First Responders is a feature of Tendenci that allow you to communicate quickly with those who need to know FIRST in times of emergency.

To use this feature, you will need to add these Users to Tendenci.

• How to Add a User
• How to Import a group of Users

Then, you will designate them as First Responders and add any specific skills they have that may be useful in times of crisis -- first aid, firefighting, crowd control, military, languages, etc.

• How to Designate a User as a First Responder

Whenever communication is sent through Tendenci, those marked as First Responders will be emailed first. If you have a User base of 20,000+, this will ensure that someone near the end of the list (e.g. Juan Zuniga) receives the email immediately rather than after all other Users have been processed.

In addition, you can forward a Press Release to all those marked as First Responders so that whoever is talking to the press also keeps your emergency personnel up to date.

• How to Forward a Release to your First Responders

By staying in constant communication with your team, you can significantly increase your response time in case of emergencies.

Tendenci® - Volunteer Sign Up and Coordination through your web site

Volunteer Portal Self Registration:

You have motivated volunteers willing and able to help you. You need your volunteers to be able to sign up on your web site quickly and easily so you can manage the influx and coordinate them easily. Tendenci does that.

The most common benefits of signing up volunteers onling through your web site are:

1. First Responder Data Capture
2. Email notification management
3. Volunteer coordination through event registration (with limits)
4. Access to the right content that the content owner or an administrator has restricted to user only
5. Distributed Authoring - your volunteers are the ones entering the data subject to rapid workflow approval by coordinators

Volunteer Coordination Tools:

1. Electronic Newsletters
2. Event Registration to Limit Volunteers at specific locations / times. Reminder emails as volunteer slot approaches
3. First Responder data collection and emergency response notifications
4. Emergency Social Services data entry and emergency case management through the web.
5. Consolidation of volunteer calendars between different volunteer organizations working towards the same goal
6. Use job board to post volunteer positions needing to be filled - integrates with newsletter to quickly ask for volunteers!
7. Automatically Consolidate volunteer positions needed across multiple organizations
8. Accept Online Donations through your merchant account
9. RSS and PodCasting built in at the lowest levels helping volunteers filter for information overload
10. Ratings for evaluation of notification clarity - even in an emergency, particularly in an emergency, exactness of speech matters
11. Forums for lower priority communication
12. Article notification with podcasting to time shift audio updates for emergency personnel responding at different times

Many elements of Tendenci are ideal for handling distributed notifications and volunteer management. Setting up events with limited attendees is a great way to manage your volunteer resources so you have the PEOPLE you need, but also in the RIGHT LOCATION at the RIGHT TIME. One click to run the roster allows your volunteer coordinators to easily see who to expect.

And with Internet access checks-ins can be done at the door.

Note that you control if you want to allow self registration. Allowing self registration allows volunteers to sign up on your site and get either basic level access or "membership" level access at your descretion.

One additional benefit of web based organization management is for business continuity planning. When natural disasters strike your online presence might be all that is left for your membership to interact with. It is a thought none of us want to have, but through 9/11, the Madrid and London Bombings, the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina we have seen time and time again that the Internet is the only thing left standing because it is geographically dispersed. Whether you use Tendenci or another product, it is imperative that continuity be a part of any disaster plan for volunteer organizations as well as infrastructure businesses. And organizations ARE critical infrastructure. We get that.

For more information about Tendenci''s first responder capabilities, contact us today.

Tendenci® - Social Services Integration

As part of our first responder suite, Tendenci includes Social Services Software for data entry.

*NOTE: This page describes a social services software product to help organizations offering social services coordination. If you NEED social services please search in your area. Please do NOT contact us directly for social services.*

When working to coordinate a crisis, organization is everything. Tendenci includes modules to profile first responders within your organization and to coordinate volunteer efforts. This naturally led to the creation of a module to enter emergency social service data. When the evacuee is being checked in, what are their needs and what are their case notes? They are traumatized, but still have individual needs. Now more than ever.

