There are many needs within a city….community volunteer needs, special event’s needs, goods needs, family needs, and even internal church and ministry needs. We’ve heard you and Meet The Need is here to help you meet those requests. We are glad to announce that you can now post a need from within any Meet The Need module as OPEN ENDED!

Open ended means that you have a need that you are flexible as to when a volunteer can meet that need.  The expiration date that the system will requireyou to enter is the date that the posting will drop off your website and websites of other organizations, if applicable. An example of an open ended need would be…

•  A church needs someone to enter data into a spreadsheet at the church office and they are flexible as to when that need is completed and a person can volunteer in their spare time.
• A family (single mom) needs help with landscaping and cleaning up her lawn to avoid eviction but has a few months to complete the work and is willing to work around a volunteer’s schedule.
• A missionary in the field needs a group of volunteers to build a wall at their orphanage and they are flexible as to when your group is available.

The expiration date is not seen by the public when searching for a need, it reads as an open ended need in the column that indicates “Date Needed”. 

Meet The Need user, Marsha Kostus, Outreach Coordinator, from Christ Church Plano in Texas offers this regarding the open ended MTN feature… 

As our church implemented Meet the Need over the past year and I worked with various departments, we discovered that we needed to be able to post needs that were not tied to a particular date. Some of those needs involved volunteering where screening was a crucial part or where the volunteer schedule was going to be more flexible and would be worked out once the person had committed.

 Last week I was notified that open-ended posting was now possible, and immediately I posted several needs. By the next morning, our registered members had received the email announcing new postings, and I had responses from members volunteering! I immediately was able to forward those commitments on to the team leader. That immediate response and the ease of getting the word out to our registered members also did a great deal to convince other departments that I work with of how well MTN works.    

 Open Ended feature is just one more way that Meet The Need can assist you in mobilizing your members to serve within your church and in your community.