Recently I was working with
CrossWinds church in Dublin CA and came across a situation I had
seen in the past but did not have a
great
solution to meet their needs. Recent
advances in F1's ability to send contacts to small group leaders has provided a
solution that now easily meets a
care
ministry needs.
The Issue:
CrossWinds Church
has care teams that are regionally based
around the Dublin City area and provide services
to people in need. They bring meals to families that need them, they visit people in the hospital, and they provide services such as lawn mowing to single parents.
Each team is comprised of a leader
and an area coordinator. The leader is responsible for the group and
recruiting new volunteers into their ministry.
The area coordinator is
responsible for coordinating efforts of the team members to provide
services and report the information back to the church staff.
Prior to Fellowship One this was being done through a network of Excel spreadsheets, email
notices, and phone calls which were all painstakingly tracked by the staff to
keep an idea of what was going on across all of the teams. The
pastor responsible for care groups also tracked volunteer activity (who was
providing the meals or visitation) to keep a list of top volunteers for the
purpose of thanking them and promoting
the ministry.
The F1 Solution:
The first need was to track
who was involved in the teams. Since
the church was regionally tracking the teams I proposed that the Activity Groups be the regions of the area
that the groups were divided into. This would allow for expansion of the teams
or possible sub division of some of the larger teams which could include up to
80 people. The Team Leader then could be
assigned at the Activity Group level and the area coordinators could be
assigned over smaller groups.
The second need was to be able to take requests for ministry from multiple sources such as web, phone, and
information cards. They would all be
input into the contact management system in Fellowship One as contact
items. Each type of request would be
tracked as a separate contact item.
(hospital visitation, meals ministry, service requests, etc) This would
allow the church to run reports and determine the greatest need of the community at any given point and also perform
trend analysis. (I.E. how many meals did
the church provide in 2007 compared to 2008?)
After contacts were entered into F1 from the various sources
they all routed to an administrative assistant that would validate the request and determine the best team to handle the issue based on area and type of
service the team provided. The
contact would then be transferred to the small group which triggers an email alert to the Area Coordinator. (See
training video in eUniversity for how this occurs)
The Area Coordinator then assigns the task to one or
multiple Care Team members who then provide services/meals/visitations to the
requesting party. Notes are entered on the contact through the Group Manager by the Area Coordinator for each
instance of service. The Area
Coordinator also posts "attendance" for the team members who are providing the
services. This allows the Church
staff to track their top volunteers
for the purposes previously mentioned.
Through the process the Area Coordinator is setting the proper disposition for the contact item which allows
for tracking "success" vs "failures" which are difficult to
determine without contact dispositions.
The church staff runs regular reports tracking open, in
progress, and closed contacts. They
track open and in progress contacts to verify
that the area coordinators are properly
documenting and following up with service requests. They also track closed contacts for the same
purpose as well as to see if any staff
follow up is needed.
This same scenario can easily be replicated at your
church. Levels of security for this type
of ministry can also be adjusted to allow all team members to update the contact
items. Training of staff and volunteers is important to the
success of this ministry.
Matthew McMaster
Passionate for People Because Christ Is