Lotsa Helping Hands Born from Experience

Need help organizing all those volunteers who want to help you? Try Lotsa Helping Hands.

Lotsa Helping Hands is the creative enterprise of Massachusetts resident Barry Katz. The first two weeks after his wife’s cancer treatment, Katz would find four-course dinners, baskets of muffins or boxes of cookies at his doorstep. Sometimes, there would be two dinners on one night and nothing the next few. His phone rang constantly with people asking, “How can I help?”

When his wife started intensive chemotherapy, friends tried to arrange regular rides for their children to and from school, and dinners a few nights a week. Some dinners included foods the kids were allergic to, but Barry felt it would be heartless to mention it, and only thanked them. Other friends offered to pick up the kids, but sometimes forgot. In addition to the emotionally painful job of trying to care for his wife and children, Barry needed to choreograph all his friends’ offers of help.

“When someone’s life is turned upside down by illness, no one realizes, at first, how much help they are going to need,” Barry says. For the four years his wife fought her illness, friends flocked to Barry’s and his children’s side, always bringing baked goods, for lack of any better way to express their sympathy and help. Then, one day, as Barry found himself throwing out a full tray of turkey roll-ups that never got eaten, he had an inspiration.

That idea developed into Lotsa Helping Hands, a web-based tool that helps organize volunteers. If Barry had had access to a similar service years ago, he could have posted his meal and driving needs, and his community of friends could have signed up without ever replicating each other’s efforts. Friends would never have forgotten when and where to pick up his children; they could have been reminded by email the day before, and an hour before. He could have left notes on his group’s customized and private Lotsa Helping Hands web site that said he wanted friends to knock and come in when they brought a meal, or that he didn’t want to talk to a soul.

Through a partnership with BMT InfoNet, Lotsa Helping Hands allows you, or someone you designate, to organize volunteers so that your needs are met and their efforts are not wasted. Learn more by visiting http://bmtinfonet.lotsahelpinghands.com today.

‘What Can I Do to Help?’
BMT InfoNet has partnered with Lotsa Helping Hands to provide a valuable volunteer coordination service for friends, family, colleagues and neighbors who want to assist a loved one going through transplant.

It’s an easy-to-use, private online group calendar, specifically designed for organizing helpers, where everyone can pitch in with meals delivery, rides and other tasks necessary for life to run smoothly during a crisis.

Here’s how you get started:

1. Choose a coordinator. Decide who is going to list needs on the group calendar: you, a spouse, family member or close friend. (More than one person can be a coordinator.)
2. Sign Up. The coordinator signs up for a free membership, which creates the group calendar web site immediately.
3. Add members. The coordinator adds the name and email address of each person who is interested in helping.
4. List what’s needed. Using pre-designed template screens, the coordinator easily adds specific needs for meals, rides, etc. to the group calendar.

The system takes over from there. Members are automatically notified by email about the site and the needs that have been listed. They can see the group calendar, and volunteer for whatever fits their own situation. Volunteers receive automatic confirmations and reminders of their commitments.

Learn how it works today. Visit http://bmtinfonet.lotsahelpinghands.com for more details.

Attention, Link Program Volunteers