Scheduling for Charity Drives
The World's First Collaborative Drive Scheduling System
Coordinate as a community to avoid service duplication
Imagine schools, charities and churches scheduling families on a shared calendar for each distribution site. Imagine the end of double-booking families to receive items at multiple locations. Imagine toy, backpack and food drives where no distribution site can be overbooked. Imagine having a complete history of all families, what they got, and from where. Imagine running demographic and items quantity reports when the drive is over.
All of this is now possible using a brand new system built explicitly for collaborative charity drives – the first of its kind. And best of all – it's offered at no charge!
…Or Run Your Own Drive
Book families to receive help across multiple distribution sites
You no longer need to conduct your food, backpack or toy drives or schedule families to receive services using forms, spreadsheets and offline databases. Instead, empower staff or volunteers to schedule families online. Control access to the system and to book certain locations. Print and hand out bar-coded confirmations to families, telling them where to be and what they'll receive. Check-in using a bar-code reader or by typing in the family's contact information.
Features
Set Up Site Calendars and Access
You control the schedule and who's authorized to book families
Based on the number of volunteers and items available at each distribution site, the drive administrator can set up a calendar specifying for each site:
• Dates available to give out items
• Times available for families to come
• How many families can be seen each hour
• Which staff or volunteers can book families at that location
Search and Schedule Families
Coordinate scheduling across sites and partners
Based on the schedule, staff and volunteers book a day and time as well as the items to be given to each family. Before loading and scheduling a family (with household members), they must search to see if that family is already booked by another partner or at another distribution site. This will prevent double or triple booking families at various locations, which is very common today because organizations conducting charity drives have to resort to spreadsheets and forms to schedule families.
Revise Schedules, Access or Availability
Instantly update any parameters at any time
The drive administrator can change the dates, times and number of appointments available for booking families (based on changes in availability of volunteers or items at each distribution site). Those changes will be instantly reflected in the system being used by all staff or volunteers who are authorized to schedule visits at that site.
Track and Report Before, During and After
Run detailed reports on service history, items given, demographics, etc.
Bar-coded confirmations and check-ins serve as reminders for families of where to go and when to arrive and help ensure accurate records of what items/services are to be received the day of the appointment. Once that family's visit occurs, it becomes a part of Shared Case Management history and appears on all reports for the administrator to view the results of the drive. Family reports show the allocation of items/services across gender, racial, age and other demographics. Item reports show how many goods or services of each type were provided to families during the drive within any date range.
What People are Saying
"Meet The Need has allowed us to expand registration, be more efficient and cost effective, and most importantly, cross check all applicants against the database to prevent double dipping and send those most in need to another local ministry where they can be better served. It was so user friendly that we were able to draft instructions and push them out via email to a number of agencies that did registration for us. With no training, the registrars all did an awesome job."
Toys for Tots (West Pasco County, FL) – Coordinator
"Meet The Need's shared scheduling system really revolutionized how we approached the 2011 Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season."
Metropolitan Ministries (Tampa, FL) – Director of Outreach and Client Services
FAQs
Q: How much does the Scheduling System cost? A: There are no required fees. Our mission is to see churches and charities doing more to bring help and hope to families in need in their communities, so we offer you all of our state-of-the-art solutions at no charge. As a non-profit, we accept voluntary donations from churches, charities and individuals who share our mission.
See More...Q: Do my staff or volunteers need to be technically proficient to use Meet The Need? A: Not at all! There is very little training required. Everything is designed to be 1 click. Many small charities and churches have little "tech savvy", so we have to make Meet The Need simple to use and implement.
See More...Q: How does Meet The Need protect personal information of families? A: Only administrators and volunteers or staff who are scheduling a family to receive items or services can see that family's contact information.
See More...Q: What if we don't have a bar-code scanner to check in families? A: Bar-code scanners are inexpensive and easily plug into most laptops. There are also bar-code scanning apps for smart phones and other mobile devices. However, staff or volunteers may instead type in whatever information the family provides (e.g. name, phone) upon check-in to search for them and their scheduled visit in the system.
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