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 share 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 appropirate, callers are escalated 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 hardship, 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 helped 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 the might be able to help you.