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Can't Send Short Term Trips? Tip #6 - Lift Up Partners Big Picture: Partners are critical to the success of missional engagement - use this season to help shine a light on them. Partners often get taken for granted in our web of missional engagement. We work so closely with them and our people know them so well that we often forget to take a step back and really focus on helping others learn about them. This is a great season to tell their story and help educate your audience about these amazing partners. Here are a few ideas. Find Out Their Needs - reach out to your partners during this season and ask about their needs during this time. That’s partnership right?! Reach out to ask about their needs and to see if there’s some way you could support those needs. Host a Webinar - schedule a webinar with each of your partners and invite all of your members to attend. It’s good to give these some structure (ex: start with prayer, ask a few set questions, etc.). This is a great way to introduce your audience to your partners. Share Ways to Engage: either through email, webinar, or any other vehicle... find ways to share their partner needs and let people know how they can engage with that partner. You don’t have to be the middleman all the time... help connect your audience directly with your partner for more updates. Prayer Teams - consider creating prayer teams for each of your partners that commit to meeting each week and praying for your partners. These teams can be such an encouragement to both your organization and your partner. Interview Your Partners - make time to connect with your partner for an interview and go through a series of questions. You can take those questions and turn them into a partner focus page on your website or a great blog entry. Retool Your Partner Webpages - take a look at your website and where you feature partners. Perhaps you could do a better job telling the story of each partner, why you partner, and how you go about partnering with other organizations. Use this season to bring special attention to your partners and build up the resources to more clearly explain who it is you partner with and why. This is a great season to bring a lot of clarity to your wonderful partnerships.   Download the full FREE ebook Today

The Roadmap to Relaunch Making the decision to start back into global engagement, especially with short term trips, is enough of a decision on its own.  Now it’s time to consider all the logistics for relaunching a short-term trip program.  Yes, this is very much like returning to the gym after not exercising for some time.  Short-term trip logistics is a finely tuned and highly skilled muscle that many of us have not exercised for some time.  That’s all about to change.  Think of this ebook as your warmup stretch for what’s about to come.     Step 1 - Evaluation, Surveys, and Research The first step in relaunch is making sure you have all the data.  It’s time to be listening well to everyone to know the lay of the land and to have your ducks in a row as you start to relaunch.  Here are some suggestions:   Research Logistics of Travel - stay on top of what the US State Department is saying about the global landscape and specific countries.  It’s their responsibility to assess the global situations and bring you accurate and useful data.  Lean into their resources and stay up to date with their news.  Even staying on top of things will help you see trends and begin anticipating changes.   Connect with Team Leaders - leverage the amazing people you have who have lead teams before.  Gather them together to learn from their input, ideas, and concerns.  And when you do gather them… be intentional to actually ask their thoughts and not make it an information meeting.  You’re going to need their buy-in for this relaunch.   Survey Alumni - reach out to anyone who has served with you before and ask them their concerns and learn from what it would take for them to travel and participate in a short-term trip again.  Yes, many of these factors are out of your hands but building a list can help you either mitigate the concern or directly address how best to attack it.  It’s also another great touchpoint to make sure people know you’re still working to re-engage. Create Indirect Surveys - you may not want to come straight out and ask how people are feeling about reengaging.  That’s okay. It some ways it feels like poor leadership to ask your constituents what they think you should be doing.  I can see that.  So get creative!  We had one organization create a tool simply asking people where they would like to go and serve and place it on a world map and noting why they were interested in serving there.  It’s indirect but still keeps people interested and showing their propensity for global mission work. Build a Decision Matrix - build an internal grading system to help you determine risk factors for short-term trips.  Essentially, map out all of your concerns or requirements, build a scoring system, and then evaluate based on the score.  For example, you might have 10 factors and each factor has a 5 point scale.  From that, you’re looking for a 36 or higher score to relaunch to that location.  You should also educate your members on how you are making this decision and even sharing your core evaluation factors.  Remember they are looking to you for leadership.   Map it All Out - take everything you’re learning from all these forms of feedback and map it all out.  Give a huge whiteboard and a bunch of sticky notes to chart out challenges, opportunities, things that need clarity, concerns to overcome, ways to re-engage that help ease tensions, and more.  This will help you build your overall plan and communication strategy for what’s next.   Step 2 - Map Out a Timeline & Tasks Now it’s time to start building out your tactical strategy.  The focus here is to create your roadmap for kicking things back into gear.  You haven’t just made a quick pit stop during this season, your vehicle has been hibernating for a little while.  And hey, this is a great opportunity to see just how you might improve your overall process!   