Nonprofit organization MoveOn.org turned to the e-mail services firm Message Systems to increase its e-mail capacity and delivery speed as membership increased by 30 percent in the last year.
The Berkeley, CA-based political action group uses e-mail to communicate with its three million members on breaking issues. But it was having problems distributing information to all of its members in a timely fashion due to in-house system limitations. This prevented members from taking immediate action, especially when time was of the essence for responding to critical political issues. So, the group turned to the Messages Systems platform.
“If I’m sending an e-mail telling you to call your congressman immediately to stop an action, and you don’t get it for five hours, then the message didn’t work,” said Barry Abel, at Messages Systems, Columbia, MD.
MoveOn.org is a nationwide political grassroots organization that works to bring ordinary people back into politics. It builds electronic advocacy groups focused on issues such as environmental and energy, campaign finance and media consolidation. Once a group is assembled, MoveOn.org provides information and tools to help each participant contribute.
To keep pace with its escalating membership and time critical e-mail content, MoveOn.org employed the Message Systems platform, which Mr. Abel claims can send one million messages per hour. According to Mr. Abel, since adopting the Message Systems platform, MoveOn.org has increased its e-mail capability by 1,000 percent and decreased its delivery time by 15.5 hours.
The nonprofit sends e-mails for fundraising, political action, crisis management and to thank donors. During Hurricane Katrina, MoveOn.org used e-mail to help people in need find people who wanted to help.
“E-mail portals were set up for people who had homes to connect with people who were homeless,” Mr. Abel said.
