Category Content: External

How does MTN protect organizations from liability?

Many churches and companies today do outreach without any form of protection from liability in case of an accident. Many charities have volunteers sign waivers or releases but some do not. MTN requires every volunteer who wants to meet a need to sign a Terms of Use indemnifying the organization from liability should anything go wrong during a community service activity. The Terms of Use was written with the help of a Christian legal assistance organization, the attorney for a large church, and MTN’s attorneys.

How does the volunteer management system work?

External, Volunteer Managementadmin

There are many features of volunteer management. Below are some scenarios based on different types of organizations using MTN and different needs sources.

Local Partners
1) If you are a church: Empower your local partners (food banks, homeless shelters, etc) to join MTN and post their own needs. Through links, their needs will show on your website, on their own website, as well as on many other local church websites for individuals to search and adopt (looking like each website – not MTN’s website). As a church you have access to see which of your members are serving, where, and when in the community through detailed reporting. Your partners will have a complete platform to manage all their outreach activity. As your partners post new needs, your members who have chosen to connect with specific partners will receive notifications that new needs have been posted. As your members adopt needs, they will receive email reminders (21, 7, and 1 day prior to the Need-By date) to complete their commitment and give a testimonial of how their serving experience was.

2) If you are a non-profit: Post your needs to show on your website, local church websites, partner business websites, and other agency websites. All needs are shared through links looking like your non-profits’ website or your partners can join MTN and have your needs looking like their website. Your partners will see all your needs AND have a complete platform to manage all their outreach activity (if they join MTN). As your needs are being met, you (the key contact) will receive notifications of each commitment. The volunteer will receive reminders to complete their commitment and give a testimonial of their serving experience (21, 7, and 1 day prior to the Need-By date). Approved Members on your dashboard will receive new needs posted emails when you post new needs so they are aware of your new postings.

Missions Needs
1) If you are a church: Create teams for each of your missions trips or add specific missionaries to your missions module. Empower your missionaries and missions team leaders to post their own needs (or you post for them), manage their volunteers, and run missions reports. With a missions link(s) on your website, as needs are posted they will be automatically on your website for your members to search, commit, and connect directly with your missionaries/missions team leaders. The same automated emails go out as mentioned in the Local Partners section above.

Internal/Outreach Needs
1) If you are a church: Post needs for the church as a whole from your main dashboard. Create teams to empower team leaders to post outreach needs. Create teams to empower team leaders to post internal church needs (ushers, greeters, etc) through the At My Church category.

Needs will show on your website (through links) for your members to search and adopt and if you choose they can be seen on other church and local agency websites. Note: All internal church needs (usher, greeters, etc posted through the At My Church category) will only be visible on your church website. It is only the outreach needs that you have an option to show on other websites.

You have access to detailed reporting to see the needs that have been posted and commitments made. The same automated emails go out as mentioned in the Local Partners section above. As a team posts needs the “new needs posted” email only goes to the Approved Members of that team (not the main organization).

2) If you are a non-profit: Post needs for your organization as a whole from your main dashboard. Create teams to empower team leaders to post needs and see reports. Needs will show on your website (through links) for your volunteers to search and adopt and they will appear on local church websites. You have access to detailed reporting to see the needs that have been posted and commitments made. The same automated emails go out as mentioned in the Local Partners section above. As a team posts needs the “new needs posted” email only goes to the Approved Members of that team (not the main organization).

How did the idea for MTN come about?

External, Foundingadmin

Our founder, Jim Morgan, was a former Investment Banker on Wall Street, Legislative Aid to a U.S. Congressman on Capitol Hill, MBA from a top business school, and spent 12 years as a Management Consultant to Fortune 500 companies. But in the midst of that career, as a Christian, he felt like he needed to be spending more time serving God and helping others. He searched for opportunities to give back with local churches and Christian charities but struggled to find something that would take advantage of the skills he had to offer. Then, during the “Dot Com” boom while working as an eBusiness strategist for Internet companies, God turned Jim’s struggle into a personal calling. One day in 2000, God gave him an inspired thought – rather than people shopping for what they want to buy on the web, why can’t they “shop” for someone who needs what they want to give away! The same strategies and technologies Jim was helping large corporations implement could be used to help others find opportunities to reach out to those in need. After over a decade of design, development, piloting and testing, Meet the Need is the realization of that vision, providing a unique and innovative way to leverage leading-edge business technology to enable churches, companies, charities and individuals to reach out to those in need in their local communities or anywhere in the world!