Brainstorm the Tasks - Gather all the right people together to map out the tasks ahead of you for this relaunch.  Think about travel, communications, partner logistics, fieldwork, training, finances, legal forms, team leader preparation, meetings, and anything else that might fall into the logistics bucket.  Basically, you are re-mapping all the common tasks to run short-term trips but you’re adding the spin of starting from a cold start.   Categorize Tasks - once you’ve built this awesome list of tasks, let’s take those and break those into categories and time blocks.  It’s good to categorize as you might assign all financial tasks to a certain person.  It’s also good to break into time blocks to help see when these tasks need to happen.   Build a Workback Schedule - now lets take all of this and create a spreadsheet or some tool to drop in our trip date that automatically populates all work back dates.  This spreadsheet gives you a tool to quickly see when things should be done no matter when the trip might occur.       Step 3 - Build a Communication Plan Your communication strategy is just as important if not more important than your tactical plan.  This is where and how you communicate everything moving forward and it needs your intentionality and focus.  Let’s unpack a few of the most critical pieces of your communication plan.     Know Your Controlling Message - it all starts with an overarching controlling message that weaves through all of your communications.  That might be something like “Venturing Out & Staying Safe” if your main point to communicate is a re-engagement and keeping people safe.  Regardless, you just need a controlling message.   Brainstorm the Messages - get together with your team to brainstorm the messages, the time frame, the needs, the questions, and the delivery methods.  It’s important to lean into others for this stage so you get help seeing the gaps you’re missing.   Build a Timeline - this doesn’t have to be anything complicated but you need to create a timeline for your communications to rollout.  This timeline should be months long and incorporate things like the key kickoff, the lead up to that kickoff, teaching moments, capturing stories around the launch teams, and celebrating their successes.   Write Everything - yeah, crazy goal right?!  Trust me in this… just dedicate a day or two and write all of your communications at once.  It’s going to help you get it all done while also keeping your mind engaged to see the overall negative at play.  Doing this all at once helps you see this as one consistent campaign.   Distribution Channels - map out all of your distribution channels (email, newsletters, social media, blog, videos, etc.) and then see how each message should be delivered via each channel.  Pro tip… don’t create new messaging for each channel, just maximize one key message customized for each channel.   Automate Everything - once you’ve written everything down and it’s ready to go… load it to tools like MailChimp, Loomly, HubSpot, or ServiceReef to automate the distribution of your messages at this given times.     Step 4 - Pull the Trigger Now you’ve got all of your building blocks in place - it’s time to pull the trigger and let things roll.  You’ve done the hard work of building your timelines and loading the resources.  Let the systems work for you so you can tackle all the necessary tasks that await you in this relaunch season.     Download full FREE ebook: Relaunching Short Term Trips Post COVID

Can't Send Short Term Trips? Tip #5 - Share Stories Big Picture: Stories are powerful and they are what people remember... share them well and often! Sharing a story well brings glory to God. Stories are powerful things... many refer to stories as the language of the heart. I think we can all relate to hearing someone share some life experiences and all we walk away with are the stories they shared. Stories just work like that. They become anchors for us to recall purpose and meaning. Well, this is one prime season for you to be capturing and sharing stories! As you work on how you engage your audience during this season, focus your messages around certain stories. We recommend you consider making 80% or more of your messaging focused around your stories. Let’s unpack a few ideas for how to do this well. Ask for Stories - this is a great season to reach out to past participants AND your partners to ask for stories about what’s happened in the past so you can intentionally share about the shared impact you are having. Then & Now - capture stories from the past but also from what’s happening around us right now. Remember you want to keep the fire alive for your global work but also you’re shifting to engaging local as well. Balance these two perspectives. Participants & Partners - it’s great to share stories from both the perspective of your trip participants but also your partners. Both can share impact, lessons learned, and invite others into similar experiences. Give Direction - it’s not just asking people to share stories, it’s also giving them direction on how. Consider giving them some examples, ideal length, and key questions to cover in their story. Pictures - it’s always better to tie a story with a picture so people can feel even more like they are there with the person in that story and experiencing things with them. Pictures also help bring greater visual appeal to the reader. Create a Story Blog - use tools like ServiceReef to build a combined story blog from all of your stories so these populate in one place for people to read. A story blog can be a powerful way for people to explore on their own. Drip Stories - incorporate these into your communication strategy and create some drip schedule (ex: every other week’s stories) to your members. Of course, it’s more information to receive but it’s also encouraging news   Download the full FREE ebook Today

