Resources

Six questions decide whether a referral works. Most of them are about getting there, not about the need.

The front desk does not have twenty minutes. Designing benevolence around the four minutes it actually has changes which features matter.

A referral list decays quietly. Nothing on the page changes when a program closes. Here is how the decay works, and the one signal that catches it.

Totals are the easy half. The half a board actually needs is what your community asked for that you could not provide.

Every church knows what it spent. Almost none can say what people asked for that there was nowhere to send them for. That second number is the one that changes a budget.

Your church already answers "who can help with this" on the phone. A widget on your own site answers it at 11pm, in the visitor's own words, without anyone being on duty.

The right question is not whether the model is clever. It is what the model is allowed to do, what it is matching against, and what happens when someone is in crisis.

Posted hours are not the same as open. A directory that computes open-now status, and tells you when a closed provider next opens, removes the wasted trip.

Most churches rely on a printed list, a spreadsheet, or one volunteer's memory. Each fails the same way. Here is what a maintained directory does instead.

When someone asks a church for help, the hard part is knowing where to send them. Here is what benevolence software does about that, and what it does afterward.

Some people will not call. A request form on the church's own website reaches them, and the request arrives in the same queue as everything else.

The person covering the office on a Wednesday has not memorized the directory. Plain-language search and a narrow permission set are what make that workable.

Church benevolence software records who asked a church for help, what they needed, where they were referred, and what happened next.

Most church benevolence referrals end at the phone number. Here is what it takes to find out what actually happened.