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Tatango Customer: Fellowship of Christian Athletes

Welcome to another Tatango Customer Spotlight.  Today we interviewed Jake Vanada, the Twin Cities Area Director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes about his usage of mass text messaging. Lets jump right into the interview…

 

Client Name: Jake Vanada – Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Location: Richfield, MN
Industry: Athletics & Ministry
Why: “Email is almost completely pointless with today’s high school students.”

Ministry Mass Text Messaging

Jake, tell me more about this Fellowship of Christian Athletes organization.

Since 1954, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes has been challenging coaches and athletes on the professional, college, high school, junior high and youth levels to use the powerful medium of athletics to impact the world for Jesus Christ.

 

Wow, that’s pretty impressive. What do you do within the organization?

My official title is Twin Cities Area Director, but I also have a real passion for finding technologies that can help our organization better communicate with the student athletes. That’s how I stumbled upon mass text messaging with Tatango.

Athletic Ministry Mass Text Messaging

Before you started using mass text messaging through Tatango, what other methods were you using to reach these student athletes?

We really had tried almost everything to reach the student to let them know when our activities and meetings were taking place. We started out with posters on the school walls; those worked ok. Email was almost completely pointless with today’s high school students. They just don’t check it often enough. Facebook is great for sharing pictures and videos, which weren’t time sensitive, but students didn’t check their Facebook accounts until they got home, which meant they would have already missed the activity or meeting. Luckily, all the kids can’t stop texting, and when we mass text message them, they responded right away.

 

So the solution was to use mass text messaging?

Sending the students a mass text message was by far, hands down, the best way to reach the students. Tatango allows us to do that really well.

Ministry Mass Text Message

What is one of your favorite features about Tatango?

I like how the students can join a group using a “keyword” directly from their own mobile phone. It’s such a great way for the students to get their mobile phone number into our system.

 

What has been one of the best parts about making the switch to mass text messaging?

By far, it’s the time savings. Using mass text messaging has freed up a lot of our volunteers’ time. Some of the staff were spending over an hour each day trying to contact their students by manually texting each student from their own mobile phone. This wasn’t very efficient, as you can imagine. In using Tatango, it only takes a few minutes a day to send a mass text message to all the students.

Athletic Ministry Mass Text Message

Do you think Tatango would work for coaches as well to communicate to their student athletes?

Oh yes, for sure. If it works for us, it will work definitely for the coaches. I would encourage all coaches—whether they are in youth, high school or even college sports to start mass text messaging their athletes. With mass text messaging, you are guaranteed that everyone gets the message, simple as that.

 


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