an Opportunity

It is never ideal when you have to cancel a volunteer opportunity. However, we understand that sometimes it is inevitable and CERVIS has many features that allow you to easily update the event and communicate the changes to your volunteers. See the steps below to cancel an opportunity in CERVIS. 

Step 1 - Mark Opportunity As Canceled 

In order to prevent new registrations on the canceled opportunity, you’ll want to change the Publish Online setting to 'Yes - Canceled'. This will also display the opportunity as canceled to volunteers who are viewing it online.

Follow the steps below to mark the opportunity as canceled: 

1. Login to your CERVIS account.
2. Click on Search / Manage Existing Opportunities under the “Opportunity Management” heading on the Main Dashboard.
3. Locate the opportunity and click on the Update/Edit Opportunity button ().
4. Locate the Publish Online setting and change it to “Yes - Canceled”.
5. Click the Update Opportunity button to save your changes.

 To do this in bulk for more than one opportunity:

1. Login to your CERVIS account.
2. Click on Search / Manage Existing Opportunities under the “Opportunity Management” heading on the Main Dashboard.
3. Select all opportunities that you would like to cancel in the list of events and then click on the Update Opportunity Attributes found in the "Opportunity Management Bulk Actions" dropdown and click the associated button.
4. Click the box next to the Publish Online field and click the Select Item(s) to Bulk Update button.
5. Click Yes, Proceed with Bulk Update to confirm.

Step 2 - Notify Your Volunteers

You will need to notify your volunteers of the cancellation. CERVIS does not automatically send a message when you change the status of an opportunity. 

You can email all of the volunteers registered for a particular opportunity to notify of the canceled event by following the steps below:

1. Click on Search / Manage Existing Opportunities under the “Opportunity Management” heading on the Main Dashboard.
2. Locate the opportunity in question in the list of events click on the Register Volunteers/Groups button ().
3. Select all registered volunteers by clicking the checkbox in the heading.
4. Click the Send E-mail to Selected button.
5. Select the options you desire and fill out the email subject and body of the message.
6. Click the Send E-mail button.
7. Click the OK button to confirm your E-mail message.

If you have SMS/text messaging enabled in your system*, you could also send a text out to those volunteers by following the steps below:

1. Follow steps 1 through 3 above.
2. Click the Manage Selected Volunteers button.
3. You will be taken to the Volunteer Management menu with the volunteers displayed there. Select them all by clicking the checkbox in the heading. 
4. Click on the Send Text Message to Selected Volunteers found in the "Volunteer Management Bulk Actions" dropdown and click the associated button.
5. Compose your message and click the Send SMS button.

Step 3 - Unregister Volunteers

When volunteers are registered for an event, they will automatically receive the default number of credit hours assigned to that event. To make it so that they don’t receive the credit for the canceled event, you will need to unregister all of the volunteers. 

Note: Alternatively, you could set the shift to be worth 0 credit hours. The registration will remain and affect reporting, but the hours will not.

Follow the steps below to unregister the volunteers from this event: 

1. Click on Search / Manage Existing Opportunities under the “Opportunity Management” heading on the Main Dashboard.
2. Locate the opportunity and click on the Register Volunteers/Groups button ().
3. Select all registered volunteers by clicking the checkbox in the heading.
4. Click the Unregister Selected button. 
5. Confirm that you would like to unregister all of the volunteers from this opportunity.

Optional Step 4 - Close Opportunity

By setting the Publish Online status to “Yes - Canceled” as discussed in Step 1, the opportunity will still be visible to your volunteers but will not allow them to register. You may want to leave the opportunity listed this way so that potential volunteers can see that it has been canceled. The system will close the opportunity and archive it after the end time has passed, just like any other events, so that your volunteers can no longer see it and it will be archived on the admin side as well. 

On the other hand, if you don’t need potential volunteers to see that the opportunity has been canceled, you can remove it from their view by closing it manually. 

Follow the steps below to close the opportunity: 

1. Click on Search / Manage Existing Opportunities under the “Opportunity Management” heading on the Main Dashboard.
2. Locate the opportunity in question and click on the Update/Edit Opportunity icon ().
3. Locate the Opportunity Status setting and change it to “Closed”.
4. Click the Update Opportunity button to save your changes.

*If you do not currently have SMS/text messaging enabled in your system, please see our knowledge base article linked HERE for information about how to set it up.