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Sarah Plotkin, Executive Director of the Welder Community Children's
Center, spearheaded the development of a community coalition. The
coalition, which included seven agencies from her local county, is
dedicated to the advancement of children's health and well-being.
Within six months of its formation, the coalition was awarded a $650,000
federal grant. The purpose of the grant was to provide for additional
grants to smaller community-based groups. These sub-awards would be used
to improve the availability of nutritional resources and child care as
well as medical and dental care for disadvantaged children.
The coalition released a number of requests for proposals (RFPs) and was
flooded with organizations seeking funds. The small office of the Welder
Community Children's Center, from which the coalition was working, was
overwhelmed with telephone calls. The calls came not only from eligible
grantees, but also from many members of the public.
In order to cope with the new workload and to keep the staff at Welder
focused on their primary mission, Sarah turned her calls over to a
telephone answering service.
Today, she has no regrets.
"I wasn't really sure this was the right way to go," Sarah said. "We are
so passionate about doing the right things for kids, I didn't know if
anyone else would embrace and live up to our level of commitment. Unfortunately, with our
own small budget, we couldn't afford to hire another staff member to handle the
calls for the community coalition."
Working with the answering service, Sarah developed criteria for
handling each type of call. Callers seeking general
information are handled with a general script. Callers interested in applying for the sub-grants, are given specialized information. The
staff at the answering service was trained
to answer all common questions pertaining to the sub-awards. When
appropriate, callers were forwarded to the in-house staff at Welder.
"To be honest, I was surprised it worked as smoothly as it did. Giving
up control over something so important to us was hard to do," said Sarah.
"Even though
it was driven by a financial reality, using an answering service was
absolutely the right thing to do."
"We were able to focus on our core responsibilities. In addition, the
callers for the community coalition are being serviced 24x7, in a way that we could never have done on our own," she
said.
When asked if she had any words of advice to other non-profits, Sarah said, "Don't be put off by the idea of
using an answering service; I was,
and I was wrong. Our passion is our mission, and our mission is our
passion. I was sure that no one else could possibly share our enthusiasm
for what we do. I have been thoroughly pleased with the service we've
received and so have our callers."
Learn more about telephone
answering services and discover how they might be able to help you.
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