Maryland’s Prince George’s County Young Democrats has a very important job. As an organization devoted to increasing political and social activism and the molding of future leaders, outreach and communication are everything.

It was during a Board of Education election that PGCYD realized it needed a solution. “We had a challenge engaging our entire list of volunteers directly and CallFire made it easier to contact them,” says Larry Stafford, President of PGCYD.

Since finding CallFire two years ago, PGCYD has launched more than 50 campaigns. Using a combination of solutions, the organization has CallFire’s SMS mass texting solution, Voice Broadcast and Cloud Call Center as part of its permanent repertoire.

“Callfire helped our organization amplify our volunteer leader resources in order to mobilize our volunteer base,” Stafford says. “We were able to get messages out more effectively including action alerts and reminders about important dates.”

The incentive to make a change was certainly obvious. Prior to finding CallFire in 2012, PGCYD used a combination of spreadsheets and SMS text messages via volunteers’ phones. Both were archaic and inefficient ways of reaching the masses.

Once making the leap to CallFire, Stafford says, “We doubled our contacts with volunteers and increased turnout to our meetings and volunteer events by 30%.” A major increase, indeed, and with little financial cost.

Being a grassroots, non-profit organization, affordability is a major concern. “The Cloud Call Center is a very inexpensive power dialer,” says Stafford. At just pennies per minute, CallFire’s CCC offers reports and statistics, a multi-line auto-dialer, MachineSkip and SmartDrop features for answering machines and can record all calls for quality control. Additionally, CallFire’s robocall and SMS text messaging solutions are only pennies per message with no sign-up fee.

CallFire’s ease of use allowed PGCYD to maintain its focus on political engagement and education, rather than extensive training on how to use outbound calling technology. Stafford’s description of the training process exemplified CallFire's ease of use when he said, “we would train volunteers as they would use the system and each one would teach another.”

As PGCYD continues its mission to promote its principles, provide hands-on training, and work on behalf of campaigns to help candidates get elected, Larry Stafford is glad CallFire will be there as the conduit to connect, engage and build his organization.

“I will continue to use the services, and I'm looking forward to the new ones.”

For more information on Prince George’s County Young Democrats, visit their website.

 

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