We hope you never need this module, but in a time of crisis we see a distributed response from our client base. No one site can coordinate everything for a natural disaster response. And if your site was published on CNN, the traffic from the entire globe would probably saturate all available bandwidth. Therefore, we see emergency response as a distributed activity now and in the future. To that end the Tendenci Emergency Social Services (ESS) software module will enable you to participate to the level of your people and not be limited by your technology.

The ESS module also works in non-emergency situations to record the social service needs of individuals within an organization. Additionally, ESS integrates with users, and therefore with the jobs and resumes modules to help people get back on their feet. Leverage your technology to HELP PEOPLE! We just think that is cool.

Volunteer Coordination for Data Entry:

Tendenci prioritizes notifications based on first responder capabilities and provides volunteer portal management. Setting up events with attendee restrictions allows management of volunteer resources.

For more information about Tendenci''s first responder capabilities, contact us today.

Tendenci® includes the ability to syndicate your content with RSS and podcasting audio files for time shifting communication during relief efforts. And RSS can easily be cached on a laptop for users to review content in the field.

First Responders Integration for Safety and Security

Tendenci® - FIRST RESPONDER INTEGRATION

Profiles and Email Notifications:

Communications during a crisis or in advance of an anticipated crisis are critical to maintaining control within an organization. Web sites are becoming the primary tool in the communications mix for organizations and businesses alike, and for a good reason: Web sites allow for distributed communication to the “masses.”

For those with email, Tendenci allows web based volunteer sign up profiling of first responders. So the users can indicate, or an administrator can indicate, their unique set of first responder skills. A crisis calls for a wide variety of skills from paramedic training, to search and rescue to truck drivers. Each is unique and if you need to use the portal to locate someone within your organization with that exact first responder skill set for emergency response, Tendenci allows you to do that.

And all communication is prioritized to go to first responders first. The theory being that it is more important to tell the hospital and Paul Revere about an oncoming storm because they will in turn tell more people and hasten the delivery of the message. This matters if you are sending 100,000 notifications to your site users as they can only be delivered as fast as the receiving email servers or phone lines, so if you can deliver the first 50 to the most critical people you increase the likelihood of a well organized and successful crisis response.

Telephone and Pager Notification Integration:

But what if not all members of your community have a computer or an email address? How do you reach them?

In working to help Houston’s Fifth Ward community integrate a security-focused application on their Web site, Schipul partnered with Dialogic Communications Corporation (DCC) to integrate its Communicator! NXT software with Tendenci on the 5th Ward HP/i-Community Portal to deliver a state-of-the-art high-speed emergency notification system.

This high-speed public safety pilot includes capabilities to issue First Responder Alerts through the portal by alerting police and firefighters first, and then the rest of the community, during potentially life-threatening situations.

By working together, Tendenci and Communicator! NXT also automate communications between school personnel and parents and can warn neighborhoods of potential risks, such as chemical leaks and sex offender notices.

The tools also work together in non-emergency situations to enhance the frequency and quality of communications between school personnel and parents so they can more proactively monitor situations influencing a child’s performance in school.

Volunteer Coordination:

Many elements of Tendenci are ideal for handling distributed notifications and volunteer portal management. Setting up events with limited attendees is a great way to manage your volunteer resources so you have the PEOPLE you need, but also in the RIGHT LOCATION at the RIGHT TIME. One click to run the roster allows your volunteer coordinators to easily see who to expect.

Tendenci also supports a social services software module for non profits to provide emergency social services check-in through your web site.

RSS and Podcasting are built in at the lowest levels to help time shift volunteer notifications based on their skills and availability. All associations are moving towards virtualization and those with a high density of first responder skills are probably at the head of the curve based on necessity!

Volunteers and evacuees can make use of the forums software as well to match up geographically dispersed people and needs.

For more information about Tendenci''s first responder capabilities, contact us today.