Students Ask for Help. Too Often, They Never Receive It.
TimelyCare’s Basic Needs solutions help you provide a clear path for student food, housing, and other basic needs, so every student can get the help they need.
When Support Stops at the Referral, Students Fall Through the Cracks
A student skips class because they don’t have money for groceries. Another spends hours trying to find reliable transportation back and forth to campus, only to give up. Another finally asks for help, but doesn’t know what to do next.
These moments happen every day across your campus. They’re not isolated incidents.
- 59% of college students have experienced basic needs insecurity.¹
- 41% struggled with food insecurity in the last year.¹
- 48% faced housing instability, and 14% experienced homelessness.¹
You have programs designed to help. But for a student facing hunger or housing instability, a list of resources isn’t always enough.
Carol Boice, contact call center agent at Davidson-Davie Community College, discusses how resources like TimelyCare can help students facing basic needs insecurity to get the support they need to stay on track.
The Problem Isn’t Access, It’s Follow-Through
Most campuses have resources to help students, but lack a reliable, scalable way to ensure they get the support they need.
What does that look like?
Support breaks down after referral
Students receive resources, but do not complete the next steps.
Staff are unable to scale support
Manual follow-up is unsustainable as demand grows.
Fragmented systems
Intake, tracking, and support live across disconnected tools.
Lack of visibility
You cannot clearly see what happens after a student asks for help.
Students struggle to navigate support
Too many steps. Too much confusion. Too many drop-off points.
Basic Needs Navigate: Coordinated Navigation, Guided Progression & High-Touch Support
Basic Needs Navigate helps colleges and universities improve follow-through, reduce gaps in care, and more consistently support more students without additional staff capacity.
It helps students move forward when the process feels too complex to navigate on their own.
With Basic Needs Navigate, you can more easily:
Ensure students actually receive support, not just referrals
Guide students through complex next steps
Support more students, more consistently
Scale basic needs support without adding staff or workload
Improve coordination across teams and systems
Gain visibility into student progress and outcomes
Address Challenges Outside the Classroom to Keep Students on Track
How it Works
Centralized intake
- A single starting point for students and staff
- Improves visibility into demand and need types
Resource connection
- Curated, maintained resource network
- Reduces dead-end or outdated referrals
Coordinated follow-up
- Proactive outreach and reminders
- Reduces drop-off after referral
Guided support
- Multi-step guidance and barrier resolution
- Helps students complete applications, navigate complex processes and complete next steps
Visibility and reporting
- Insight into demand, engagement, and student progression
- Helps you understand what is working and where students stall
Basic Needs Connect: Centralize Intake and Improve Early Follow-Through
Basic Needs Connect helps colleges and universities move beyond fragmented, manual processes by creating a more coordinated and visible approach to student support.
For campuses that are just starting out in their basic needs support or have budgetary constraints, Basic Needs Connect creates the structure and visibility needed to support students more consistently.
For campuses looking to support more complex needs, improve follow-through at scale, and guide students through multi-step processes, Basic Needs Navigate builds on this foundation with a more coordinated, higher-touch approach.
With Basic Needs Connect, you can more easily:
Bring structure to basic needs support across your campus
Create a clear, centralized starting point for students and staff
Improve early follow-through after a student asks for help
Increase visibility into student needs and support activity
Reduce manual tracking and coordination across teams
A New Model for Student Success
TimelyCare’s Basic Needs solutions provide a coordinated support and navigation layer that works with your existing systems and staff to help students move from request to action to progress without falling through the cracks.
For Students
They feel supported, stay in class, and have a clear path to persistence.
For Your Team
Staff gain capacity as we handle the navigation and follow-up, moving your workflow from reactive to proactive.
For Your Campus
Your systems work together, and you finally have the data to prove the impact of your well-being strategies.
Let’s talk about how we can make sure your students get the help they need
Ready to close the gap between asking for help and receiving it? Our team is here to help you scale support and protect student enrollment.
FAQs
Basic Needs refers to essential challenges such as food, housing, finances, transportation, and caregiving that affect a student’s ability to stay enrolled and succeed.
It is a coordinated support and navigation solution that helps students connect to and follow through on basic needs support through centralized intake, resource connection, structured follow-up, and guided support.
Most campuses already have resources, but many students never complete the steps required to access them. TimelyCare’s Basic Needs solution helps students move from asking for help to actually receiving support.
Directories list resources. TimelyCare’s Basic Needs solution focuses on what happens after, helping students understand next steps, stay engaged, and move forward while giving institutions visibility into progress.
No. TimelyCare’s Basic Needs solution works alongside your existing systems and teams, improving coordination and follow-through without replacing them.
No. TimelyCare’s Basic Needs solution centralizes intake, manages follow-up, and improves coordination so your team can support more students without increasing manual workload.
