Telzio Serves as Phone Partner for the Ronald McDonald House Telethon

Telzio Serves as Phone Partner for the Ronald McDonald House Telethon

On Friday, August 14, phones across eastern North Carolina started ringing at 7 a.m. and didn't really stop until 8 that night. It was the 10th annual Telethon benefiting the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Eastern North Carolina, presented by WNCT9, with a livestream on the WNCT9+ app that evening. Telzio came on as the event's phone partner this year, working alongside T-Mobile to help every donor calling in actually get through.

What the Telethon Is Really About

The Ronald McDonald House of Eastern North Carolina runs two houses in Greenville, both a short walk from ECU Health Medical Center and the James and Connie Maynard Children's Hospital. Families traveling to Greenville for a child's medical care can stay at either house at no cost, with a hot meal, a warm shower, and a bed close to the hospital instead of a long drive home. There's room for up to 31 families at once, and nobody gets turned away because they can't pay.

Ahead of this year's telethon, the tenth, WNCT9 spent months collecting stories from families who know the House best. One was the Wilhide family of Goldsboro. Their daughter Piper was diagnosed with stage three neuroblastoma as an infant, and the family stayed at the House through her surgeries and chemotherapy. Another story followed a Greenville mother who talked about losing her son, and how the House was what got her through it.

That support doesn't stop when the cameras turn off. A Greenville McDonald's location has employees who spend part of their week packing meals for House families. One of them talked about his own brother, who was born with spinal injuries and wasn't expected to live past six, but lived decades longer with help the House gave the family. Stories like that are probably why this telethon keeps growing every year. Last year's telethon, the 9th, raised $79,500 for the House.

Setting Up the Phones

Every one of those stories, and every donation that came from them, had to get through on a phone line to actually reach the House. That's a bigger lift than it sounds like. Calls spike the second a segment airs, a lot of volunteers need to be reachable at the same time, and a busy signal at the wrong moment means a donation that just doesn't happen. Ahead of the telethon, Telzio worked with the RMHC-ENC and WNCT9 teams to get the phone bank ready for the day.

None of that was ever meant to be the story. It was meant to stay out of the way so the real story, families like the Wilhides and people like that McDonald's employee, could be what viewers actually took in.

How It Was Set Up

On the technical side, the setup was fairly simple. RMHC-ENC used one main phone number for the telethon, with Telzio's call queue feature behind it to handle the volume. Instead of every call needing its own line, the queue held calls and sent them to the next available volunteer, so a busy stretch during a popular segment on air didn't turn into missed calls or people getting a busy signal.

Volunteers were set up as users in Telzio, which let them log in and take calls from whatever device worked best for them, a desk phone, a laptop through the browser, or the Telzio mobile app on their own phone. Since shifts changed throughout the thirteen-hour day, volunteers could log in and out of the queue as they came and went, and RMHC-ENC and WNCT9 could watch call activity from the dashboard to see how things were going and shift people around if one part of the day got busier than expected. It's a similar setup to what a lot of nonprofits use for hotlines and phone banks year-round, just condensed into one thirteen-hour day.

Grateful for the Chance to Help

Telzio gets to work with a lot of nonprofits, and the Ronald McDonald House of Eastern North Carolina is exactly the kind of organization that makes that work worth doing. Ten years of a community showing up for the same cause, one phone call at a time, is worth stopping to appreciate. Thank you to the House and to WNCT9 for putting the telethon together and for having us as part of it.

If you'd like to support the families staying at the Ronald McDonald House of Eastern North Carolina, you can donate directly through their website.

Running Something Similar for Your Nonprofit?

If your organization runs a hotline, a phone bank, or an event where the phones need to hold up under pressure, see how Telzio supports nonprofits and get in touch with our team.