Meet The Need brings a Fortune 500 caliber solution to the world of local compassion. Now for the first time, through Meet The Need charities can immediately communicate their volunteer and resource needs to a large number of churches, church members, businesses and others in the community who have a heart for the work they're doing. Charities can also manage all volunteers, in-kind donations, families and events…seeing instantly who has agreed to meet each need and watch the remaining needs adjust automatically as they are met (or are partially met).

It's important to note that our approach is not a clearinghouse. Clearinghouses struggle because every church and charity has unique areas of focus, partnerships, events, benevolence, drives, etc. What they need instead are systems to help them communicate, collaborate and manage those areas of focus. So Meet The Need's approach instead was to build and GIVE charities best practice systems for:

Managing and Recruiting Volunteers Accepting and Tracking In-Kind Donations Recording Family Needs and Services Provided Organizing Charity Drives Running and Broadcasting Events

All of those are shared platforms so the needs posted by one charity are instantly shared with other organizations. Yet they're private labeled so they look exactly like your web site – so the community won't see Meet The Need's heart for serving others - they'll see yours.

This is huge gamechanger for charities in terms of taking work off your staff, communicating with partners and volunteers, handling logistics, managing and tracking all charitable activities, and mobilizing more people to bring help and hope to those in need.

…and despite the 10 years and millions of dollars investing in building all this, Meet The Need is a donation-funded 501c3 so there are no required fees for using any of our software or services.

"For over 37 years, Metropolitan Ministries has been delivering hope to individuals and families in crisis through services that alleviate suffering, promote dignity, and instill self-sufficiency. The form of that delivery has varied from time to time, but one constant has remained the same—volunteers. Known as the Y factor internally, our volunteer corps has grown steadily during the years and enabled us to deliver hope in greater volumes than ever before. However, during the 2009 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.

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!"

—Metropolitan Ministries, Tim Marks, President