A new way to use the church website

[brochris]

I've been trying to think through a new functionality for my church website. I'd like to add a point of connection with the community where people can both post needs that they have, and others can volunteer to fill those needs. Kind of like a job board, only for service projects. Like, someone might post that they need someone to clean out their gutters, or someone else might post that they just need an extra pair of hands in fixing their car. What do you think?

[jason.e.mock]

Hi Brochris,

I'm actually working on building the same thing for our church. Actually I have it built, but we're still working through some of the logistics. I certainly don't have all of the answers, but would like to share where we are right now in thinking through it in hopes we can get some input.

We started tripping on our shoelaces when we started talking about privacy. Some people might be embarrassed to share their need but have a strong need that the Body of Christ really should meet. Others might know someone outside of the church in need that they'd like to "nominate" to receive help. So, where we are now is submissions are anonymous to everyone except the church office staff. If someone is interested in filling a need, they contact the church office staff who takes down their information. The office staff then provides the volunteer's information to the person in need and leaves it up to them to work our the details. That feels clunky, but that's where we are at the moment. Other ideas?

On the technical side of things, our Web site is powered by Drupal, so I created a new content type, allow the anonymous (public) user to create that type of content but not to publish it. The office staff gets a notice when new content is available, does some basic checking to make sure everything looks good, then publishes the content for the public to see. One of the fields is a custom CCK field with the name of the person in need -- that is the field that only the office staff can see, even when the piece of content is published.

We haven't gone live with this feature of the Web site just yet, partially because I haven't had time and partially because we got bogged down in the policy/procedure discussion. Hope that helps continue this discussion and we're certainly open to other ideas.

Thanks!
Jason

[[Director] Joseph B]

The privacy and verifying information can be very important.
I know I had a few friends upset when it was posted to pray for my family because I had "passed on".

It may be clunky but it will save you some grief.

[brochris]

Yeah, privacy is an issue I've been trying to think through, too. On an off-topic, yet slightly related note, when I hand out a list of prayer requests to people in the church (that they have requested prayer for), I don't include last names. Even though our church knows who it's referring to, I don't want the person who we're praying to think that we're spreading their personal needs all around town.

I like your solution, Jason, that we can simply hide the name of the person online. I met with a team at church last night and talked about this a bit more. We'll probably move forward with something like this in the future.

[SterlingAug]

Our church mission statement is "Loving God, Loving People, and Serving the Community". Several times a year volunteers get together for several hours, we split up into groups, and then go off to help prior approved projects to help the community. Projects could include cutting down trees on an elderly persons home then clearing away the mess, helping a non-profit organization by supplying a few bodies to get things done, setting up a free car wash, etc. The recipient of the help is NOT allowed to pay or donate anything to the church or volunteers. It is totally free. It is amazing how far a little kindness can go.

[Rennie]

You should look into tableproject.org. It's free and should have all the functionality you are looking for.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

This is a wonderful Idea!

[SwordmanJr]

Originally Posted by Joseph B

The privacy and verifying information can be very important.
I know I had a few friends upset when it was posted to pray for my family because I had "passed on".

It may be clunky but it will save you some grief.

How did that happen?

[SwordmanJr]

Originally Posted by brochris

I've been trying to think through a new functionality for my church website. I'd like to add a point of connection with the community where people can both post needs that they have, and others can volunteer to fill those needs. Kind of like a job board, only for service projects. Like, someone might post that they need someone to clean out their gutters, or someone else might post that they just need an extra pair of hands in fixing their car. What do you think?

Trying to connect with others is another barrier I'm having to try and get past.

[TheWordSpreader]

I'm new to creating websites so I don't know the exact steps but you can create a page where a person could post a need as a guest, the post would only show the request and no personal information would list, then add a reply button that is directed to the guests email, again not shown in the post only accessible through the reply button.

Another option would be to ad a "comment panel" with a Facebook login (sorry in advance if I'm not allowed to post that name) and an "option" to post anonymously that way people can chose to make their information public or anonymous, remember to make this...

OPTION STAND OUT SO PEOPLE CAN EASILY SEE IT!

Encourage people not to use full names in their requests to preserve privacy. Doing it this way would make it easy for people to reply because a reply button could be added to send reply to their Facebook account. Everybody has one of those these days!!!