When I heard the vision and passion about Meet the Need, I remember saying to myself, ‘finally, someone has figured this out!’. Meet the Need is a ministry which will integrate ministries with ministry opportunities in the greater Tampa Bay region. This will be a greater unity within the body of Christ. One of the things I love about this ministry is Jim desires to complement and enhance what ministries we are already doing…not compete. I wholeheartedly support Jim Morgan and Meet the Need.
- The Crossing Church, Todd Bolt, Executive Pastor
What a Kingdom building opportunity this is! Not only does Meet The Need release the bottle neck at the church staff level on getting serve opportunities to your congregants, but it empowers individuals to put their faith into action. The load has finally been lifted from outreach church staff, who feels the heavy burden of trying to connect gifted servants to needs in the community. Now, at a touch of a button people can match their own personal gifts and promptings directly to a person, ministry or even a non-profit. The opportunities to serve are endless! These are not just simple "random acts of kindness" - the Holy Spirit wants to work in and through surrendered hearts, and we are called to sow seeds. These acts (seeds) are the means by which walls come down and hearts are opened to receive the love of our Savior. What are we waiting for? Let’s go be Jesus with skin to a hurting world.
- Van Dyke Church, Kim Crosby, Missions & Outreach
We are a large church and we work with a large number of local compassion ministries. Trying to match up so many ministry opportunities with so many members has been a challenge for our staff to coordinate. Because we struggled to manage all of the requests that came in for volunteers and find members who were capable of helping, we couldn't do as much as we wanted to mobilize our members to serve our community. However, Meet the Need handles a great deal of those logistics, so we know our impact for Jesus Christ in Brandon is going to expand dramatically. And it's wonderful how easily we were able to customize Meet the Need to suit our requirements and fit seamlessly into our culture.
- Bell Shoals Baptist Church, Debbie Weisemann, Minister of Outreach
Metropolitan Ministries benefited tremendously from the Feed the Bay initiative. Meet the Need was a critical resource for this effort, and mobilized over 800 volunteers for a single day of action. We received many of these volunteers at the Ministries and were impressed by their passion for service and the structure that Meet the Need provided to communicate details. We are anxious to begin to use some of these technologies for our own volunteer efforts. Many thanks to Feed the Bay and Meet the Need for a job well done!
- Metropolitan Ministries, Jennifer Bivens, Director of Development
The Crossing Church is overjoyed about using Meet the Need. We have been praying for unity of churches in our city to meet the needs of the community. Now there is a simple platform to post and adopt needs across denominations through Meet the Need. Our individual church members, LifeGroups, and Community Action Team can search and adopt needs to live out our church’s vision of “compassionately loving people”. What better way to empower God’s people to give and serve without having to wait for the next church-organized project. Through Meet the Need, our church’s DNA is changing to be one where we are the hands and feet of God as a lifestyle, not a program.
- The Crossing Church, Tonya Nichols, Equipt to Serve Director
The purpose of One CommUNITY Now, Inc., a faith-based non profit in Pasco County, is to unite churches in West Pasco County to provide more effective community services. Meet the Need provides a perfect solution for individual churches when gathering relevant needs from their congregation and finding church volunteers to meet those needs. Additionally, churches have the option to share their needs with other One CommUNITY Now church partners to find additional volunteer help. Meet the Need allows us to continuously find needs and volunteers in West Pasco County. Thanks Meet the Need.
- OneCommUNITY, Otto Berlin, President
Meet the Need has proven to be one of the most useful ministry tools available for special event volunteer management. Feed the Bay was a multi-church initiative that provided 270,000 lbs. of food to food banks in the Brandon, FL community. As planning for this event proceeded, we began to see the need for a viable way to manage the 800+ volunteers that were required in order to carry out such a huge task. When called upon for assistance, Meet the Need was quick to rise to the occasion, and, to the extent of even developing new software applications, provided an excellent resource for recruiting, communicating with, and receiving testimonials from our volunteers. The support provided by Meet the Need was invaluable in contributing to the success of our event.
- Feed the Bay, Cindy Perkins, Director
Meet the Need is a tool that enables us, through the structure of our Life Groups, to make a positive impact in our surrounding community. This online resource easily connects willing servants with real needs in our community, thus enabling us to involve a larger number of people in our outreach efforts. As Christians, Meet the Need helps us to do what we are called to do (serve others) simply and effectively!
- Bay Life Church, Jon Weaver, Life Groups Pastor
Meet the Need has been an incredible ministry resource for us. As a multi-ethnic, urban church, Common Ground Christian Church serves a community with a diverse set of needs and concerns. We have been able to connect with our neighbors on a personal level and serve their greatest needs. God has certainly put reaching our neighbors at our finger tips.
- Common Ground Christian Church, Danny Shaffner, Senior Pastor
For over 37 years, Metropolitan Ministries has been delivering hope to individuals and families in crisis through services that alleviate suffering, promote dignity, and instill self-sufficiency. The form of that delivery has varied from time to time, but one constant has remained the same—volunteers. Known as the Y factor internally, our volunteer corps has grown steadily during the years and enabled us to deliver hope in greater volumes than ever before. However, during the 2009 holiday season, volunteer contributions reached record highs here at Metropolitan Ministries due in no small part to the technological advances offered by Meet the Need.
Early last year, it became clear that tough economic times would bring to our doorstep thousands of more families needing assistance than previous years. In anticipation, we began a partnership with Meet the Need that would eventually enable us to recruit and sign up online almost 1,000 volunteers per day for the week prior to Thanksgiving and the two weeks prior to Christmas. Meet the Need took advantage of society’s growing thirst for social media as a means to communicate coupled with our volunteers’ busy schedules by providing an easy-to-use calendar, with shift times, of all our holiday volunteer opportunities. Through our web pages, we simply gave volunteers an overview of the holiday volunteer experience and then directed them to an embedded Meet the Need site. With a single click, they could quickly review dozens of opportunities. Just like using an online retailer, volunteers went through the familiar steps of adding shifts to their cart, increasing the number of volunteers to include their family and friends, registering, and checking out. Then within seconds, Meet the Need sent them an automated response providing final details. Moreover, Meet the Need was available 24 hours per day, thus enabling volunteers to sign up at a time of their choosing, regardless of the availability of our staff.
Not only did Meet the Need meet the needs of volunteers, but it also met the needs of our staff. Over 2,900 individuals signed up through Meet the Need for 3-hour blocks of time at our Tampa location alone. This provided a savings in manpower of roughly $176,000 (based on the Independent Sector’s value of a volunteer hour in 2008 as being $20.25). Moreover, the saving extended into our own personnel costs. Not only did we save over 290 hours of time spent on the telephone signing up volunteers, but Meet the Need’s professional and responsive support team provided immediate, customizable solutions to our needs through the season. Consequently, our already stretched (yet charming) volunteer staff was then freed up to address other critical needs.
In the end, however, Meet the Need’s greatest value came in the form of linking vital community resources with real people to meet the needs of those hurting and in despair. By the end of the holiday season, over 37,000 families across three counties were helped with the aid of Meet the Need. Today, Metropolitan Ministries continues to use Meet the Need, but in three new ways: to solicit specific assistance on behalf of our resident families, to organize year-round food and toy drives, and to attract “high impact” (i.e., long-term) volunteers. Hope continues to live at Metropolitan Ministries each and every day in part because of the generous contributions of volunteers throughout the community. It is a win-win situation for all involved and only made possible through strong and lasting partners like Meet the Need. Thank you Meet the Need for helping make that happen!
- Metropolitan Ministries, Tim Marks, President