A committee may contain one or more seats. For example, a finance committee could have three seats:
- Co-chair (2)
- Bookkeeper (1)
- Auditor (1)
A seat can have one or more positions. For example the Co-chair seat has two positions, one of reach of the two co-chairs. You may assign any number of positions to a seat, so you could have 1, 50, 100 or 1,000 positions available for any seat.
Creating, Editing or Deleting Seats
- Log into your organization's VolunteerMatters site with proper permissions
- Click on Setup > Committees.
- Click the ‘Edit’ icon
to the right of the existing committee that contains the seat you would like to change (you may have to scroll down after the page refreshes) - In the 'Edit Committee' box, click ‘Edit’ to the right of the existing seat you would like to change, the 'Delete' icon
to remove a seat, or click 'new' 
to create a new seat. - Enter the seat name. (While the system does not require seat names within a committee to be unique it is a good practice and highly recommended. Having multiple seats on the same committee with the same name can make automated transactions, like placement imports, behave unpredictably.)
- Choose the seat type (Seat types are for reporting purposes only. Choose one from the drop-down list.)
- Enter the seat description (This description is for internal purposes only unless you have chosen a placement fair product upgrade. The placement fair uses this description by allowing authenticated contact to browse available seats by committee. This online catalog publishes the description of each committee and seat to provide information about the committee’s purpose and the position’s responsibilities.)
- Enter the number of positions available for this seat. (You may assign any number of positions to a seat, so you could have 1, 50, 100 or 1,000 individuals assigned to any one seat. For system administrators, this value is for informational purposes only to identify need and level of fulfillment. The system does not prevent an administrator from over-filling seat assignments.)
- Enter a display order number. (When listing this seat in the administrative site or on a report, the system will use this value to determine in what order the seat should be listed. Seats are first grouped by their committee and ordered within those committees by display order number. The system lists those seat with the lowest display order number first and the highest last.)
- Choose whether or not to mark this seat as being active. (An active seat is available when assigning placements and also as a part of roster reporting. Those seats that are deactivate (the box is un-checked) are unavailable when assigning placements and for some of the placement reports. If you deactivate a seat, any assignments made to this seat will remain in the system’s history and subsequently in a contact’s history had they been previously assigned to this seat for any period of time.)
- Click ‘Update’ if editing or 'Add' if creating.
Deactivating a Seat
A seat is typically deactivated when assignments are no longer being made to it. For all practical purposes a seat should only be deactivated if the organization no longer has this position within their organizational structure. An active seat is available when assigning placements and also as a part of roster reporting. Those seats that are deactivate (the box is un-checked) are unavailable when assigning placements and for some of the placement reports. If you deactivate a seat, any assignments made to this seat will remain in the system’s history and subsequently in a contact’s history had they been previously assigned to this seat when it was active.
To deactivate, simply follow the instructions above to edit the seat and uncheck the active checkbox.
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