Center lead guide

Last reviewed 2026-05-23 · About a 10 minute read

This article is for center leads — volunteers assigned to manage Paint The Province sign pickup at a specific Forever Canadian center. If you haven't been assigned to a center, the tabs on a center page won't show up for you. Talk to support if you should have access and don't.

As a center lead, you handle three things: publishing the pickup hours when volunteers can come collect signs, reviewing the pending requests for your center, and marking pickups complete on the day.

Reaching your center's page

Each Forever Canadian center has its own detail page at /centers/[id]. You'll usually reach it from a request notification email, but if you know your center's URL you can go straight there.

The center page has four tabs across the top:

Requests — pending sign requests waiting on a decision.
Hours — the pickup hours you've published for upcoming days; volunteers self-pick a 30-minute slot from these.
Scheduled pickups — requests you've already approved where a volunteer has picked a pickup time. Ordered by the scheduled time.
History — requests that have reached a final state (picked up, rejected, or cancelled), most recent first.

The Requests tab opens by default. Switch tabs by clicking the tab label.

If you're a lead at more than one center, each center has its own separate page and tabs. Open each center URL in turn to work through all of them.

Manage pickup hours

The Hours tab is where you tell the system when your center is open for volunteer pickups. Volunteers can only pick a slot inside a window you've published, so this is the gate that lets the rest of the flow run.

The week strip

The top of the tab shows a horizontal strip of 7 day cells, starting from today. Each cell shows the day-of-week abbreviation, the day-of-month number, and an hours summary (for example "3h" if you have three hours of windows published that day, or "—" if nothing is set). Today's cell is labelled Today. Tap the chevrons on either side of the strip to jump back or forward by a week.

Tap any day cell to focus on it. The focused day's heading appears below the strip in the format Friday, June 5, with an Add window button on the right.

Adding a pickup window

Tap Add window to open the Add pickup window dialog. The dialog opens with the focused day at the top and the caption All times in Mountain Time so there's no confusion. Fill in:

Start — a time picker; pick a time on the hour or half-hour. ("8:00 AM", "9:30 AM", "1:00 PM"; not "8:15".)
End — same picker, must be later than Start.
Capacity per 30-min slot — a whole number from 1 to 20. The helper text under the field reads "Maximum volunteers per 30-min slot". So if you set Start 9:00 AM, End 11:00 AM, and Capacity 2, you've made room for 4 slots × 2 volunteers per slot = 8 pickups in that window.
Notes (optional) — up to 500 characters. The character count appears under the field. The note is saved on the window in case you want to remember the context later.

Underneath the form, a live preview shows your math, e.g. "4 30-min slots × 2 max = 8 volunteer pickups in this window". When everything looks right, tap Add window. The dialog closes and the new window appears in the focused day's list. If something is wrong, the button is greyed out and a warning appears (most often "End must be after start.").

Editing or deleting a window

Each row in the focused-day list shows the window's time range (for example "9:00 AM – 11:00 AM") and a small caption with the capacity ("2 per slot"). On the right are two small icon buttons:

Edit window (pencil icon) — opens Edit pickup window, the same dialog with the current values pre-filled. The confirm button changes to Save changes while editing.
Delete window (trash icon) — opens Delete the Friday, June 5 · 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM window? with the warning "This won't cancel any pickups already scheduled inside this window — you'll need to follow up with those volunteers manually." Tap Cancel to back out, or the red Delete button to remove the window. Anyone who already scheduled a pickup inside it keeps their slot.

If the focused day has no windows yet, the list shows the empty state "No windows published yet for this day."

Tips for publishing hours

Publish one or two weeks ahead. Volunteers can only see slots inside published windows, so empty days mean no pickups.
It's fine to publish the same hours for several days in a row — there's no template feature yet, but adding a window on a second day takes about 15 seconds once you know the times.
Capacity is per 30-minute slot, not per window. If you have one helper at the door, set capacity to 1; if you have two people who can hand out signs at the same time, set it to 2.