Diversifying Engagement Pathways Pre-COVID kept many engagements in missions very unilateral… a great deal of short term trip engagement.  The pandemic quickly slammed the breaks on international travel and much of global mission work.  Post-COVID will release a variety of pathways to engage creating more opportunities for involvement, more systems to be created, and more able to use new and different skills.  Let’s explore just a few paths that are soon emerging.     Physical Short Term Trips The first pathway is exactly what we all know and expect to relaunch soon, even if it’s a little slow to prime the pump again.  Short term trips are almost a hallmark now in the way mission work comes out from North America.  We can debate if short term trips are good or not but the fact is there’s a huge engine called short term trips and our real duty is to focus on doing them well. No doubt short term trips will quickly re-emerge as we move out of the COVID-19 fog.   Virtual Engagement COVID-19 has also brought about true innovations in global engagement via Zoom, creating digital resources, training programs, and much more.  This has been steroid shot for missions in many ways to give mission folk a nice swift kick to join the modern age.  We’ve witnessed some amazing creativity and intentionality to keep engagement strong during this season and we don’t expect that to cease.     Local Engagement The lock-down has also allowed many organizations to focus energies on the needs directly around them.  Not to mention, many global communities have come to our doorstep as the past two decades have had such unprecedented migration and relocation of people.  I believe the strongest organizations are the ones that realize the needs in their own backyard and make that part of their overall strategy… often directly serving the same people groups they fly around the world to engage on short term trips.     Hybrid Engagement The final pathway is some combination of the three above.  Think of this as your investment portfolio and how we’re all taught to diversify your assets.  Finding some balance of these three pathways is probably what’s most wise for all of us and should be highly considered as we build our strategic plans for the future.  Even if we consider the potential of another lockdown like COVID-19, if we have a three-part strategy in place then it essentially only highly restricts one pathway (short term trips) but it keeps our people engage plus we’ve already built strategies to continue supporting and serving our global partners.     Download full FREE ebook: Relaunching Short Term Trips Post COVID

Can't Send Short Term Trips? Tip #4 - Shift To Local Big Picture: You must give people the opportunity to serve wherever they are... but soon! Many times we don’t think of missions as something that’s local. We won’t dive into that whole discussion... I’m just going to move right into an assumption that we need to shift into being hands and feet right here around us. Our belief is that missional living should be a way of life and something you’re doing overseas and right here at home. This season just gives us the opportunity to focus well on local engagement. So a really quick refocus here... we’re trying to keep our people engaged. Our big picture goal is to engage people in missional living but right now we can’t travel overseas. We’re shifting that energy, even if our entire organization is focused globally, to something local, if even just for a season. Here’s why this is so important. You are a guide for these people and they have trusted you to help them explore how to use their talents and where to use their giftings to serve others. Remember your role and jump in with both feet as their great guide. They need you. There is a thirst in their heart to serve and you have a great opportunity right now to connect that thirst with a chance to give of themselves. Here are some tips to make this happen: Research - finding local opportunities isn’t that difficult when you start digging a little. Start with a general search online for ways to serve locally but then reach out to known organizations and churches to learn more. Promote - be an advocate for serving local and make sure you’re advocating this to your audience. It’s good for them to hear your voice (like we talked about earlier) and to stay the role of the guide through this process. Organize - the icing on the cake is when you can host and run your own local serving events. These are great ways to keep your entire audience engaged but also great for specific teams to focus them on an activity that helps build that team. Stepping Stone - continually remind your team leaders and volunteers that every single serving opportunity is a stepping stone to the next one and there’s very little difference in what they are doing right here at home and what they will do soon overseas. Live Generously - help guide people to living generously. Sometimes you simply can’t serve locally but there are other ways you can give. Help people know all the ways they can participate in serving their local community. Consider Anxiety Levels - everyone has their own level of comfort and even anxiety around the world today. Take into consideration the level of comfort of your people and build opportunities for various perspectives.   Download the full FREE ebook Today

Philosophical Approach to Missions There are always guiding principles in action for how we engage the world around us.  These philosophies guide us and serve us well, especially when we identify them and draw them out to their potential.  Let’s unpack a few guiding principles to consider but you need to do the work to identify your guiding principles and how you share these with your community.     Greatest Goal We believe the greatest goal of mission work is to glorify God.  That’s our north star and the single greatest evaluation point for each and everything we do.  That clarity pivots how we evaluate things as we seek to line things up with what glorifies God vs. always trying to figure out what God might want.      Guiding People We believe that we all serve as guides to help direct people in their personal missional journey.  While it might seem that we are trying to engage them and make them advocates for our specific cause, we’re really more about the larger picture of missional living and seeing people developed for the better.  As such, our goal is to guide people well on this journey.   Giving Dignity We believe we have a responsibility to empower people well to do the work of missions and to seek to bring dignity to the work of their hands.  We desire to see those we serve and those serving with us restored and receiving dignity from the work we do.  Building a filter of dignity helps clear a lot of the fuzz around what’s the right and wrong way to do things.     Next Steps Always… and we mean always… be guiding people to their next step.  You are a guide but you are also guiding people to something.  Short term trips are never an end in themselves.  So whatever your strategy might be in this season and the next, it’s always a next step to guiding people to a deeper personal conviction, journey, and engagement.   Download full FREE ebook: Relaunching Short Term Trips Post COVID

