New Join the Call Pilot Program
The Direct Support Network and Berks Gas Truth have teamed up to make it possible for more grassroots members of our movement in Pennsylvania to participate in conference calls. Free conference call services aren’t really free to those who have landlines or airtime minute limits on their cell phones. Our pilot Join the Call program will give you as hosts of calls the ability to offer AT&T Pre-Paid minutes to people interested in participating.
During the pilot phase of our program, we can offer minutes to up to four callers, so feel free to offer the service in your meeting announcements, but make sure people understand that there are a limited number of calling cards available.
Here’s how it works:
1) Ask people to contact you if they’d like to use the free minutes. We can only offer the service to Pennsylvanians during the pilot.
2) Send the person’s name and the phone number they’ll be using, as well as the meeting date and time, to karen.feridun@gmail.com. We’ll send you the dial-up information and pin to share with the person.
3) The caller will have to dial an 800 number and pin before entering the conference call number and pin.
4) At the end of the call, most services send you an email with details of the call. Please forward that email to karen.feridun@gmail.com. We’ll match the number on the report with the number the caller provided so we can track how many minutes were used. That’ll help us know when it’s time to re-charge the card so the next caller doesn’t run out of minutes mid-call. If your service doesn’t provide a report, please let Karen know how long the call lasted and we’ll assume the caller was on for the duration.
That’s all there is to it!
Calling cards avoid long distance charges, but don’t spare callers airtime minutes. We’re exploring options for those callers who don’t have landlines and have limited cell plans.
By the way, if you get a frantic fifth caller who would like to use the minutes, let us know and we’ll do our best to add a card. Otherwise, we’d really like to keep it to four cards during the pilot.
Contact Karen Feridun at 610-678-7726 or karen.feridun@gmail.com if you have any questions.