What's in the Requests tab

The Requests tab lists every pending sign request for that center, oldest first. Each row shows:

The volunteer's first and last name (or "(no name)" if their profile is incomplete) — clicking the name opens their public profile page.
The quantity, formatted like "3 signs" with the number in bold.
A small chip with the volunteer's FSA and city (e.g. "T2G · Calgary") when they have a residential postal code on file.
A stats line summarising the volunteer's history at this center: "5 requested · 2 picked up · 5 installed (3 pending)".
A second line: "Requested May 18, 2026 4:32 pm".

On the right of each row are two icon buttons: a check icon (Approve) and an X icon (Reject).

If there's nothing to do, the tab shows "No pending requests."

Scheduled pickups

The Scheduled pickups tab lists every request a volunteer has scheduled a pickup time for. Rows are ordered by pickup date/time (earliest first) and carry the same volunteer info as the Requests tab, plus the pickup datetime and a Mark as picked up button.

When a volunteer arrives at the center to collect their signs, click Mark as picked up on their row. The row disappears from the tab and a small confirmation appears: "Marked as picked up." If someone else already marked it picked up, you'll see "Already picked up." and the row will disappear from your view as well.

If a volunteer reschedules or cancels their pickup time, the list won't update on its own — refresh the page to pull the latest state. A rescheduled row will show the new date/time once you refresh, and a cancelled pickup time will drop off this tab (the request returns to the volunteer's awaiting- pickup-time bucket on their side, but doesn't reappear in your Requests tab since you've already approved it).

History

The History tab lists every request for the center that's reached a final state — picked up, rejected, or cancelled — most recent first. Each row carries a small status chip (Picked up, Rejected, or Cancelled) so the outcome is readable at a glance. The view is read-only: no row actions, no Approve/Reject controls. Use it to look up an earlier decision or to see what reason was given on a rejection from weeks ago. When the tab is empty it shows "No closed requests yet."

Approving a request

Click the green Approve check icon on a row. The Approve request dialog opens with a short explanation: "The volunteer will pick their own pickup time from your published hours. They'll get a confirmation when they do."

The dialog has one field: Optional message to volunteer — a free-text area (up to 1000 characters) for any extra instructions you want to include in the approval email: where to park, the side door to use, who to ask for. The helper text reads "Leave blank to send a standard approval"; anything you type here lands in the volunteer's approval email and on their request detail page.

When you're ready, click the Approve button. The request leaves the queue and the volunteer receives an approval email titled "Your Paint The Province request is approved – (request #abc123)" with a Pick your pickup time button that takes them back to the dashboard and opens the slot picker. The short ID at the end is the last six characters of the request, so two requests don't share a subject line.

If two leads are working the queue at once and someone else already approved or rejected this request, you'll see "Request already decided." at the bottom of the screen. Refresh the queue and continue with the next row.

Note on the change: Earlier versions of this dialog asked you to set the pickup date and time yourself. That's no longer the case — volunteers now pick their own slot from the hours you publish in the Hours tab, so a window that says "open Friday 9 AM – 11 AM" is the only thing telling the system when pickups are possible.

Rejecting a request

Click the red Reject X icon on a row. The Reject request dialog opens with a single multi-line Reason field.

Type a short, specific reason — between 10 and 1000 characters. The counter under the field shows your character usage and the minimum. Be plain and kind; the volunteer reads exactly what you write.

Click the red Reject button. The request leaves the queue and the volunteer receives an email titled "Update on your Paint The Province request – (request #abc123)" with the quantity, the center name, your reason, and a Submit a new request button that takes them back to the request form so they can try a different center or a smaller quantity.

Notes on scope

Leads only see requests for the center(s) they've been assigned to. The URL for a center you're not assigned to responds with a 404 — that's by design.
The center-lead view (/centers/[id]) is the only one you need. Platform admins have a separate admin-only management view at /admin/centers/[id] for editing center metadata and assigning or removing leads — you can't reach that view, and that's by design. If you need a lead added or removed, talk to a platform admin.
If you're an admin yourself, you'll see an Edit center link in the page header that takes you to the admin view; the admin view has a View as center lead link that brings you back here.

Stuck?

If a request won't approve, or a volunteer reports they didn't receive their email, contact support and we'll take a look.