School on Wheels and Cathedral High School

Client: School on Wheels and Cathedral High School
Industry: Not-for-Profit
Goal: Thank donors, collect pledges and build relationships.
Results: School on Wheels
Sent 567 calls.
Positive tracking results.

Cathedral High School
Sent 1990 calls.
Encouraging feedback from school community.

Marion County non-profits benefit from Vontoo’s Gift of Voice initiative
Area non-profits, including School on Wheels and Cathedral High School, get vocal using free voice marketing service

As the recession hits businesses and organizations hard, many of these struggle to maintain revenues or achieve their desired bottom lines. However, arguably the hardest hit sector of all is that of non-profit organizations. While people largely still feel inclined to pledge donations to charities and non-profits whose missions they support, their economic situations often prevent them from following through on their pledges. For the non-profit organizations, this results in a year-end struggle to collect from donors.

Understanding this predicament for non-profits during a recession, and knowing how important it is to maintain positive relationships with a donor base, Vontoo began an initiative in December of 2008 to help these organizations contact donors who had pledged throughout the year. Through its first annual Gift of Voice program, Vontoo donated its services at no cost to all Marion County not-for-profit organizations. The Gift of Voice included up to 1,000 free voice-marketing minutes and all the support each organization needed to make its campaign a success. This equated to 1,000 free calls each non-profit could send to contact its donor base to thank donors and/or secure pledges and contributions for 2008 before the end of the year.

Two non-profit organizations which took advantage of Vontoo’s Gift of Voice initiative were School on Wheels and Cathedral High School. School on Wheels is a local non-profit that provides free tutoring services and educational advocacy to homeless children in Indianapolis. Donations and volunteers are vital to the success of the program. Through the Gift of Voice program, School on Wheels used Vontoo’s service to thank its 2008 donors for their contributions and to remind those who had unfulfilled pledges that there was still time to donate before the year’s end.

Janet Hiatt, the Vice President of Development for School on Wheels, was grateful for the opportunity to take advantage of Vontoo’s service free of charge. “The voice marketing service offered was a neat way to reach out to and thank our donors, who are so important to our organization. The tracking reports provided were also helpful in that they enabled us to monitor how many people had received the information we wanted to communicate.”

Cathedral High School was another organization that took advantage of Vontoo’s Gift of Voice program during the 2008 holiday season. This Indianapolis-based Catholic high school used the service to send thank-you messages at the end of the year to its donors, recorded by Father William Munshower, the school’s Chaplain. The simple message of thanks and appreciation was received very well by donors.