Can't Send Short Term Trips? Tip #3 - Communicate Well Big Picture: Communicate well and often so your participants feel honored and stay well engaged... don’t allow room for doubt. Seasons of uncertainty can bring doubt and confusion and as things shift around us, we’re all wondering what’s next, how do we navigate things, and what should we be doing. That’s only natural as humans as we think about our base needs. What’s great is how this sets you up for success in being a guide for your participants to help show them the path forward. Being a guide is one of the most important things you do for your participants. They are looking to you for direction and even if you don’t have all the answers, I’m certain you have a picture of what the next few steps you’re taking might be. Great! Communicate that and be transparent about things. People don’t need to know the entire plan but they would like to know what’s the next step or two. So let’s unpack a few things you should consider in your communication strategy. Create a Plan - even not knowing how long things might be on pause, go ahead, and create a rhythm of communicating every so often. Perhaps it’s once a week or every other week. Just have some consistency. Engage Multiple Parties - remember it’s not just about your trip participants - it’s also about your team leaders, your field partners, your donors, your volunteers, and anyone else who is involved in the process. Send Prayer Needs - a great place to start in your communications is sharing key prayer needs from your partners with your participants. This is something that can always be of value. Point to Current Opportunities - international trips might be on pause, but what can you be doing in your own neighborhood now? Point your participants in a direction that allows them to use those servant-minded skills now. Remember Acts 1:8 with the intention to reach Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Create Benefit - we are all inundated with communications and emails. That said... make yours stand out. The simplest way to do that is to make your communications beneficial to your participants (focusing on their needs and not your own). Think Sequentially - this is more advanced, but consider leveraging your overall communication series to help teach something but doing that in parts. For example, you might have a 10 part teaching that’s communicated over 20 weeks. Be Creative - these can certainly be simple text emails but also think about adding videos, giving assignments, inviting into online discussions, and more. Be creative in what you communicate to make it fun and engaging. Create a Community - consider creating some online community and always point back to it so that your participants can connect with each other and see that they are never alone on this journey. Share Stories - stories are powerful means to engage our hearts and minds. Share what stories you have but also ask people to share their stories. Mix these with international experiences and local to help cast that local vision.   Download the full FREE ebook Today

Guiding Philosophies Here at ServiceReef, we believe everything starts with the foundation of WHY... or perhaps also known as your guiding philosophies. Philosophies drive 100% of our technology development which is a bit strange. Most technology companies focus first on functionality. That might work in many places but it doesn’t work well in this space. Our “end game” actually isn’t technology - it’s seeing more people mobilized into missional living. So we start with guiding philosophies that then materialize into how we design and build our technology. So let’s dive into a few for this strategy. And hey... please feel free to steal any of these and use them for your organization! After all, we’re all in this together. Creating a Culture We believe that a local engagement strategy in any organization will shift the culture and help create a fuller culture of volunteer engagement. Functionally, we’re working to get people to sign up for volunteer opportunities but bigger picture... we’re looking for life change, habit change, and a culture shift. Everyone has a Calling We believe everyone has a unique calling (and unique gifting). It’s easy to fall into a mentality of “well, someone else is going to do it” or “someone else is called to do that” but the truth is, we are all called to serve our neighbor and engage the world around us (and we don’t believe barking at each other on social media qualifies for serving the world around us!). Every single person has unique skills and is called to serve in some way. People Need a Guide & a Plan We all need a guide to show us the way at various stages of our lives. How many of us have had mentors and other key influencers in our lives. That’s your role right now in this strategy... to guide people into serving. The simplest way to be a guide is to create a clear plan for your members to engage and teaching them how to engage their unique skills. We’re going to help you build that plan here so you can be a better guide. It Takes a Catalyst Leader So buckle up... if you are reading this ebook then you already have an itch to be that catalyst leader. We’ve learned that one massive piece of this puzzle is having someone (or some organization) take the lead to build a local engagement model. These things don’t just happen. That’s why we believe this is a foundational philosophy to a movement like this... it’s takes someone like you to lead the charge and make it happen. Good news... we’re here with you every step of the way.

