A TAS Case Study
Sarah Plotkin, executive director of the Webber Community Children’s Center, spearheaded the development of a community coalition.
The coalition, which included seven agencies from her county, is dedicated to the advancement of children’s health and wellbeing.
Within six months of its formation, the coalition received a $650,000 federal grant. The purpose of the grant was to provide for additional sub-grants to smaller community-based groups.
These sub-awards would be used to improve the availability of nutritional resources and childcare as well as medical and dental care for disadvantaged children.
The coalition released many requests for proposals (RFPs) and was flooded with organizations seeking funds.
The small office of the Webber Community Children’s Center, from which the coalition was working, was overwhelmed with telephone calls. The calls came not only from potential grant applicants but also from many members of the public.
To cope with the new workload and keep the staff at Webber focused on their primary mission, Sarah outsourced her incoming calls to a telephone answering service. Today, she has no regrets.
“I wasn’t really sure this was the right way to go,” Sarah said.
“But with our own small budget, we couldn’t afford to hire another staff member to handle the calls for the community coalition. We are so passionate about doing the right things for kids, I didn’t know if anyone else would share our level of commitment.”
Working with her answering service, Sarah was able to develop a protocol for each type of call. Callers seeking general information are handled by the answering service, which relays basic information.
Callers interested in applying for the sub-awards for the federal grants are given specialized information. The answering service staff can answer almost all questions pertaining to the sub-awards, thanks to the information Sarah prepared.
When necessary, callers are escalated to the in-house staff at Webber.
“To be honest, I was surprised it worked as smoothly as it did. Giving up control over something so important was hard to do. Even though it was driven by a financial necessity, outsourcing was absolutely the right choice,” said Sarah.
“Using an answering service allowed us to focus on our core responsibilities. In addition, the callers for the community coalition are being helped promptly and professionally around the clock, in a way 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 outsourcing, which is something you associate with regular businesses but not so much with non-profits. I was, and I was wrong.
“Our passion is our mission, and our mission is our passion. I was sure 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.”
Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s book The Profitable Answering Service.
With over three decades of industry experience, Peter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of TAS Trader, covering the telephone answering service industry.