Understanding Request Emails: What Can My Church Do?

Overview

This article provides an in-depth review of the actions available for church leaders and responders when they receive a CarePortal request notification via email.

Intended Audience

CarePortal Churches: Primary Point Person, Team Leaders, Response Team Members

This Article Covers

• Responding to a Request: General Training Video
• Responding from a Request Email
• Yes, I Can Help!
• Follow
• Commit to Pray
• Share
• Activate My Church
• Engage Community
• Church to Church

Responding to a Request: General Training Video

The video below walks you through the process of responding to a CarePortal request.

Responding from a Request Email

Church leaders and their response team members can use request emails to respond to requests. Church leaders have additional options to activate their response teams, connect with other churches, and engage their community around each individual request. 

Yes, I Can Help!

Clicking the "Yes, I Can Help!" button takes you to the specific public page for this request, where you or your responders will have the ability to commit to the items requested by the requesting agency worker, commit to pray for the family, and sign up to follow this request to receive updates about new actions taken for the request.

Click the "Yes, I Can Help!" button again on the request page and select the items you'd like to help with. Next, you will be prompted to enter the message you would like to send to the caseworker who entered the request.

All responses entered on this form are publicly visible. Do not enter your contact information in this text field. Your name, email, and phone number will be provided to the caseworker in the email that includes your response message and an overview of how you're able to help.

Follow

The follow feature allows you to receive email updates for a specific request. When you follow a request you receive email notifications when a church responds, the case worker updates the request, and when the request is closed. If you respond to a request, you automatically follow the request. This ensures that you receive all updates for that request after you have responded.

Pray

The Commit to Pray feature allows you to take a physical action to symbolize the unseen spiritual activity of prayer.  We recognize that as citizens of the Kingdom of God, where results and fruit cannot always be counted by tangible measures, prayer is our most important work!  

Committing to pray also allows us to have some tangible measure to document that the children and families represented in the requests are being lifted up in prayer, providing a source of encouragement to the caseworkers, and your local network leaders working together on behalf of these children.

Share

This button allows anyone to promote and advocate for this request in other ways so more people can learn about the opportunity to respond and help. Whether the request is being shared via social media or directly in an email to specific leaders or teams of people, anyone who sees the request and wants to respond will be guided through an easy process of creating a free CarePortal account and responding to the request.

Activate My Church

The Activate My Church feature is a church leader action that will send the request details and a personal encouragement or note to your Response Team. After your Response Team has been activated, the Leader Action language changes from “Activate” to “Update.” This provides an opportunity for Church Leaders to add another message to their Responders after they’ve Activated them for a request! For more information regarding Response Teams check out this article.

Engage Community

Engaging the Community is a great way for your church to partner with other churches as well as local community members. Only church leaders have the option to Engage the Community, which places your church as the "Lead Church" for that particular request and sends your custom message to other churches, champions and community responders within your community, inviting them to help meet the needs listed on that request.

Engaging the Community also notifies the agency worker who entered the request, but only to let them know your church is taking the lead on the request and will contact them when resources become available. As the "Lead Church", any subsequent community responses for that request will be sent to your church so you and your team can facilitate the connection with the agency worker and the family, as needed.

If another church as taken the lead on a request already, the option to Engage the Community will not be available.

(Note: If your church is not a Connecting Church with an active CarePortal Card, community responders would not be able to directly fund items on the request through the platform in a way that equips your Response Team to meet the need.)

Church to Church

Clicking the "Church to Church" button will take you to the public request page and allow you to send a message to other point people and pastors at other churches near the family of the request who have also received the request. This is a useful feature for certain situations where your church may be able to meet part of the need, and another church is able to help with the rest of the need.

Another example would be if one church has beds to donate, but they do not have a vehicle to deliver them. You can see the church's response saying that they would love to donate beds but need assistance with delivery. You can use the Church to Church feature to send that church a private message letting them know you can provide assistance in delivering the beds.

To use the Church to Church feature, click the "Contact" button to the right of a Church or Response Team within the Churches/Response Teams section and then type your message in the text box at the top! To use this feature within your CarePortal dashboard, go to the Network tab of the request you want to message another church or response team about and click the "Contact" button to write your message.