As you can see, we've launched a new website design. The website is always developing, changing, and ultimately trying to be the best tool we can create to connect neighbors in need with neighbors looking for help. The following post is an overview of all the new features, edits, or stability enhancements we've made. We hope you find some new features that you didn't know about already and it helps you stay more connected. If you ever have ideas or suggestions, send us a note. We welcome your input. 

Recent Improvements & Features: 

• Our notification system can now send out SMS (text) and email notifications if a project is scheduled and requests volunteers. Users must enable this notification in their preferences. Login to your account, hit "Edit Profile" at the top of the webpage, and then update your notifications with the button to the right. 
• When viewing a Service Event, a green "Export Projects" button is now available for admins and community members. It acts exactly the same as on the project search page and gives you an simple format you can print or share via email.
• We added the ability to "feature" a project on the homepage. NL staff will routinely add projects here that we want to draw attention to. We know some of you want to know what's urgent or has the greatest need. This is your place to find those projects. 
• The way "Export Projects" and the Project Map are created behind the scenes was completely re-written in a way that will improve performance. Those that use that feature should note both loading much more snappy.
• Projects can now have a parent/child relationship.  This allows you to create an overall parent project with child/sub projects underneath it.  Ex: create a parent project for a major renovation, then sub-projects for the unique tasks (plumbing, electrical, framing, etc.).  This will hopefully help tasks to be tracked in addition to allowing coaches to oversee a specific piece.
• Sometimes volunteers select a project to coach and something happens making it hard to follow through. What happens is they either forget to un-coach or they find another coach that wants to take it on. Previously, the only way for another volunteer to take over required comments or emails back and forth to coordinate. Now, a volunteer can now request to takeover as coach using a new button under "More Actions".  Doing so will send an email to the current coach -- if they click the link in the email, the project will be transferred to the new coach automatically.
• Our Projects Map feature now shows only NEW projects, skipping ones in a planning/scheduled/ongoing state. The latter was causing volunteer confusion.
• If you use our special events area, the list of registered attendees is now exportable in CSV/Excel format.
• For volunteers using the SMS notifications ("text me when a new plumbing project is added in zip code nnnnn", etc), replying with a "STOP" text message now correctly blocks future notifications.
• On project donations, donors are now given the option to add an extra 5, 10, or 15% donation for operational/general funding, which helps us tremendously. We raise a lot of funding for specific projects where we ensure 100% goes directly to projects. You can still do that, but if you've got a little extra to help us keep the organization growing, we'd appreciate it. 

We have a lot more planned for 2017, so stay tuned for those developments.