Care Needs: Organizing Practical Help from a Care Request
When someone in your congregation is recovering from surgery or planning a loved one's memorial, the help they need is often practical: mow the lawn for five weeks, clear out an attic, staff a luncheon in shifts. Organizing that usually means one big email, a pile of replies, and one person trying to remember who said yes to what. Care Needs puts the whole sign-up inside the care request, so the needs, the helpers, and the finished work sit beside the visits, notes, and tasks your team already keeps.
Watch a short explainer on how Care Needs organizes practical help inside a care request.
What Care Needs is
Care Needs is an optional CareNote add-on that gives any care request a practical-help sign-up page. You list each thing the family needs, then invite people to help. Helpers say "I can help" on a simple page with no CareNote account. You can invite individuals, a whole group, congregants who match a filter, or anyone by email, including neighbors and relatives who attend somewhere else.
Care Needs is the sibling of Care Table, which handles meal sign-ups. Care Needs covers everything else a family needs a hand with. For meal sign-ups, use Care Table. Both can live on the same care request.
You turn Care Needs on under Optional Add-ons > Care Needs in your Owner settings. Once it is active, that page shows Care Needs is active, your open needs and signed-up helpers, and a Who you are helping table. The Manage Care Needs pages button takes you straight to them.
1. Start from the care request
Open the care request for the person who needs help, click Actions, and choose Add Care Needs. CareNote creates the page and opens it. Once a page exists, the same menu item reads Manage Care Needs.
The care request also gets a Care Needs summary card showing the status, how many needs are open, filled, or done, how many people are invited, and the next upcoming need.
2. Set up the page
On the Care Needs page, open Actions and choose Edit setup. Fill in:
- Recipient & Location: a title, the address, On-site instructions (gate codes, where tools are, parking), and a contact name and phone. The public page shows the city only. Helpers see the full address after they sign up.
- About: a few sentences and an optional photo for the public page.
- Family point person: a name and email for someone in the family who can see who is coming and post updates.
- Options: Send reminders to helpers and Show a giving link.
3. Add the needs
On the Needs tab, click Add a need. Choose a type, give it a title, and set When to On a date or Anytime. Add a start and end time to make a shift, a Location (if different) for help away from the home, Helpers needed, and Supplies / what to bring.
Each row has a menu: Sign up a helper (for someone who called the office), Mark done, Repeat this need (for weekly help like mowing), Reset (clear sign-ups) when a need has sign-ups, Edit, and Delete.
4. Build the invitee list
On the Invitees tab, use Add individuals, Invite congregants, Add from group, or Add manually. The Source column shows how each person was added, and Status shows Not yet invited or Signed up. People already on the list are skipped, so nobody is invited twice.
5. Activate and send invitations
When the page has an address and at least one need, open Actions and choose Send invitations. CareNote tells you how many people will be emailed and skips anyone already invited. Adding invitees to a draft never emails them. You can also use Copy sign-up link to share the link yourself.
What helpers see
Helpers never log in. They open the link and see the story, the city only, a line such as "7 of 10 needs still need help," and posted updates. Needs are grouped by day with the badges I can help, Covered, thank you!, and Done. Off-site needs say "Location shared after you sign up."
Clicking I can help opens a short form: Your name, Your email, an optional phone, and an optional A note for the family. Then they click Sign me up and receive an email with the full details.
Their own page has Add to calendar, a details box (where, when to arrive, what to bring, contact), and Save changes. If plans change, Cancel my sign-up opens the spot for someone else. On or after the date, they can mark the need done and add a note about how it went.
Staying on top of it
The page's Actions menu covers Send invitations, Post an update, Send family link, and View public page, plus Pause, Mark complete, Edit setup, and Cancel Care Needs. The Sign-ups tab lists who signed up for what, their notes, and how it went. The Updates tab lists what you and the family have posted and whether it was emailed.
Helpers with a need tomorrow get a reminder, and invitees who have not signed up get an occasional nudge while something is still open. Turn these off with Send reminders to helpers.
Every claim and finished need is written to the Care Story, so when someone mows the lawn, the care request shows it.
Frequently asked questions
Do helpers need a CareNote account? No. The link in their invitation is all they need.
Who sees the family's address? Only helpers who sign up. The public page shows the city only.
Can one need take several helpers? Yes. Set Helpers needed on each need. It shows Covered, thank you! once it is full.
What happens if a helper cancels? The spot opens again right away, and the coordinator is told.
Can I use Care Needs and Care Table on the same care request? Yes. Both appear in the care request's Actions menu.
Watch
- Introducing Care Needs: Practical Help, Organized (1:44)
- Practical Help, Organized: Care Needs Sign-Ups in the Care Request (4:41)
The Care Needs page on carenote.app has the overview.