Coastal Cathedral Increases Their Volunteer Turnout By 100%

When Nathan Carter and his team decided to text-enable their 700-strong congregation, they couldn’t have anticipated the response they received.

Despite having pretty decent interaction with their social media pages, Nathan began to notice that the follow-through didn’t exactly match the amount of  “likes” they received. So he began to shop around for a more direct way to communicate with their congregation.

He had noticed that communications were getting missed among the sea of posts within his members’ feeds. In that, he was missing out on the opportunity to directly reach what he referred to as his “core group”.

“You can have 700 people at your church, but you’re going to have about 15-22% of that who make up your core group,” notes Nathan. “They’re your volunteers, they tune into every stream, read every post. But there’s no analytics on social media for me to find my core group, and that’s who I need to reach to get things done.”

Investing In Core Group Communications

In addition to holding weekly services, Coastal Cathedral also has its own daycare and participates in several ongoing philanthropic missions. As anyone involved in their own faith community knows, this doesn’t happen without a lot of support from the community.

Nathan needed a way to reach his most engaged members with all of Coastal’s volunteer needs. After testing out a few different communication methods, it was texting that proved the most effective way to reach his most engaged members.

"Nothing is as instant and responsive as the SimpleTexting platform. If I need volunteers, there’s no better way to instantly communicate that besides SimpleTexting."

Nathan Carter

Communications Director

While social media allows him to reach people connected to their ministry in some way, it’s texting that cuts through the noise and really produces valuable engagement.

As Nathan puts it: it’s simple, familiar, accessible, and affordable.

“What you guys offer at the rate you guys offer it, just beats the majority of everybody else in the market. Your price points are incredibly flexible for what kinds of service you’re getting.”

Putting Texting To The Test

While Nathan was on board with texting from the get-go, some of his colleagues weren’t as easily convinced. So, they decided to put their communication channels to the test.

Their daycare center was reopening after COVID stay-at-home orders were lifted, and they needed help over the weekend moving items to and from the center.

For a few days they advertised their need for volunteers on their Instagram page, and 25 folks showed up to move everything out and deep clean.

On Sunday, the day they needed to bring everything back inside, Nathan sent out one text message asking for volunteers. Two hours later, they had 50 folks show up to lend a hand.

Since then, the consensus across the ministry has become, “If we want to put something out there, we use social. If we want results, we use SimpleTexting.”

As members gradually return to church and social distancing restrictions lessen, we only anticipate Coastal Cathedral’s texting community to grow as well.

Do you know of a church that could benefit from a way to reach their core group? Tell them to sign up for a 14-day free trial with SimpleTexting to give it a go.