The Emerging Tensions Andy Stanley once said that we as leaders face tensions all the time but we have to distinguish between tensions and problems.  We are duty-bound to solve problems and manage tensions, especially in the world of missions.  So let’s unpack a few of these emerging and current tensions to glean a clearer picture of the future of missions.     Traditional Models vs. New Creative Models The first tension we are facing is managing the known history of models that have worked and those new models that we may not have even discovered yet.  I’m convinced that our Lord intentionally frustrates our models of missional engagement to keep us on our toes and to force us to be creative.  I believe that because He is a creative God and we are made in His image and work was actually part of creation before the fall.  There’s something glorious about work and especially creativity (with the known challenges that the Fall certainly makes more difficult).   The past 100 years of missions have largely been seen a similar model both in long term and short term missions.  The past decade has brought about many new philosophies and thoughts to challenge the current models and now COVID-19 has accelerated the need and calling for creativity.  We’ve been witnessing groups working to rapidly build global tele-health resources to continue meeting medical needs, we’ve seen other organizations building amazing digital teaching resources to share with global partners, and we’ve seen other organizations radially reshaping their short term trip program during this season of pause.  All I know is that we’re not called to be idle when the Lord charges us to serve.     Going vs. Teaching Many books have been written like When Helping Hurts to address a re-emerging focus on teaching indigenous leaders the skills that allow them to do the work rather than us going and doing the work.  I’m a huge advocate for this philosophy while also believing both short and long term engagement is necessary to do that well.  There’s no “throw the baby out with the bathwater” here.  But we are faced with a new challenge of considering how we might teach others to “do mission work” when we have these periods of not being able to go.  I’m certain no one reading this would assume that a global shut down in travel should ever hamper our dedication and drive to be engaged in mission work.     Physical vs. Virtual We’ve almost completely known the physical nature of mission work.  We’ve gone on trips, served people, eaten meals together, and experienced life together.  But what happens in these seasons where you can’t physically be with someone?  Obviously, being physically present or not should not hinder our engagement.  I believe this season will help us radially accelerate our virtual engagements while gearing up for more refined physical engagements.  We’ve been given a gift in this season that’s forcing our innovations and maximizing the world of digital assets.  It’s amazing to see just how creative Christians are becoming in this season.   One Time vs. Replicating The terms sustainable and scalable inundate our world today as we wrestle with how to do things better and engage the world around us better.  Now, to be clear, I’m not certain you can find either of those words or even philosophies in the Bible.  God has an uncanny ability to do His own thing, to leverage a band of misfits for His Gospel, and to seemingly win and lose throughout history all the while He never loses His Lordship.  Not to go all theological here but we do need to wrestle with principled leadership and His Lordship.  Thankfully, it’s all His dominion and we’re called to steward the specific pieces He has given us. So let’s focus on that.     As we re-approach missions in this post-COVID world we are forced to consider more intentionally our efforts and if any of our previous one-time touches in places is most effective or better yet, how we can make these one-time touch-points add up to something more sustainable.  By the way, I do believe we should build towards sustainability… it’s just not our primary calling.  Here’s an example.  One group we work with sets out with each new location creating a 2-year engagement plan.  During that team, they intentionally send a series of short term trips with educators, healthcare professionals, engineers, and other professionals to teach.  The sum of it all adds up to each community being taught a carefully created curriculum that then leaves them well equipped to take these learnings and run on their own.  