Getting Started

What it looks like to gather care

1

Create your free CareGather

Meet Maria. Maria recently was diagnosed with cancer. She's got a long road of treatments, hospital visits and recovery ahead. While health is her number one priority, she's worried about keeping life in motion - the groceries, school, work - and knows the things that bring her joy in life will move to the back burner.

Maria's best friend Angela offers to set up a CareGather for Maria to bring her friends and family together who are eager to support and send their love. Together they can bring some joy and lend a hand while she focuses on health. She visits CareGather.com, enters a few details, and quickly starts a page for Maria.

Maria: a young woman with a close-shaved head, smiling at the camera with one hand resting against her head, outdoors against green foliage.
2

Gather your community

Angela invites Maria and her mother Rose to be Organizers, who can help manage the page and post updates. They each can now share Maria's unique CareGather link to her coworkers, high school friends, church-members, and wider family. Suddenly, there are dozens of people on Maria's CareTeam sending care and encouragement to her and her family on CareGather.

Maria would like the option to share more personal needs and messages to a select group. So Angela sets up a CareCircle, which sends private messages to a select group of loved ones who are able to see 'CareCircle' only updates and support needs.

CARETEAMORGANIZERSCARECIRCLE
3

Post the best ways to care

As people reach out with, 'How can I help?' Maria and her husband add some ideas to their page. Knowing they'll need someone to walk their dog when they're at the hospital, they add 'Walk Rosco' as a way to support, adding the dates that will be needed. Maria's neighbors jump in to claim dates and coordinate who will walk Rosco.

Maria is unable to take her kids to after school activities due to chemotherapy, so she adds 'Provide Transportation' as a way to support. Here everyone can sign up for specific dates and times.

Two support requests from a CareGather page: 'Transportation', asking for help getting the kids to piano lessons, and 'Walk Rosco', asking someone to watch the dog during an eight-hour hospital day. Each card shows the CareTeam members who have claimed dates and a View Support button.
4

Gather Care in the CareBasket

As messages, offers to support, gifts, and gift cards are sent, they are all in one place for page organizers: the CareBasket. When Maria's coworker Steve offers to coordinate meals, it appears in her CareBasket. She posts the offer on her page and adds the best dates for friends and family to sign up.

Maria's high school friends want to send something to brighten her day. They see she has already received several DoorDash gift cards, so instead they send an Amazon gift card. Maria accepts these in her CareBasket, and they're delivered to her email.

A CareBasket entry: Steve Watkins offers to coordinate home-cooked dinners from the office, alongside a gift card marked '3 Sent' that has been sent to the page.
5

Stay Connected Through it All

Throughout Maria's treatment, she and Rose share updates that are sent through CareGather messages to her whole CareTeam. Conversations with friends and family are now "how are you, really?" and less "what's the latest?"

As Maria's treatment continues, Maria's CareGather community stays up-to-date, sends loving messages, and offers the right care in the moment. Maria and her family are emboldened by this love, confident that they can make it through, and even find joy during one of life's hardest moments.

Seven people standing in a circle, seen from below against a bright blue sky, each clasping the hands of the two people beside them.

Let's Get Gathering!

Start a new CareGather Page