There are over 6,000 Chabad shluchim operating in every corner of the world, with hundreds of thousands of Chabad constituents behind them. Yet in any given city, between 30% and 95% of Jews are going completely unreached.

Contacts fall through the cracks, volunteers have no structured way to plug in, and shluchim – stretched impossibly thin – have no practical way to manage the data and follow-up that consistent outreach demands.

A shliach in Taos, New Mexico, set out to change that.

Rabbi Eli Kaminetzky spent years building ConnectYid, a groundbreaking app developed together with a full team of professionals – including experienced developers, a systems architect, and a marketing advisor with Fortune 100 experience – and has now released it to the public.

“Every shliach has hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Yidden in their area they’ve never been able to consistently reach,” Rabbi Kaminetzky told Anash.org. “We built ConnectYid to change that – to give shluchim and their volunteers a simple, practical system so that no Yid slips through the cracks.”

The idea came from his own experience on the ground.

“I was doing this myself in Taos and watched our reach grow dramatically,” he said. “Once I saw what was possible, I knew this had to be available to every shliach.”

The app allows shluchim to import their existing contact lists directly from an Excel sheet, and from there it takes over. Every contact appears as a pin on a live map. The shliach draws a custom area on the map – whatever neighborhood or zone he wants to focus on for that day or season – and the app instantly builds an optimized route, so volunteers move efficiently from one door to the next without backtracking.

Visits can be organized and categorized by type: matzah distribution, Chanuka menorah, erev Shabbos candle delivery, and more, allowing shluchim to run targeted, organized campaigns across their entire community.

Lists can also be divided into sections and shared with volunteers and bochurim, turning a one-man operation into a coordinated team effort.

After each visit, the volunteer logs exactly what happened – whether someone put on tefillin, accepted Shabbos candles, wanted to talk for an hour, or simply took a gift and said thank you – and saves it with one tap. Contact information can be updated on the go as well, keeping the database current whenever an address changes, a number is updated, or new details come in.

That living record builds over time, and automated alerts and reminders ensure no one ever falls through the cracks again.

“Yesterday I finally got to use ConnectYid, and I have to say it’s transforming my shlichus,” Rabbi Berel Levertov, head shliach to Arizona, told Anash.org. “I have visited many yidden and delivered to even more people I had on my mailing list, but never got to visit. I’ve tried to do this with other apps, but it simply doesn’t work.”

Other shluchim echo the sentiment. “The ConnectYid app is an incredible tool for my shlichus, very easy and straightforward to use,” said Rabbi Levi Danow of Chabad of Fort Wayne, Indiana. “It helps me keep in touch with the local Yidden consistently. Highly recommended.”

Rabbi Mendy Kramer, a shliach in Ashdod, Eretz Yisroel, added: “ConnectYid has all the potential to become an internationally successful project which will connect Jews together everywhere, simply, easily and conveniently.”

“I loved how easy it was to connect with my fellow Jews and grow the community,” said David Bartel, a senior UX researcher at Vanguard. “Can’t imagine how it was done before this.”

The app is priced to be accessible for Chabad centers of all sizes. ConnectYid can be found at ConnectYid.org.