About

MissionMakr.com started as an idea that founder, Robert Carpenter, had while on the Temple Mount during a Holy Land tour in 2008.  Having traveled to Israel eight years earlier on a similar tour, and having spent time working for a large mission organization, the opportunity to match technology with a common problem found in all “vacations with a purpose” and short-term mission trips became apparent.

The problem?  How to communicate with all the people that touch a trip along the way while creating lasting impact through the trip’s phases.

Whether planning a trip to the Holy Land or organizing a short-term mission trip to Mexico, effectively communicating and creating lasting impact within the four natural phases of every trip is critical.

The four phases of every short-term mission trip are:

  • Launch (generating interest, providing information and a way for people to sign up)
  • GearUP (preparing trip participants, training and creating team cohesiveness)
  • GO! (connecting from the field with supporters and people who want to follow the trip day-by-day)
  • Tell (communicating what happened to the church and others while creating lasting impact for future trips)

Until MissionMakr, efforts to communicate these four phases were generally accomplished through paper-based systems, verbal announcements, individual church web pages, email and small group meetings.

Armed with only an idea, MissionMakr began to take shape when two God- inspired things happened.  First, Robert met a young computer programmer, Caleb Cohoon, who shared a passion for missions.  Caleb is an accomplished musician and traveled as part of a missions worship team while at Liberty University.  Second, the Youth Pastor for Student Ministries at the church Robert attends, Shelter Cove Community Church, was interested in using MissionMakr for their upcoming High School trip to Mexico.

Working together, MissionMakr debuted in November 2008 … just in time to Launch Shelter Cove’s Mexico 2009 trip to Mexico to the entire church.  Through the process, each trip phase added a new level of communication and impact to the trip.  Launch made everyone in the church aware of the upcoming trip.  GearUP helped create a cohesive team of 75 before the team hit the field.  The GO! phase was especially exciting.  Each day, MissionSupporters could log in to a secure site and see photos and read “field news”.  More than 200 Mission Supporters received a daily email notification and logged in to GO! where they could read and see what was happening on the mission field.

After MissionMakr’s initial success with Shelter Cove, we realized that anyone who plans and leads short-term mission trips could make more out of missions by using it.  After two years of development and field testing, MissionMakr.com OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED ON JULY 17, 2010.

Getting started is easy and free!  Free?  Yep.  Free.

Sign up, build a trip and launch it to the world for free.  The cost of MissionMakr is based on those who sign up for the trip.  When a person signs up for a trip, they become a Pending MissionMembr.  Once activated, they become an Active MissionMembr and move on to the password protected GO! phase.  Each activation of a MissionMemr costs between $18 and $14 based on the number of Credits purchased and allows the MissionMembr to use all four phases of the web-based application.  One more thing … the Mission Team (typically church staff) use MissionMakr.com for free.

MissionMakr focuses on two things: effective communication and creating a lasting impact.  Our system doesn’t interfere with your business logic or how you run a trip.

If you want to make more out of missions, MissionMakr.com is the place to start.  Now that we’ve launched, you could really help us as we work to get the word out.  Tell your friends to check us out.  If you want to connect, email me, Robert, at rcarpenter@missionmakr.com.

If you want to see how MissionMakr.com works, check out our 3:58 second demo on our home page.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Robert