Meal Trains for Other Purposes?

November 20, 2017 4:57 AM

Are there sites that are like those meal train websites (to help those with severe illness or mourning) but which help organise hangout times? Or a way to customise those sites for those purposes?

I am currently going through an immensely difficult time right now and the thing I'm finding most helpful at the moment is time with people, especially staying with friends for the night. I've gotten a bunch of offers, but it can be overwhelming to figure out where to go when especially when I'm very low.

I was thinking of those websites where you can sign up to deliver meals to those in need and I was wondering if there's a way to adapt them to say "ok you can stay at my house on X to Y date". Or a preexisting site exactly for this? Or some other method?

posted by divabat to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

On mealtrain you can customize what's being asked for in each time slot, so you can definitely use the tool for this, but I can see how the name would be misleading.

(also, sending care & strength across the internet, and I think this is an awesome idea)
posted by ITheCosmos at 5:11 AM on November 20, 2017

Check out Doodle — people can select what dates they’re available, don’t have to sign up for any accounts, super easy to use.

(Sending warm thoughts to you!)
posted by saturngirl at 5:19 AM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

VolunteerSpot does this. It is pretty customizable. :) People can sign up for different times. It is now called signup.com
posted by coevals at 5:32 AM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

You can really do everything you're looking for on any kind of publicly editable shared document. When I had surgery last year and needed lots of help with small daily tasks, we used a Google spreadsheet where each cell was a day and people wrote their name under days where they were available to come help. (But, seconding that you could also use a meal train site for this if you wanted things like automatic email reminders.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:53 AM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]