Best practices in online shopping dictate that users want to first see the items they are interested in and only then are they will to register and provide personal information. Far fewer people would go online shopping if they had to register or login first before seeing any items.
Category Content: External
Does my staff need to be technically proficient to use MTN?
For staff members, the Dashboard is well organized and straightforward. All functionality is designed to be “1 click” (e.g. approving members, creating teams, deactivating needs). Posting a recurring need for volunteers for the entire summer can take less than 2 minutes. Many small charities and churches use MTN and most have little technical proficiency so we have to make it easy (e.g. to post needs, edit needs, read reports about who’s meeting those needs) to get everyone on board with MTN. Our efforts are to take every possible step/click away from users (to make the system easier to navigate), which has meant much more technology development work on our part but resulted in a more user friendly system.
We live in an elderly or impoverished area where not many people use computers. Can MTN still be useful?
Yes, MTN has been designed to be very user friendly. MTN is similar to shopping on Amazon.com. If they can check email or have ever bought anything online, they can use MTN. Actually, it is easier than online shopping because they’re not putting in credit cards and waiting for approval. MTN gets very few complaints from anyone about having trouble signing on to meet needs. Thousands have used MTN to register successfully for volunteer opportunities and events, both young and old, both technology proficient and technology averse.
However, it should be noted that in some communities and churches, online tools will not be the only way churches and charities to find volunteers and connect people to opportunities to serve. Trends in the business and social networking world point to increasing adoption of online methods of communicating. People in all age groups are becoming increasingly comfortable with online searches (putting in criteria, getting results that fit, and selecting the one that suits them best) and they enjoy the convenience (being able to do so at midnight on Friday or Sunday afternoon). But some people will still want to sign up on paper or by phone, which can work well in combination with MTN because you can adjust the number of people or items still needed by simply changing that number next to each need on your MTN Dashboard.
How is MTN different than church social networking sites?
Church-specific social networking was a competitive space with many vendors a few years ago. Those companies saw an opportunity to take advantage of the increasing popularity of social networking and assumed it could be applied profitably and effectively in churches to connect members. However, all but a few of those vendors are out of business today. They learned that church members didn’t want to join another social network. Church social networking sites have little to do with serving the community. They are intended for internal communication within the church and are not used by local charities, so it does not connect members directly with opportunities or charities, as Meet The Need does. Meet The Need is a software provider, not a social network – we give churches and charities proprietary software for managing all of their charitable activities. The fact that those systems are also used by other local organizations to communicate the needs of those local organizations provides added “social” and “networking” connectivity.
How is Meet the Need (MTN) different than other “volunteering” or “clearinghouse” web sites?
Meet The Need is the ONLY system in existence today that unites and mobilizes the cities to serve by empowering each individual church and charity with a completely controllable, private labeled, yet shared platform. Clearinghouse solutions do not empower; they drive all traffic to one destination web site to post and find needs. However we learned that churches don’t want to abdicate local missions by sending members to an outside clearinghouse web site to find needs. Churches and companies also want to control and regulate the needs being shown to their members/employees. And charities do not need just another place to post needs. We also realized that churches, companies and most charities had no modern systems for managing and communicating local needs. So Meet The Need took an “empowerment” approach, equipping each individual church and charity with modern tools for managing and communicating all of their charitable activities. MTN automates all of the local mission processes that were formerly done by pen, paper, phone, and e-mail. With MTN, your organization’s staff is able to spend much less time and effort, yet dramatically increase the organization’s impact in the community. For example, showing needs, taking sign ups, making changes/updates, handling cancellations, sending reminders, etc. are all handled automatically.
Why is MTN donation-based rather than fee-based?
Rapid, widespread adoption of Meet The Need by churches and charities in a community is ideal for a city to take full advantage of Meet The Need. It is much easier to get pastors, charities, associations and other influencers to adopt MTN and recommend MTN if there are no cost. For example, the primary way that charities learn about MTN is through churches who tell their charity partners that there is now a much easier and better way for those charities to share their needs with the churches members. So if MTN charged charities, churches would be in the awkward position of “selling” MTN to charities and that would stifle the “word of mouth” spread of Meet The Need.
How can our organization make a donation?
When your organization registers with MTN you will have an opportunity to make a donation via this link or via an email communication.
How is MTN funded?
As a 501(c)(3) Public Charity, MTN has been funded in large part by donations from a group of individuals and foundations who believe in our mission and feel called to support our ministry. However, the costs of providing churches and charities with systems for managing all of their charitable activities have been significant. So we ask churches and charities to consider donating to help MTN cover those costs, as well as help fund our expansion. Because the software has already been built primarily through the generous contributions of Christian business people, most software development costs are behind us and the ongoing costs of enhancing the systems and serving our members are all that need to be covered.
What is Meet The Need going to cost us?
There is no cost to use Meet The Need. We are a donation-based 501(c)(3) backed by Christian philanthropists, churches and charities who want to see the their city doing more to serve those in need. You or your organization may donate to MTN if you’d like but there are no required fees to use our state-of-the-art software. That’s how we connect cities to serve – by giving valuable systems away to ensure everyone says “yes” to Meet The Need and winds up connected.
Can our organization limit who can see certain needs?
Yes, in two directions:
- Post/Edit Needs – You can post needs so that they are seen only by your members (private), only on your web site (semi-private), or may be seen outside of your organization (public). For example, a church may set up a team for Visitation exclusively for its Elders and Deacons. In that case, the Visitation team leader would post needs as “Private” so the Elders and Deacons would have to log in before even being able to see those needs.
- Hide/Show Needs – You may also choose which needs from outside of your organization may be seen by your members or employees. For instance, you may be working with one food bank and not another so you could show the first food bank’s needs and not the others. You can do this in one of two ways: 1) If you want to show all local needs except for the needs of particularly charities, then you can “hide” the needs of those charities, or 2) Rather than showing all local needs, MTN can provide you separate links for each of your charity partners showing each charity’s needs on separate buttons.