Why we built 4Bells

 

It all began when we gathered folks together who work in animal rescue for a Generator, a convening we hold with experts to surface problems, challenges, and potential technological solutions. Soon after, we held a Generator with folks working in food recovery. Both of these entirely different groups shared one recurring need: a way to simplify their processes for deploying volunteers to time-sensitive tasks. They shared arduous scenarios with white boards and notebooks and endless phone calls. Everyone agreed--and some even chanted their excitement--that something had to change.

 

And we kept talking

 

The idea captured our attention, so we did what we do: we talked about it with lots of different people. And in our discussions and in our research, we found that disaster response teams also had a need for a lightweight tool to organize and deploy volunteers in an emergency. While we developed 4Bells with emergency response in mind, 4Bells can be used by many types of organizations to accomplish a variety of time-sensitive tasks.