In the middle of the residential Summit Neighborhood is a large hospital that wants to get larger. “Not if the neighbors can help it”, says Jon Howard who heads up the Summit Neighborhood Association anti-expansion campaign. As part of its struggle against the hospital, the Summit Neighborhood Association is using a myriad of tactics including petitions, lawn signs, letters and now email campaigns.

Using CitizenSpeak, neighbors were able to invest themselves in our cause with little effort. “While many households in our neighborhood might be against the hospital’s expansion, our cause is only one issue in their busy lives,” said Jon. “It’s easy for residents to feel helpless against powerful interests armed with highly paid PR firms and lawyers.”

Jon credits CitizenSpeak with providing a solution that helps educate neighbors and enables them to take action. “The service is successful because it accommodates our daily routines that already include email. With little effort, CitizenSpeak enables busy individuals to know what’s going on in their neighborhoods, and more importantly, to take action.”

Easy to use service means projects meet deadlines with less hassle. Volunteer based organizations regularly see their projects derailed by labor intensive activities. For example, letter writing campaigns require someone to write copy, merge letters, buy stamps… In each one of these steps, there is an opportunity for delay. Someone goes away, someone’s mother gets sick. “It can be weeks from the time we decide to launch a letter writing campaign to the time we complete it.”

“With CitizenSpeak, one person can put the whole email campaign together in a few minutes without getting out of their chair. They can be back at work in no time.”

Members want to hear from us to find out what we’re doing and how they can help. “As a direct marketer for non-profit organizations, I’m amazed by how often my clients think that people don’t want to be contacted for help or money. True, people don’t want to be asked out of the blue to buy a new phone plan. But when someone gives you their contact information and asks for information, they’re mad not glad when they don’t hear from you. If you’re not following through you’re actually doing harm. We took a lot of names and said we were going to do something. CitizenSpeak let us do exactly that.”

Participants don’t just send an email, they tell you what motivated them to do it. “The thing that I wasn’t anticipating were the comments,” said Jon. “They were really powerful. Organizations that launch traditional letter writing campaigns don’t get the personalized statements that each letter contains. With CitizenSpeak, we were able to find out what specifically were the hot buttons for residents. We learned that most people were angered by the hospital’s arrogance, their exclusion from planning as well as specific problems - the lights, the trash, the parking… Those are concerns that we need to know and do something about to truly represent the residents of this neighborhood.”

For more on the Summit Neighborhood Association, please visit: http://www.sna.providence.ri.us/