Greetings one and all!
Today I am pleased to announce that we are releasing our "Needs" feature.
That's great, what is it?
I'm glad you asked! Needs is a nifty feature that allows the church to ask members to perform tasks that need doing or, said another way, for church members to fulfil the needs of the church and it's members.
These Needs could look like any number of things.
- Organising Meals for members who are unwell
- Organising Church Drop-offs for members who are without transportation for some reason one weekend
- Helping other church members out with tasks around the home they can't complete due to illness/injuries
- Organising supplies for a church event
Oh that's awesome! How do we use it?
At least that's what I hope you're saying now!
To begin with, you'll want to setup your Need Types, which can now be found under
Settings -> Needs -> Need Types
.This allows you to categorise your needs, and allows members to subscribe to specific types of needs they want to be alerted of when needs are created of that type.
Once that's done you can now navigate to the "Needs" menu option you'll now see in your menu.
You can then click on "Add" on the top of the page to add a new Need!
You'll then be asked to fill some information in about the need and give it a due date. If any members had subscribed to that type already, they'd be notified of that need being created.
Members can then assign needs to themselves, and mark them as in progress or as complete as needed.
Hopefully this will help assist your church in looking after your members!
Is there anything else we need to do?
There certainly are some minor other things that you should do before rolling this out to people to use.
Firstly you'll need to grant access to this new feature to people! This can be done under Settings -> Access Permissions as with other permissions. There's an option under the Admin area for Needs, which can then grant access to creating, editing or deleting needs, as well as marking a need as "Cancelled"
There's also an access permission under the Member Area options, for Members to see them in the Member area.
Some FAQs
Q: Can I duplicate needs?
A: Not yet. We plan on looking at this in the next few weeks!
Q: Can a need be assigned to multiple types / Locations?
A: No, needs can only be assigned to a single type or location right now.
Q: Can multiple members be assigned to a need?
A: Not yet - We don’t plan on adding this in, but if there’s enough support for this feature we may look into it.
Q: Can an Admin assign, or re-assign needs or change it’s status?
A: Not yet - This is planned though for future improvement though if there's demand for this.
Q: Can we import Needs from our previous system
A: Not yet - This is not planned but we’ll monitor the need for this.
Q: Where can I get further support if needed?
A: First, you can look at the support articles linked below. If you need any further assistance, please contact support via support@tithe.ly