Shout out today to our friends at Fidelity International in Kingswood, especially Mark Robbins and Sal Agowun.
Their generosity has helped us solve a problem in our response to COVID-19.
As lockdown arrived we quickly re-engineered our service so that staff and volunteers could continue to give advice but from their homes. This involved using their own mobile phones to call clients.
The team brilliantly achieved this almost overnight, but there was a snag.
Advisers needed to speak to our most vulnerable clients to ask about their well-being and whether they needed help. We found many of our calls were not being answered and realised the clients were often just not picking up. The explanation was that calls from personal phones quite properly showed up ‘Number Withheld’.
When Fidelity heard this, they offered to donate 16 iPhones complete with call and text package for 12 months. Now our team can text clients before calling, say who they are and give a visible rather than a withheld number.
CARBS Chief Executive Andrea Dunhill said
“The iPhones have made a huge difference to the client-answer-rate and also given our volunteers more confidence that they will be able to help.
“We’re immensely grateful to Fidelity for stepping in so quickly and making such an appropriate donation. Their generosity will allow us to sort out the problems and improve the lives of hundreds of local people.”
NOTES 1) We also want to thank Voluntary Action Reigate & Banstead (VARB) for putting us in touch with Fidelity. Their role in building partnerships benefits many organisations and many thousands of people across the community. 2) Through its Corporate Citizenship Programme, Fidelity International seeks to support a number of charitable causes to improve the lives of others, support the environment in which we operate and to generate employee engagement and pride in our activities.