Meet The Need’s Shared Case Management system provides solutions for all 3 of your possible options for helping a family:

1. Record/view assistance you provided to the family today
2. Post/communicate family needs that you can’t meet today to see who can help
3. Schedule a family to come back on a future day (if you can’t help them today, and you do not need to post a need because you have a charity drive or delivery coming up and want to schedule the family to come back to receive those items or services)

See MTN’s User Instructions for Shared Case Management.

Meet The Need is designed to ensure the confidentiality of personal information of families you are serving.  Under no circumstances are Social Security Numbers (if you enter them) visible nor shared with anyone in the Meet The Need system.  Once entered, the SSN is encrypted and will not be seen by any key contacts or users (not even by the organization that entered the family).  If a family provides their SSN to a key contact, then it is searchable (if entered in full), but even in that instance the SSN does not appear on the screen.

• Lists the local families that your organization has helped and what was done for them
• Shows you what assistance families have received from other local organizations, helping prevent anyone from taking advantage of your generosity
• Allows you to post needs of families and broadcast them anonymously to individuals and organizations in your network
• Enables you to schedule families to come back at certain days and times for drives or delivery of items or services
• Provides you the ability to run reports showing the history of assistance provided and needs met/posted for each family or across all families you’ve helped over a certain time period

See MTN’s User Instructions for Shared Case Management.

A person can be provided with the option of meeting a need of a family directly (and receive only the first name and phone number of the family) only if that individual meets all of the following criteria:

1. Be  an “approved member” of an approved church
2. Be specifically enabled by the church to have the option of giving directly to a family
3. Has a skill or item that a family needs
4. Specifically chooses to give (items or services) directly to the family (they can still choose at this point to give through the church or charity to whom the family is assigned, rather than doing so directly to the family)

If the person wanting to help that family does not meet all of those criteria they can only meet the need through the organization that posted the need for that family. They will receive a confirmation email when they sign up to meet that need with the name, address and number of the church or charity that posted the receiving family’s need.  The church or charity that posted the need is also notified and the two parties will arrange a way to pick up the item or deliver the service.

As a church you have the ability to allow your Approved “Members” to deliver an item or service directly to a family.  When you log into the Dashboard, go to My Account and under Member Status, click Pending Members. Above the table, you will see a section called Default Direct-To-Family Setting. Use that drop down to switch the organization default to allow or not allow your “members” to have the option of delivering to a family directly as you approve them. Meet The Need strongly recommends running background checks on each individual before enabling this setting. If a member is disabled from delivering directly to a family in need, they can still meet needs of families by working with the local charities or churches who posted the need for those families.

As a Key Contact, you also have the ability to enable or disable an individual Approved “member” to deliver directly to families through the Approved Members page.  Simply click the Direct to Family Enabled/Disabled link to the far right of the person’s name to change the status for that individual.