Frequently Asked Questions

An organization is any club, school, nonprofit, business, or community group based in our community that regularly runs events or programs open to local families. Creating an organization gives you your branding on every event and program, team management tools, recurring events, and immediate publishing — no review queue, no waiting.

From your dashboard, click "Create an Organization." You'll add your organization's name, logo, and contact info. Once submitted, we'll send a verification link to your organization's email address. After you verify, our team will review and approve your organization — typically within 72 hours.

Email verification confirms that you have access to the organization's official contact address before your request reaches our review team. It keeps the queue clean and speeds up your approval.

Find your organization on the site and click "Claim this Organization." We'll send a verification link to the email address on file for the organization. Once verified, you'll have full admin access.

Our team typically approves new organizations within 72 hours of email verification. You'll receive an email when your organization is approved and live.

From your organization dashboard, go to Members and click "Invite Member." Enter their email address and assign them a role — admin or contributor. They'll receive an invitation by email.

Admins can manage the organization profile, invite or remove members, and update organization settings. Contributors can submit events and programs on behalf of the organization but cannot change organization settings or manage members.

Yes. There's no limit on the number of admins or contributors in an organization.

From your organization dashboard, go to Members, find the member you want to remove, and click Remove. They'll lose access to the organization immediately.

From your organization dashboard, go to Events and click "Add Event." Fill in the details and publish. Because your organization is verified, your event goes live immediately on the community calendar — no review required.

From your organization dashboard, go to Programs and click "Add Program." Fill in the program details including type, age range, and seasons. Because your organization is verified, your program goes live immediately in the Programs directory — no review required.

Yes. Updates to organization events and programs go live immediately. There is no review process for organization edits.

Athletic (sports leagues and teams), Camp (day camps, overnight camps, clinics), Class (ongoing instruction like art, coding, or dance), Club (ongoing youth organizations like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, and robotics clubs), and Lesson (private or small-group instruction). Kankakee Direct reserves the right to reassign a program's type to ensure accurate categorization across our listings.

Email info@kankakeewithkids.com and we'll add it to the list.

Bulk upload lets you add many events or programs at once by uploading a CSV spreadsheet. Instead of creating them one at a time, you prepare your list in a spreadsheet, upload the file, map your columns to our fields, and review the imported items — all in one flow. Bulk uploads are available for both events and programs from the Bulk Uploads tab on each page.

From your organization dashboard, go to Events or Programs and click the "Bulk Uploads" tab. Select or drag a CSV file onto the upload area. We'll read your column headers and suggest how they map to our fields.

Four columns are required: Title, Start Date, Start Time, and Description. Optional columns are: End Time, Venue Name, Address, URL, Phone, and Email. Use these exact column names in your spreadsheet header row for the smoothest experience — the mapping screen will match them automatically.

Two columns are required: Title and Description. Optional columns are: Program Type, Seasons, Activity, Age Min, Age Max, Venue Name, Address, Info URL, and Registration URL. If your CSV doesn't include a Program Type or Seasons column, you'll be asked to set those before the review step.

For dates, use MM/DD/YYYY (e.g. "07/04/2026") or a readable format like "July 4, 2026." For times, "3:00 PM" or "15:00" both work.

After uploading, you'll see your CSV column names on the left and dropdown menus on the right. Columns that match our expected names are mapped automatically. If any columns don't match, use the dropdown to connect them to the right field. Required fields are marked with an asterisk.

If all your events or programs are at the same location, you can skip the address column — your organization's default address will be used. If some are at different locations, include an Address column in your CSV.

If your CSV includes a Program Type column, each row can specify its own type. If not, you'll choose how to handle it before the review step — either set one type for the whole batch, or pick the type for each program individually during review. Seasons work the same way: include a Seasons column with comma-separated values (e.g. "Fall, Winter"), or set a default for the batch.

If a program is set to Athletic type, it needs a linked sport or activity. If your CSV has an Activity column, we'll match it to our list automatically. If we can't find an exact match, we'll suggest the closest one for you to confirm. If you're setting the type per program during review, you'll pick the sport from a searchable dropdown when you select Athletic.

If any rows are missing required fields or have unrecognizable input values, nothing is saved. You'll see a list of which rows have problems and why. Fix your CSV and re-upload.

For events, we check for matches on the same title and date. For programs, we check for matches on the same title, type, and season. The upload process will alert you if any matches are found.

After the CSV is parsed, you'll review each item one at a time. You can accept it (publishes immediately), remove it from the batch if it was flagged, or accept all remaining items at once. At any point, you can revert the entire upload.

Voiding a batch immediately removes all of its events or programs from Kankakee Direct. Use this if you uploaded the wrong file or need to start over. You can always re-upload your CSV afterward.

Yes. The Bulk Uploads tab shows a table of all past uploads with the date, who uploaded it, row count, how many items are approved or pending, and the batch status. You can void any active batch from this table.

Recurring events let you set up a repeating schedule once — weekly practices, monthly meetings, annual fundraisers — and we'll generate the individual event instances automatically. This is available to organizations only.

Weekly and monthly patterns are supported, including flexible options like "first Monday of every month." Annual events can be set up as well.

Yes. You can edit a single instance — for example if one week's practice moves to a different location — without changing the rest of the series. You can also apply changes to the entire series going forward from any point.

Yes. Individual occurrences can be removed from the series without affecting the rest of the schedule.