In time of a disaster relief effort, you know it’s important to have accurate information about your volunteers and how they can help. With our new Readiness Disaster Intelligence (ReDI) System, you can now ask detailed questions of your volunteers when they register so you know what tools they may have and what they can do. You can also filter for volunteers with specific skills or equipment – and quickly contact volunteers who meet your needs.
How ReDI is different from your Connect platform
The ReDI System functions much the same way as a regular Connect platform, but it focuses specifically on disaster-related needs and volunteer skills. ReDI system registration includes a step to create a disaster profile, so you can capture unique information relevant to disaster response.
In the disaster-profile step of the registration process, volunteers will:
- Provide some disaster-related personal information.
- Identify skills, experience, and equipment that they possess.
Once volunteers have provided this information, you can filter for those skills to find and recruit and place volunteers most effectively in a disaster.
Preparing to use your ReDI System
If you're already familiar with the standard Connect platform, you'll find that the setup process for the ReDI System is very similar. You'll still want to consider a few topics specific to the ReDI System as you prepare to launch.
For example, think about which steps you want volunteers to complete when they register. Learn more about that setup and best practices by reading The ReDI System: Managing Volunteer Registration.
To learn what that registration looks like to the volunteer, see The ReDI System: Registering on a Disaster Response Site.
Finding and emailing volunteers in the ReDI System
Once you have gathered disaster-response information from volunteers, you can quickly filter for the skills or equipment that they have identified. Then you can email individual users or groups of users who meet the criteria you are looking for.
Learn more in this article on The ReDI System: Filtering and Emailing Volunteers for Disaster Response.
Using Initiatives in the ReDI System
Initiatives will be an important part of how you organize your disaster response. Initiatives function the same way in the ReDI System as they do in other Connect platforms. To learn more about initiatives, see The ReDI System: Initiatives.
Learn what you need to know ahead of time
Learning opportunities are available to help you prepare ahead of time so that you can smoothly begin using your ReDI System when a disaster strikes.
Contact Galaxy Support if you would like to view the video on how to set up and use your ReDI System.
We suggest that you establish a training plan for yourself and your team so that all of you remain ready to use the system in a time of disaster. For example, you can view the video and look through the articles on a regular basis, say every six months.
Ask our Galaxy Support team for ideas.