General Information

You begin building an opportunity on the General Information page where you will need to make your first key decision: what type of opportunity is this?

• Fixed Dates - this is your most typical type of opportunity where you have a fixed beginning and end date to your trip.  Most every short term trip will be a fixed date trip.  This is the default.
• Ongoing - these opportunities can start and stop at anytime.  For example - you may have opportunity for someone to serve at your global hospital but you first are asking people if they are interested and then assigning the date range and fundraising goals for the event once you've made a plan.  
• Simple Registration - these opportunities do not require the participant to create an account but you only capture name and email address for registrants.  This is great for mass signups or for a "one off" serving opportunity (say a build day or an hour long commitment). 

NOTE: in the future, once you have created a trip you will be able to simply clone previous events for lightning fast opportunity setup.

Once you have determined what type of opportunity then you're off to a series of fields to help participants better understand the key information.  Here you will need to know the following:

• Opportunity Name - here you name your opportunity but we do recommend you name it something that people can recognize and something that makes it simple for you to identify on the backend.  For example, don't use a name like Kenya... try using Kenya Youth 2020 (summer) as an example.
• Start Date & Time / End Date & Time - these fields allow you to place your date and time for starting and stopping.  The date is the most important.  You can leave the time field empty but these are especially nice for local serving opportunities.
• Time Zone - this will default to your organization's time zone but this is the reference point for all of your registration cut offs and other time related items.
• Registration Start Date - this is a field that allows you to publish the event for people to view but doesn't allow them to register until the date/time you specify.  
• Registration Deadline - this is fairly straightforward.  This is where you want the registration to end.
• Description - this field allows you to give a general description for your event - consider things like an overview of the itinerary, type of work, partner organization, and testimonies of others who have participated on this trip in the past.  You may know all about this location but those exploring do not.  How would you describe the trip if they called you asking for information?
• Custom Categories - now if you have created custom categories then here is where you want to select the ones that apply.  For example you might want to select which partner organization and which church campus.  Your members will be able to search opportunities list by these categories.  
• Terms & Conditions - do you have specific terms for someone applying for this trip?  This is a good place to load those so the participant must agree before being able to apply for the trip.  You may consider having the text from your various forms here even if you plan to have them sign a paper copy as well.
• Privacy - where do this trip appear? -  the first security question is asking if this trip is to appear to only your organization, your organization plus your partners, or private.  The private field will not publish this opportunity on any of your list so you will need to send a direct link to someone to register for this opportunity.
• Privacy - who can see the details of this trip? - this security question allows you to show all data about the trip to someone who has this page link OR you can choose to keep all of the information private.  This is a good best practice for trips to restricted access areas.  No one can view any of the trip data until they have applied AND have been accepted.  
• Primary Contact - this is an important field to complete so that those with questions know who to contact.  This may or may not be your trip leader.  
• Opportunity Location - this allows you to note where the destination of this event is planned.  Make sure to fill in at least the country so a map point will plot on your map.