Recently, I became aware of two great website to help organize volunteers that are simple to use for any situation where you might need to schedule meals for someone in need or gather items for an event.
In the past few months, I've helped schedule meals for a friend who adopted a baby on short notice and witnessed another friend as their family was displaced when their home caught on fire. Most of the time, the problem isn't finding people who want to help, it's figuring out how to organize the help that pours in.
Two websites have been of great help: TakeThemAMeal.com and SignUpGenius.com.
This site is a wonderful resource to simply and effectively plan meals for anyone in need. A new user simply fills out a one-page online form with details for the coordinator, the recipient, address for meals to be taken, start dates, stop dates, frequency, and special requests. Once these details have been inputted, you can invite people via email to participate and share the link via Facebook and other social media sites to encourage more support.
“TakeThemAMeal.com is great because it allows anyone to participate, whether they are a part of our formal Meals Ministry Team or not, and whether they are a part of our church community or not–it is open to anyone in a person's ‘circle,'” comments Mary at Valley Springs Presbyterian Church.
TakeThemAMeal.com is free for anyone to use and simple enough for the non-technical user to oversee meal scheduling.
This site is a wonderful resource for setting up robust sign up forms for different categories of need, great for helping people in a number of different ways, such as for people in need of multiple items for a trip, room sign-ups, potlucks, helping friends in need, and more.
“I absolutely LOVE your site. I am a home room mom, prayer coordinator, on the board of a volunteer group, soccer mom, etc. and this makes my life soooo easy. I would gladly pay and can't believe you do this for free,” Cynthia Morris, Dallas, Texas.
Simple Wizard for Building Sign Ups
- Choose from hundreds of professionally designed themes
- Upload your own image/logo to your sign up page
- Use a WYSIWYG interface to create rich-text descriptions
- Enter hundreds of dates in an instant using our recurring wizard
- Watch video tutorials to easily create a sign up
Flexible Sign Up Page Formats
- Non-date specific sign ups for donation lists or ongoing sign ups
- RSVP format sign ups for parties and banquets
- Traditional Date/Slot sign ups for massive volunteer sign ups
- Sign ups with limited quantities or unlimitted quantities
- Comment field for custom responses on each sign up
- FREE advertising-based sign ups or fee-based no-ads sign ups
Lauren,
Thank you for this excellent feedback regarding our site. We love to hear that other churches are using TakeThemAMeal.com because we created the site to help our own church as we were caring for our friend.
Adina Bailey
Co-founder