How St. Paul's Salisbury church used Zelos to deliver 6.5 tons of food in three months

How St. Paul’s Salisbury uses Zelos

St. Paul’s Salisbury is a UK church that ran its own food service through 18 weeks of COVID lockdown. The volunteer workforce was small: fewer than 50 people. Over three months, the team distributed 6.5 tons of food to more than 2,000 people in the surrounding community.

The whole operation was coordinated through Zelos. A single coordinator spent less than half an hour each week posting tasks. Congregation members claimed them around their own schedules.

The weekly tasks in Zelos included shopping runs, donation sorting, food deliveries, prescription pickups, birthday cake drops, dog walks for people who could not get out. Volunteers opened the app, saw what was available, and claimed the tasks that fit their day. The same coordinator used Zelos’s announcement feature to share results from the week’s work and stories about the people being served, keeping the volunteer base connected to the mission without needing in-person meetings.

The challenge

Lockdown food services exist in a tight resource window. The people who need delivered groceries are vulnerable and the deliveries cannot slip. The volunteers helping are themselves often balancing other responsibilities at home. The coordinator running the operation does not have time to chase people one by one.

St. Paul’s Salisbury had fewer than 50 volunteers between them and the needs of a community under lockdown. Every hour of admin overhead would have come out of someone’s hands-on volunteer time. Coordination needed to be lightweight, digital, and asynchronous.

In-person meetings were not an option. Long WhatsApp threads would have spread information too thinly. The team needed one place where tasks were posted, claimed, and tracked, and one place where the coordinator could broadcast updates without writing a fresh message to every volunteer.

The solution

The coordinator posted tasks in Zelos in under 30 minutes each week. Each task was small and self-contained: a specific shopping list, a specific delivery route, a specific donation sort. Volunteers logged into the app, saw what was available, and claimed the tasks that fit their day. The coordinator could see in one view who was on the team, what was claimed, and where the gaps were. Filling a gap meant posting one more task, not making a round of phone calls.

The task list ran a broad range: shopping and collecting food, sorting donations, food deliveries, prescription deliveries, coordinating birthday cake bakes and drops, and dog walking for people who could not leave the house. Pets counted as part of the community.

Zelos’s announcement feature handled the communications side. The coordinator shared the week’s results, profiles of the people being served, and reminders of what mattered. The volunteers stayed connected to the mission without needing weekly meetings or one-to-one check-ins. The same setup is well-suited to church volunteer coordination and grassroots community work generally.

The results

The food service ran for 18 weeks. Over three months of that operation, the team distributed 6.5 tons of food and connected with more than 2,000 people in the surrounding community. Deliveries reached families, vulnerable people, and elderly residents who could not leave the house.

The admin overhead stayed at roughly half an hour a week throughout. No full-time staff, no special tools beyond Zelos, no in-person meetings.

The coordination model carried the operation through to the end of lockdown. Fewer than 50 volunteers, half an hour of weekly admin, 2,000 people served. A community supported by its own people, one claimed task at a time.