Big Brothers Big Sisters of Victoria and Area is dedicated to improving our community by providing children and youth with mentors. Although we fund these matches through various means, our greatest source of revenue comes from the collection of clothing and small household items. Many of you may have received a call in the past from one of our local telephone representatives asking for you to leave clothing outside your home for our drivers to pick up. By donating gently used clothing, you support us in striving to achieve our goal: that every child who needs a mentor, has a mentor.

While operating our Donation Centre has offered our agency some resilience during these tough economic times, we are constantly faced with the question of “how do we do more with less?” In an effort to reduce our administrative workload and decrease our impact on the environment, we recently elected to transition our call center into a digital operation. As a result, all of our calls are now done through a computer over the internet, and our records are tracked electronically.

It is important to know that none of our calling or administration has been outsourced. When you answer the phone, you are still speaking to a live caller from our local office here in Victoria, and never an automated message. It has always been the policy of our management team to ensure that we operate locally, and this continues to drive our decisions to this day.

As we have been transitioning to this program, we know that we may have upset some of our loyal supporters. We have received e-mails and phone calls regarding issues such as call clarity, and on occasion, instances where there is nobody else on the line. The system we have decided to use is not an automatic or predictive dialer. It will only start calling when a caller is logged in to the system and ready to speak. Many of these issues have been the result of minor complications such as an un-plugged headset, a wrong button pressed, or the incorrect configuration of our system. As we move forward, we see more and more positive feedback each day.

We apologize for any inconvenience we have caused anyone. It would be impossible to do the work we do without your ongoing support and patience as we continue to learn new skills. Nothing hurts us more than the loss of a donor, even if it’s only the occasional bag of clothes. If there is anything we can do to reaffirm your belief in what we do, or if you would simply like more information about our transition and the positive affects it has for our programs, please contact Devin Chappell, Business Development Manager at 250-475-1117 ext. 50 or bigbrothersbigsisters.ca

Sincerely,