Poll Question

Meet The Need provided a platform to connect the community during the 2011 Holiday season that revolutionized service delivery. A three county area was united in outreach to the poor during the months of November and December. Toys for Tots, The Salvation Army, YMCA, Metropolitan Ministries, public schools and area churches served 10s of thousands of families using Meet The Needs’ collaborative scheduling system. These efforts were carried out by on a single shared platform that:

1. equipped over 40 local churches to register families and distribute food and toys,
2. engaged local public school teachers and guidance counselors to schedule children to receive food and toys,
3. hosted a multitude of registration locations at local ministries within a three-county radius staffed by volunteers all using Meet The Need, and
4. jointly scheduled families on shared, access-controlled calendars to receive gifts at specific dates, times and locations

Using a shared platform across all those sites and organizations ensured that the same families were not booked to receive items at multiple locations. It also allocated families across various sites and time based on the number of volunteers available to distribute items and the number of items available to distribute. So there was no overbooking at various times and locations. Bar-coded sheets printed out through Meet The Need’s system were handed to each family, helping make sure everyone came to the right location at the right time and made “check in” very easy for staff.

Karl Celestine, Director of Outreach and Client Services shared that “Meet The Need’s shared scheduling system really revolutionized how we approached the 2011 Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season. One of our biggest struggles is collaborating with other service providers throughout the community. All of us serving the poor and homeless are working hard to provide for our own budgetary needs—and donated food and toys is no different. With this in mind we had attempted to share information during the 2010 holiday season to avoid service duplication, which we estimated to be at 50%. This ‘sharing’ amounted to emailing Excel spreadsheets back and forth between agencies for several months. As you can imagine, our ability to look through an ever growing list (we serve 25,000 families on average each year) was way too cumbersome to do effectively. Our focus is serving families, not looking at lists. Meet The Need changed all of that. We were able to do things we had never done before because we could easily see who had already registered. It eliminated duplication and paved the way for true collaboration. For example, Toys for Tots only serves children up to age 12. Metropolitan Ministries serves children through age 17. We created a referral form so that a family who registered initially with Toys for Tots could also register at Metropolitan Ministries to receive toys for their teenager. We could not have done this without Meet The Need. Families were served with dignity and love like never before. Meet The Need equipped ministries with a framework to serve families the best way possible.”

Katie Waugh, Coordinator for Toys for Tots in Pinellas County shared a similar perspective, “In the past we were limited on helping families, but now because of Meet The Need we can see if a family is already receiving toys from another organization and give toys to people that really need them, therefore serving more families. Being able to register our families in a shared information system meant that I had a much better understanding of the individuals we serve – I was able to see a single father registered for our toys, but also for a Thanksgiving turkey from another organization and it gave me a clear understanding of the difficult situations our families are in, and how needed our ministry is.”

The 2011 Christmas season has launched an effort amongst service providers throughout Tampa Bay that is likely to continue into the New Year. Perhaps Celestine says it best, “Meet The Need connects the community. Each provider has our own mission and focus. We all offer different things to those in need. Seeing what families have received from others allows us to put together a good case management plan to move them to self-sufficiency. As we all begin to unite in our service to others—including the local churches using Meet The Need—we can say we are not just ‘handing out aid’ but moving families to self-sufficiency.”