This group (even before COVID-19) was filling in the gaps of time between their short term trips with weekly Skype and Zoom calls to keep the community rolling and answering key questions.  And so, they were building an amazing blend of one-time engagement and repeated engagement.   These are by no means the tensions we see in this shifting world but they do capture some of what’s happening today.  Are you curious about where things are going in missions?  You should be.  All I know is that God is up to something, He always is, and there’s no doubt that tensions will be in the middle of most of it.     Download full FREE ebook: Relaunching Short Term Trips Post COVID

Can't Send Short Term Trips? Tip #2 - Equip Your Leaders Big Picture: Your leaders are your greatest vision advocates... equip them to multiply your vision. A CEO once asked me if you were rolling out a new initiative... if the time should first be spent engaging your internal teams or making an announcement to the public. Answer... you should always first engage your internal teams. It’s a matter of respect but it’s also just a good strategy. You want your internal teams supporting whatever shifts you may have and you certainly don’t want to agitate some of your greatest advocates! Most organizations have a core team that manages all of the short term trip strategy and logistics, but you also have key leaders, team leaders, and volunteers. All of these should be engaged in this process. After all, they are already invited to your team for a reason! Invite them into more of the strategy now to help craft this new path forward. Here are some suggestions. Brainstorm with Them - invite each of these groups or representatives from each group into a brainstorming session about how you are going to engage during this season of no short term trips. This can be live or virtual but host something that asks for their options, ideas, and feedback. Pitch the Concepts - once you have a plan in place, pitch the whole idea to them, and ask for their feedback. Don’t just tell them what’s happening, invite them into what’s happening and give them a chance to shape things. Make them Advocates - call them to action by asking them to be advocates of this new strategy. You need a lot of voices out there helping to make this shift. Engage your leaders to be voices for your new strategy. Specific Communications - make sure you are including them on the “early release” of your thoughts and plans. It just builds capital with those who are key to helping you scale your message. Honor them Well - once things have all been rolled out for your new strategy, come back and honor your leaders well and give them thanks. Maybe even send them a note and a small gift of thanks. However, you build your strategy, lean into your core team to help you make it a success. You don’t need to carry the weight of all of this on your own. Truth is, you probably already have an incredible team to help bring this all to life.   Download the full FREE ebook Today

Story: Southeast | Unleashed 
 One of our long lasting partners, Southeast Christian Church, began spinning out a vision months ago to hyper launch into local engagement and mobilizing their 30,000 person congregation into local engagement. The goal was to make this an ongoing part of the church culture. And so began their journey to Unleash the full force of the church... with the simple title of Unleashed. To mobilize this many people required a few key ingredients. First, it required a large amount of serving opportunities. Southeast rallied together 50+ local organizations to post their trips to an aggregated list. Second, it required a dedicated mobile app to host this aggregated list of opportunities. Third, it took a huge initiative from the entire church to host a big launch. In March, Southeast launched the entire Unleashed initiative with over 500 serving opportunities aggregated from 50+ organizations with their dedicated mobile app (iOS and Android) for people to download and a half day virtual event to promote and educate the church about opportunities and organizations. ServiceReef was honored to be part of this project to build the aggregation tools and the mobile app for Southeast. It’s been a great journey seeing how so many have signed up and are engaging in serving locally through this Herculean effort by Southeast. This story is a great example of keeping momentum moving even during this pandemic and giving people a strong means of engagement.

