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Volunteering

Who this is for: everyone — families claim volunteer slots; team admins create them Applies to: all platforms (Android, iOS, web)

What this page covers

Mountain-bike seasons run on volunteers: registration desks, course marshals, bike washes, trail-work days. Groupset lets a team admin post volunteer opportunities, families claim slots and check in, and the app keeps track of the credit hours each family contributes toward the team's season target. After reading this page you'll know how to find and claim a slot, check in and out, how hours and milestone badges work, and (for team admins) how to create opportunities and set the season target.

Before you start

  • Anyone on the team can claim a volunteer slot; creating and managing opportunities is for team admins. Coaches can view but not create them.
  • Hours are credited to the account that checks in — so if a grandparent or another adult checks in on your behalf, use their account, because the credit follows the person who did the work.

For families: finding and claiming a slot

  1. Open a practice, race, or social event from the events list and look for its volunteer section — opportunities attached to that event appear there with a Sign up button. Team-wide and standalone opportunities (for example, a trail-work day that isn't tied to an event) appear in the volunteers area of the app.
  2. Each opportunity shows the times, how many slots there are, and how many are still open. Slots update live, so you'll see when someone else claims one.
  3. Tap Sign up. If the slot is already full you'll be told — claim a different one.
  4. You can cancel a signup any time before you check in.

Some opportunities are a single task rather than a timed shift — for example "bring 40 cookies." Signing up is the same: one claim, one commitment. When the team admin set a needed by time for such an item, its card and detail page show Needed by: Sat, Oct 4 · 8:30 AM — exactly when the item must be delivered.

Events with open volunteer slots also show a card in the activity feed, so you can jump straight to their volunteer section from the home screen. If an item on that card has a needed-by time, the card shows it too ("Bring to: — needed by 8:30 AM").

Opening an event from its volunteer card puts the volunteer section right at the top of the event page, so on a busy event day the signups are the first thing you see. In that view, the event's check-in controls appear for team admins and for people signed up for one of its shifts.

For families: checking in and out

  1. Check-in opens 10 minutes before your shift starts. Open the opportunity and tap Check in.
  2. When your shift ends, tap Check out. Your hours are recorded at that moment.
  3. Forget to check out? If your shift's scheduled end passes, the app checks you out automatically at that time — you still get credit for the time you served. (If you arrived late and were checked in after the scheduled end, you won't be auto-checked-out; the shift stays marked incomplete until it gets a manual check-out, so contact your team admin.)
  4. Missed checking in entirely? A few minutes after your shift ends, the app sends you a "did you complete your volunteer activity?" prompt. Confirm it and you get the same credit as an on-time check-in — no penalty. You can also decline it.

Your signup shows its status so you always know where you stand: signed up, checked in, completed, or (if you never checked in and the shift passed) marked as a no-show.

Credit hours and milestone badges

  • Hours accrue per team, per season, and add up across every kind of volunteer work — races, practices, social events, and standalone jobs.
  • Credit is earned when you check out (or confirm retroactively), never just for signing up.
  • Milestone badges are awarded once as your season total grows: Bronze at 3 hours, Silver at 5, Gold at 10, Platinum at 15, and Diamond at 20. You get a notification when you cross a line.
  • A team admin sets a season hour target for families. Parents see a progress card ("Volunteer hours: X / Y") on the dashboard's family area; if no target has been set, your hours still show, just without a goal. Each parent sees progress for their own family against the full target — with two linked parents, both see the shared athlete counted in their own family's progress.

Privacy note: on signup lists and reports, minors are shown as first name and last initial only.

Reminders and changes

  • The app reminds you 30 minutes and again 10 minutes before your shift starts, and notifies you when you're checked out. For an item with a needed-by time, those same reminders count down to the delivery deadline instead — they're worded around the delivery ("…is needed in 30 minutes — deliver to ") rather than a clock time.
  • Shift reminders can't be turned off individually — they arrive even if you've switched the volunteer category off in your notification preferences. Turning push off for the whole app silences them; they always land in your in-app notification center.
  • If a team admin moves the linked event, your shift times move with it automatically — so does the needed-by time on an item — and you're notified of the new time (unless you're already checked in).
  • If the event is cancelled, its volunteer opportunities are cancelled too, and you're notified.

For team admins: creating opportunities

  1. Open the volunteer section of an event (or the volunteers area for a standalone job) and choose to add an opportunity.
  2. For events, add shifts: each shift has a start offset relative to the event (for example, 30 minutes before the start — up to 12 hours before or after it), a duration, and a number of slots. You can add several shifts at once, and shift start/end always follows the event automatically.
  3. The multi-shift builder is built for adding a whole race-day kit in one sitting: an Add row button stays pinned at the top of your list (and again below it), so you can keep adding rows without reopening anything. If you open it with nothing added yet, a card invites you to add your first row. Every time you add a row — blank, copied, from a template, or generated — the app scrolls to it so you can see what you just created. Item rows use the labels Item, Quantity, and Unit (for example Item: cookies · Quantity: 40 · Unit: trays); timed shift rows keep Title.
  4. For a standalone job — trail work, a season-long role — set the date and times yourself.
  5. For a quantity assignment you can set an optional needed by time — families see exactly when to deliver the item, and reminders use it. For an item linked to an event you pick the time relative to the event (up to 72 hours before or after the start). Standalone items work differently: there's no separate Needed by field — the item's own end time is both the delivery time families see and the moment sign-ups close. In the builder the Needed by field sits after Unit, is blank by default (it's never pre-filled from the event), and shows the resulting clock time as you set it; a deadline after the event ends is allowed but flagged with a warning. Copying items from a past event carries the deadline over, adjusted to the new event's start.
  6. Save your setup as a shift template (a named kit) to reuse next season, or copy the shifts from a past event — the app lists your team's recent events to pick from. Applying a template recreates its shifts with times adjusted to the new event; a needed-by time saved with a template is stored relative to the event, so it re-lands at the same offset on the new event. If the template was saved for a different kind of event (a race kit applied to a practice, say), you'll see a suggestion note but can still apply it. Templates can be edited, duplicated, and deleted from the volunteers area, and deleting one never changes shifts already created from it.
  7. Edit or remove opportunities from the same screen. Removing one cancels any signups that hadn't checked in yet (those people are notified); signups already checked in keep their credit.
  8. If slots are sitting empty, use nudge to send a fill request to team members who haven't signed up for that opportunity. A nudge for an item with a needed-by time includes the deadline ("Needed by Sat, Oct 4 · 8:30 AM") so people know when it's due.

For team admins: season target and report

  • Set the season volunteer-hour target for your team in the team's volunteer settings. A season is a calendar year: you name the season when you set the target (for example fall-2026), and progress counts hours credited from January 1 through December 31 of that year.
  • Hours are measured per family — a parent plus the athletes linked to them. An athlete with two linked parents appears in both families, each measured against the full target; an athlete with no parent linked (one with their own login) counts as their own family.
  • Open the volunteer report to see each signup's status, totals per family, and export it as a spreadsheet (CSV). Hours already credited keep counting even if the opportunity was later deleted.

Notes and limits

  • Signups stay open until the event ends — there's no early cutoff — but a full slot is a full slot.
  • Cancelling a signup after you've checked in isn't possible; ask a team admin if the hours need correcting.
  • A quantity assignment ("bring 40 cookies") is a single slot — it can't be split between people. Create separate opportunities if you need two families to share a task.