The Warrior Gateway Directory allows users in the military community to easily find the resources they need. However, it is also a tool which makes it easy for service providers to interact with their clients and stakeholders. We know there are a lot of sites out there that list information, resources, and service providers for the military community…
So why should you, a service provider with limited time and resources, use the Warrior Gateway Directory?
1) It allows you to easily communicate important information with your client base in the military community. We list basic but necessary information about service providers (where you’re located, what you do, how to get in contact with you, etc.), which you can edit once you claim your profile. We are also developing more advanced ways to communicate via your service provider profile, such as an Announcements box, an Events Calendar, the ability to post the need for volunteers or emergency donations, plus more.
Why use the Warrior Gateway to communicate rather than relying only on traditional channels like your own website? We are building a single, central place for users who are looking for information about service providers; it makes it easier for the user if he or she can find information about ten organizations in one place rather than on those ten organizations’ separate websites.
2) You can easily find out what your clients are saying and thinking about you. We allow users to leave ratings and reviews for service providers they have used. This can help you to discover areas which are in need of attention or improvement in your organization’s provision of services. Think of it as an online comment box.
3) You can interact by commenting back. If a user posts a review for your organization, you can post an official reply which will be displayed directly below the user’s comment. This will allow you to directly and publicly address the user’s concerns (or thank them for their praise!). We think this will create an open forum that will be good for transparency.
4) It provides a unique metric of success for stakeholders, especially donors. Knowing what clients think about a service provider can be more illustrative than traditional financial metrics used for non-profits, such as program expenses and revenue, when measuring an organization’s success and effectiveness. We’d like your success as a provider of services to the military community to be told not just through your financials but through the words and stories of those whose lives you affect with your service. This will have major implications for the way donors measure your success as the ‘ratings-and-reviews’ model becomes more prevalent in the non-profit community.
5) It’s a good way to discover and get in touch with other organizations doing work similar to yours. Just as our users in the military can use the Warrior Gateway Directory to seek out organizations near them, so too can you! This should be useful for coordination and referrals, and also for sharing resources and best practices with organizations like yours. We are also looking into building an online forum for discussion and resource-sharing between service providers.
We are confident that the Warrior Gateway Directory is a tool that will help service providers communicate with their clients, stakeholders, and other service providers. To use the Warrior Gateway, get started by finding your organization’s listing in the Directory and claiming it. If you can’t find a listing for your organization, you should add it to the Directory. You can then verify or edit the information we have listed for your organization, and respond to any comments left by users on your profile page. Also, be sure to tell your clients about your profile on the Warrior Gateway and suggest they log on and leave a rating and review about you.
If you have any further questions about how you can start using the Warrior Gateway to the fullest advantage of your organization, don’t hesitate to contact us.
