The ONE Campaign
Live, Automated, and Toll-free Patch-through calls
The Problem
Coming off of the wildly successful Live 8 concerts, The ONE Campaign wanted to test the commitment of 1.5 million concert goers by attempting to get them to engage in legislative action. ONE, an organization committed to eradicating poverty and AIDS in Africa, was supporting an important Foreign Operations bill being voted on by the Senate. ONE wanted this Santorum-Durbin amendment, which allocated $100 million to fight disease in Africa, passed. ONE only had e-mail addresses for these supporters and wanted to see how we could get these supporters to engage the Senate and voice their support for this important amendment.
The Stones' Phones Solution
In order to affect the vote, ONE wanted their new activists to contact their Senators' offices and encourage the Senator to support this bill. ONE sent an e-mail to supporters informing them of this important amendment. The e-mail included a toll free patch-through number, set up by Stones' Phones, which encouraged supporters to call the number. When called, the number offered callers a recorded message supporting the Santorum-Durbin amendment and asked if they wanted to speak with one of their Senators' offices to explain their support for the bill. The 800 number was highly interactive and automatically identified the calling party's number giving the caller the option of their two Senators.
The Result
The program proved highly successful. Over mulitple days and day parts the 1-800 number received thousands of calls. In the end over 22,000 people were patched into their Senators' offices to encourage support for this important amendment. We were able to successfully use supporters identifed from a concert to become legislative activists. The Santorum-Durbin amendment passed with overwhelming support and ONE was able to continue to build a strong network of new grassroots activists.