The Customer
Adas Israel Congregation
Adas Israel Congregation is a large, diverse, urban synagogue located in Washington, DC. It can be difficult to sustain a feeling of community in a large congregation in a busy city. We make a special effort to maintain a caring, personal connection with our senior members (80 years and older) and those who are new to the synagogue. One way in which we do this is to have holiday gift baskets hand-delivered twice a year to over 200 older and new members by their fellow congregants.
Challenges
We are much better at prayer, study and t’sedakah (Hebrew for “charity and justice”) than mass package distribution. For years, we’ve struggled to create efficient routes with good instructions for over 40 volunteers each delivering 5 to 7 gift baskets. We want the volunteers to spend their time with the recipients of the gift baskets – not struggling to find them. Our amateur manual efforts at creating routes has taken many hours, much anxiety and produced uncertain results.
Solution
This year, Ed Kopf, one of the co-chairs of the gift project, decided there had to be a better way. Ed searched the internet for a tool that would meet our needs. Route4Me stood out as uniquely easy to use, comprehensive and as having a flexible pricing structure. Using Route4Me on trial, Ed was able to cut the time spent and improve the results of routing dramatically. The volunteer drivers were each given turn-by-turn instructions that got them to their fellow congregants quickly and efficiently.
Benefits
The organizers and volunteer drivers in our gift project spent their time this year in the best way possible – sharing with their old and new friends and strengthening our community. And when we contacted Route4Me, they understood what we are trying to do for our community and worked with us to assure that we’ll be able to use their outstanding service for years to come.”
