Should I Become a Community Champion?

Overview

This article is intended to answer four basic questions:

• What is a Community Champion & how does it work?
• What are the Top 10 Benefits of being a Community Champion?
• How do I get my organization signed up?
• What should I expect once we enroll?

What is a Community Champion & How Does it Work?

link to video

Nearly 70 percent of needs entered by Agencies into CarePortal are met by Churches. That’s great! But what about the other 30 percent? Those are real kids. Real families. We want to always push toward 100 percent as if a child’s life depends upon it. What would that take?

Community Champions are groups in the community such as business teams, sports teams, non-profits, or family foundations who have a heart for meeting real-time, vetted needs in the community. Through CarePortal, each of these partners is given the chance to say “Yes” to resourcing approved requests through specially-trained, local churches who are empowered to serve at the point of care in partnership with other responders as available. These churches are called Connecting Churches.

When a Community Champion leader says “Yes” to resourcing a need, the CarePortal platform automatically alerts Connecting Churches near the family, giving them a chance to commit and connect with that leader and their team, as needed.

Providing Tangible Items

When tangible items are offered by a Champion team to help meet a request the Connecting Church will arrange for the pick-up and use the items to meet the need and make a connection with the family. In many cases, Champion leaders and team members could be involved in the delivery of the items in partnership with the local Church as needed.

Providing Funding for Items

If a Community Champion or individual responder offers the funding needed to cover a request through the CarePortal platform, the same relational connections are made as with tangible items, and the money is released to a reloadable CarePortal Debit Card issued to the Connecting Church once that church makes a public commitment to the caseworker to meet the need with the funds that were given.

What are the Top 10 Benefits of being a Community Champion?

1. Build company, team or family culture around valuable opportunities to give time, talent and treasure in serving the most vulnerable
   
   

2. Access to meet high-impact, vetted needs from carefully selected requesting agencies, schools and non-profit organizations that directly serve families and kids in crisis
   
   

3. Activate and manage your own response team(s) in a way that gives team leaders login access to their own team dashboard
   
   

4. Custom settings for each Champion account and its teams, providing flexibility in how they want to serve
   
   

5. Track the economic impact of what each team has given and done together 
   
   

6. Localized training and support from local CarePortal experts
   
   

7. Community partnership opportunities for individual responders and your organization to take next steps and deepen connections
   
   

8. Determine which churches you’d like to partner with when your teams respond
   
   

9. Custom-branded public web page providing an easy way to meet and advocate for open requests
   
   

10. Mobile App allowing team leaders to activate and lead their teams, and responders to commit to serve or give

To access a downloadable PDF version of this list here.

How do I get my organization signed up?

Use the enrollment form below to get started!

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What should I expect once we enroll?

Once you complete the enrollment form above, here's what happens:

1. You will gain immediate access to your CarePortal dashboard ("pending" status) where you can start watching various training videos and adjusting your settings.
2. At the same time, your local network leaders will be alerted about your enrollment and will reach out to begin or continue a dialog around helping you develop one or multiple response teams on the CarePortal platform in a way that best fits your organization's structure and purpose. 
3. A local orientation will need to be completed with this local network leader to review the most common requests, current partnerships, and the opportunities and challenges in your specific community. They will also be able to help answer any lingering questions about how the technology works and make recommendations on how to update your settings to match how you want your teams to respond. 
4. Your account will be activated by your local network leader when you've completed this orientation and are ready to start having access to respond to real time needs as a team!

Have additional questions? Here's a link to some FAQs!