Verification of hours is meant to be done by a contact person who is over the volunteer activity where the student served. (This is different from approving hours that is completed by a school staff member towards a goal in their school's x2VOL account).

There are 3 ways students hours can be verified in x2VOL:

1. Organization verifying hours in their account- a registered organization in our system can post an event. Students sign up for the event and log their hours towards it. After it is over the organization contact can sign in to their account and verify the pending hours on their Pending Hours page.
2. Email Verification- when students log hours towards a Personal Project or an Opportunity posted by their school, an email can be sent to the activity contact with a link to verify the hours.
3. SMS Text Message*- when students log hours towards a Personal Project or an Opportunity posted by their school, a text message can be sent to the activity contact with a link to verify the hours.

Pending Entries

All pending entries should be evaluated on a case by case basis. Not all pending hours are pending for one specific reason.

One possible reason that hours could be pending is because the project contact did not receive the email. 97% of email Verifications are successful, however, 3% are not delivered for reasons outside of x2VOL's control. Either the email was sent to a spam/firewall folder or the student did not enter a valid email/phone number. Click here for instructions that you can send to your students to fix either of these issues.

Students can RESEND the verification request once and they can also EDIT the verification contact information if entered incorrectly the first time and resend the request after editing.

It is important to make sure that all Opportunities posted by the school have a verification contact selected. Here's an example of an Opportunity with a verification contact selected:

If you do not have a verification contact selected, your Opportunity will look like this:

If you see "None" in this drop down box, your students hours will not be verified for this Opportunity until you select a contact.

Helpful Tips for Verification

1. Enforce a timeline on all hours submitted- Many schools have a policy that requires students to submit hours within one week of volunteering. This allows the verifier to receive a verification request in a timely fashion. If a student submits hours outside of the one-week time frame, the hours are automatically denied. This may be too strict of a policy for your school, so you may want to adjust your timeframe. However, remember that the sooner the verification request is sent, the higher chance the hours will be verified. Most nonprofit organizations interact with dozens or even hundreds of volunteers. If the student submits a verification request weeks or even months after their service, the verifier is less likely to remember the student and what he or she did.
2. Allow students to add a photo or document with their entries to act as proof of service- This is a great option if the verification contact is not receiving or replying to the verification email. You can view these attachments from the Pending Hours page and approve or deny the hours as you see fit.
3. Have the student re-send the verification email- Students may re-send the verification email one time for each submission. Click here for a guide to send to students if they need help.

*Verification options can only be changed by Administrator Users in x2VOL. By default, Text Verification is turned off. If you would like to turn on this feature, go to your Organization Settings page.

Make sure that both "Email Verification Link" and "Text Verification Link" are Enabled. Click "Save".