Policy Change: Digest Email Required
In the new 2023-2024 program year, both Master Gardener and Master Watershed Steward programs have made receiving email alerts part of their policies, and have removed the option to have “none” as a communication preference. If you have previously had “None” set as a communication preference, this has been reset to a Weekly digest. Please review your policy statements.
Enrollment Updates
When logging into to the volunteer portal, you might be shocked to find your dashboard enrollments are back to zero. Don’t panic! We track your volunteer activity for each program year. If you look closer at your enrollment it has a date range next to it, which starts on October 1 and ends September 30 each year. On October 1 of every year the system will automatically enroll you into the new program year.
You can find your previously entered activity on the My Activity page.
In the Past Activities section you’ll notice it only goes back to October 1, 2020. This is because all all records from the legacy system have been summarized by the program year and archived.
When you navigate to My Account at in the navigation, you can see all your past summarized hours for your current and past enrollments.
Penn State Extension requires our volunteer programs to submit all volunteer hours at the end of the program year. To encourage volunteers to enter their hours within a timely manner, we will be setting a deadline of October 13 to capture all volunteer hours that occurred during October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2023. When creating new self-reported activities, please pay attention to the program year you are selecting. Both current and previous program year enrollments will be available during this grace period. Make sure you select the correct the record with the correct county program, and program year. So if you volunteered 10 hours at a demo garden, on September 29. 2023, you will want to log that in the previous program year 2021-2022.
If you are brand new to the program as a trainee, you might only have only have one enrollment for the current program year, and that’s okay! Work with your county coordinator if you need an enrollment for the previous program year if needed.
If you are missing your current enrollments our you are seeing issues with your hours summarizing, please use the contact page to submit a ticket.