Case Study
"During the holiday season, volunteer contributions reached record highs here at Metropolitan Ministries due in no small part to the technological advances offered by Meet The Need. Early last year, it became clear that tough economic times would bring to our doorstep thousands of more families needing assistance than previous years. In anticipation, we began a partnership with Meet The Need that would eventually enable us to recruit and sign up online almost 1,000 volunteers per day for the week prior to Thanksgiving and the two weeks prior to Christmas.
Meet The Need took advantage of society’s growing thirst for social media as a means to communicate coupled with our volunteers’ busy schedules by providing an easy-to-use calendar, with shift times, of all our holiday volunteer opportunities. Through our web pages, we simply gave volunteers an overview of the holiday volunteer experience and then directed them to an embedded Meet The Need site. With a single click, they could quickly review dozens of opportunities. Just like using an online retailer, volunteers went through the familiar steps of adding shifts to their cart, increasing the number of volunteers to include their family and friends, registering, and checking out. Then within seconds, Meet The Need sent them an automated response providing final details. Moreover, Meet The Need was available 24 hours per day, thus enabling volunteers to sign up at a time of their choosing, regardless of the availability of our staff.Read More...
Not only did Meet The Need meet the needs of volunteers, but it also met the needs of our staff. Over 2,900 individuals signed up through Meet The Need for 3-hour blocks of time at our Tampa location alone. This provided a savings in manpower of roughly $176,000 (based on the Independent Sector’s value of a volunteer hour in 2008 as being $20.25). Moreover, the saving extended into our own personnel costs. Not only did we save over 290 hours of time spent on the telephone signing up volunteers, but Meet The Need’s professional and responsive support team provided immediate, customizable solutions to our needs through the season. Consequently, our already stretched (yet charming) volunteer staff was then freed up to address other critical needs.
In the end, however, Meet The Need’s greatest value came in the form of linking vital community resources with real people to meet the needs of those hurting and in despair. By the end of the holiday season, over 37,000 families across three counties were helped with the aid of Meet The Need. Today, Metropolitan Ministries continues to use Meet The Need, but in three new ways: to solicit specific assistance on behalf of our resident families, to organize year-round food and toy drives, and to attract “high impact” (i.e., long-term) volunteers. Hope continues to live at Metropolitan Ministries each and every day in part because of the generous contributions of volunteers throughout the community. It is a win-win situation for all involved and only made possible through strong and lasting partners like Meet The Need. Thank you Meet The Need for helping make that happen!"
What people say about Meet the Need
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"Over 2,900 individuals signed up through Meet The Need for 3-hour blocks of time at our Tampa location alone. This provided a savings in manpower of roughly $176,000…we saved over 290 hours of time spent on the telephone signing up volunteers…"