Introduction to a Local Engagement Strategy We’ve already given some definition and clarity to what local engagement is and it’s results but let’s take a little more time to unpack the concept, casting its vision, and building a value proposition. The Concept The concept is simple... you have members in your audience who you want to connect to serving opportunities. You want that process to be simple and you would love for that to be as automated as possible. You would also like to keep track on their involvement and impact. The Process Alright, so no false promises here... this strategy takes work! The impact is huge but there’s also a good deal of work to make it happen. Our goal is to make the process to get there simple: • Build your Platform - design your structure, strategy, and process • Launch your Movement - kickoff your plan and infuse your new culture • Connect your People - guide your members to matched opportunities Our commitment to you through this ebook is to give you the tools you need to bring this plan to life, to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you (since we’ve already done this with others before), and to share tips/tricks to help you accelerate your success. Who is this for? ANY organization that is trying to connect their members to partner serving opportunities. Just to name a few: • Churches - churches looking to offer more serving opportunities and bring together local partners to engage their congregation. • Middle/High Schools - schools working to instill a volunteer mindset in students and needing to display opportunities from local partners in a single place. • Universities - universities working to engage their student populate in local serving. • Businesses - businesses with a corporate mindset for volunteerism and wanting to create tools to connect their employees to opportunities. • Municipalities - city groups desiring to build a city-wide strategy and structure for anyone to find an opportunity that matches their interest. • Non Profits & Conferences - non-profit groups focused on volunteerism who also partner with a number of local organizations. How does it work? 
In some ways it’s really simple and in other ways it’s really complex. The diagram below captures the basic model of what’s happening in an aggregated serving strategy. You have multiple organizations posting opportunities into a central database/list. You are the “owner” of that list and you share that with your members. The system backend does all the work to aggregate. Your role is to promote the initiative. For the member it’s simple because they have one central place to look for opportunities and sign up. For the host organization (you) it’s simple because it’s all automated once its initially setup. For the partner organizations it’s simple because they have the tools they need to manage volunteerism and it automatically aggregates to the shared list. Importance of Ownership One foundation we strongly believe at ServiceReef is the need to promote you more and ServiceReef less. That might sound strange but our goal is for your members to never even know who we are. That’s why you can brand your own subdomain on ServiceReef but also why this mobile app can be completely branded for your organization. Why is that important? Because you are who they trust and who they know. That’s why we shy away from using “the ServiceReef app”. Why confuse your members and try to “sell” them on something else. Why not make this something that is yours? That’s one of our goals in how we’ve created this tool. How does it work? 
 In some ways it’s really simple and in other ways it’s really complex. The diagram below captures the basic model of what’s happening in an aggregated serving strategy. You have multiple organizations posting opportunities into a central database/list. You are the “owner” of that list and you share that with your members. The system backend does all the work to aggregate. Your role is to promote the initiative. For the member it’s simple because they have one central place to look for opportunities and sign up. For the host organization (you) it’s simple because it’s all automated once its initially setup. For the partner organizations it’s simple because they have the tools they need to manage volunteerism and it automatically aggregates to the shared list.   Importance of Ownership One foundation we strongly believe at ServiceReef is the need to promote you more and ServiceReef less. That might sound strange but our goal is for your members to never even know who we are. That’s why you can brand your own subdomain on ServiceReef but also why this mobile app can be completely branded for your organization. Why is that important? Because you are who they trust and who they know. That’s why we shy away from using “the ServiceReef app”. Why confuse your members and try to “sell” them on something else. Why not make this something that is yours? That’s one of our goals in how we’ve created this tool. Value Proposition 
What’s your value proposition? We believe that knowing the value you bring to your team is essential and helps bring clarity. So let’s quickly unpack a few value propositions you’ll experience with an aggregated serving strategy. Your Members Encouragement to serve Means to find opportunities that match personal interests and skills Searchable list in their pocket (mobile app) Your Partners Toolset to manage all of their serving opportunities Access to a much larger group of potential volunteers Part of a larger movement Your Organization Automated workflow so you don’t have to manually create lists Reporting on partner and member engagement Custom branded mobile app to promote Your Local Community More people engaged and serving Spider network of people serving where they may never have been exposed to before Frequently Asked Questions There are always more questions to answer! This ebook will help unpack many questions you might have about this strategy so stick with it... there’s a lot of useful information in here. But still, we know there are a number of questions you might be asking so let’s unpack a few. Is this part of a church’s missions department? Well, it could be but we most often see this as part of the entire church culture or strategy. Many times the missions department will be the “owner” of the plan but will actively engage other departments in the church sense volunteerism is more than mission trips or local partners - it’s also internal serving . How do you get leadership on board? We should write an entire ebook just on that! Truth is, that’s difficult. Our suggestion is that you bring leadership stories and examples of how this has worked for others (some here in this ebook), communicate you have a clear plan (leveraging this ebook), and show the greater impact your organization could have. Keep with it and be persistent. This is a good thing to advocate for and will make a huge difference in the culture of your organization.