For more information, watch our MTN overview video.

Where is Meet The Need operating now and what are its expansion plans?

Expansion, Externaladmin

MTN officially “launched” in 2010 in Central Florida after 9 years of planning, piloting, design, development and testing. It has now expanding into over 70+ cities across the US. Because MTN works best when many churches, companies and charities are on board in the same city, plans are to continue to expand into selected cities as opportunities arise (i.e. where several large churches and charities in a city are willing to lead the way). We also depend on partnerships with city reaching organizations to help us get the word out about Meet The Need to the organizations in their networks. We help city reaching groups accomplish their vision of a united and mobilized community, working together to bring more help and hope to struggling families.

How does MTN help run our church or charity event or make a large city-wide event far more successful?

Events, Externaladmin

Events require collaboration and coordination. Without an automated system, those tasks are far too manual and labor intensive, done primarily via email, phone calls, meetings and paperwork. Communicating needs, taking sign-ups, handling cancellations, determining who-did-what and gathering testimonials after the event are all challenging to manage as well. But MTN provides a way to handle all collaboration and administration with much less effort, while also getting much better results:

Involve Partner Organizations – MTN entices other organizations to be part of your event by allowing them to plug in and benefit with little effort on their part
Unite All Partners Seamlessly – Show a wide variety of opportunities and take registrations through the web sites of all partners, not just your own site (unless you want to show those needs just on your web site)
Manage All Logistics and Volunteers Online – See all your teams, leaders, shifts, volunteers and supplies all on one access-controlled Dashboard
Make Sure Everyone Is Where They Need to Be the Day of the Event – Make changes, communicate updates, handle reminders and cancellations automatically
Record and Track all Event Activities for Future Use – Track outstanding needs, audit, calculate volunteer hours, and retain all info for future events

Can our organization make adjustments to the details (e.g. logistics) about a need, even at the last minute, and communicate the changes to all individuals who’ve signed up?

Efficiency, Externaladmin

Yes, quantity needed, dates and times, descriptions of the need, etc. may all be changed and any time. The new details are reflected instantly on all web sites where a need appears. The content of reminder emails also automatically changes. You can also email all individuals in each shift where a change has occurred.

How does MTN save charities time and money?

Efficiency, Externaladmin

There are tremendous inefficiencies today in how charities communicate needs to church and corporate partners, and how those churches/companies share those needs with their members/employees. MTN automates all of those processes that are currently done by pen, paper, phone, and e-mail. MTN also provides charities with a complete set of best-in-class systems at no charge for managing volunteers, in-kind donations, families in need, events, drives, etc., saving money spent on purchasing each of those applications and the time spent learning all of those systems.

How can I empower leaders in our church to manage their ministries more efficiently?

Efficiency, Externaladmin

Staff and lay leaders want better tools to help them manage their internal ministries (e.g. greeters, ushers). They find it challenging to e-mail and call to find volunteers, track signups on spreadsheets, send reminders, handle last minute cancellations, etc. MTN eases the administrative burden on internal ministry leaders by empowering them with a automated Dashboard to post and manage their own needs. The church staff also saves substantial time by letting lay leaders handle all of those logistics.

How does MTN save churches time and money?

Efficiency, Externaladmin

MTN automates all of the local missions processes that were formerly done by pen, paper, phone, e-mail and Post-It Notes. There are tremendous inefficiencies today in how volunteer needs are communicated to church attenders/members and how they connect with those opportunities. A church cannot possibly survey the community, even just its charity partners, to find out their current needs and put those in front of members on a real-time basis. Those needs are constantly changing and the church cannot keep up with them or communicate them effectively from the pulpit or in the bulletin. Even if a church managed to communicate those needs, how would members register to volunteer?

With MTN, a church staff could expend very little effort (far less than it does today) yet be able to dramatically increase the church’s impact in the community by allowing members and small groups to see and sign up for a wide range of church, charity, family or missions needs through the church’s web site. A church can even let members and small groups “opt in” to receive emails from ministries inside or outside the church whenever they post new needs