Equip the volunteer workforce to better serve the local community

For their traditional home delivered meals, Meals On Wheels in Tarrant County delivers an average of 2,500 hot lunch meals a day.  This vital service is accomplished through the tireless and dedicated efforts of their many volunteers who drive an average of 248 delivery routes each day, with 10 – 16 clients in each route.   

Overview

The target is to complete each route within an hour from the time the drivers leave the pick-up site with the meals to the time they complete their last delivery.

Strategy and Goals

To successfully achieve these goals with an aggressive schedule, the Meals On Wheels team needed to replace an unreliable, clunky, and oftentimes not usable application that was not designed for this type of operation with a modern, mobile application including a sleeker, simpler design that is tailored to their process, engages more volunteer drivers and provides greater and more accurate visibility into the routes, deliveries and wellbeing of the customers they serve.

It provides features that make the process of route management and delivery completions more efficient and effective with a tool that is easy for volunteers to use.

• Securely sign into the site and see their assigned route(s), pick-up site location and each delivery location on their mobile device first thing in the morning.
• Click on the address of the pick-up site or delivery location to automatically engage the mapping application on their mobile device to get directions to their destination.  Volunteers don’t have to type in the address.
• Click on the MOW Operations phone number or client phone numbers to automatically dial.  Volunteers don’t have to dial the numbers.
• Click a button to mark a delivery successful.
• Check a box indicating specific observations and enter notes regarding the client’s condition or no-answer situations, which automatically emails the information to MOW Operations, recording the important information and significantly reducing the number of phone calls needed.
• Click a button to automatically call 911 for an emergency situation, which also automatically notifies MOW Operations.
• At the end of the day, all delivery information is removed from the interface, protecting the clients’ Private Personal Information (PPI).
• Route start times, and delivery status and times are captured to provide accurate metrics to help ensure route optimization and provide detailed and accurate statistics to help improve route efficiency and aid in funding requests.

The Final Results

• Improving the communication process and efficiency between MOW operational teams and the volunteer delivery drivers throughout the delivery day
• Collecting more detailed and more accurate metrics about the deliveries to assist with route construction and funding
• Increasing the number of volunteer delivery drivers by making the process easier and more attractive

The Conclusion

The new MOW Volunteer Delivery Application is a mobile-friendly, web application that consumes pick-up site data, client data and delivery route information and provides an electronic view of the daily “route sheet” to volunteers.