Customer Story
Youth Opportunities saves hundreds of hours with SMS student communication
Overview
Challenge: Youth Opportunities needed a more efficient and effective way for trainers to communicate with students, without relying on time-consuming calls or texts sent from personal phones.
Solution: Sinch Engage, through Act! integration, enabled trainers to send and track SMS directly from their CRM, making it easier to message individuals, groups and program cohorts at scale.
Results: More effective student communication, continued support beyond the classroom and time savings of hundreds of hours for trainers.
“SMS4Act! allows trainers to meet communication needs of our students and it makes the process easy and cost-effective. The addition of SMS has led to time savings of hundreds of hours.“
For Youth Opportunities, communication is part of the support itself. Staying connected with students before, during and after a program can make a real difference to how engaged they feel and how much value they take from the experience.
Youth Opportunities is a nonprofit focused on helping young people build confidence, resilience and leadership skills through school-based programs. As its work expanded, the organisation needed a better way for trainers to communicate with students at scale without relying on time-consuming calls or texts sent from personal phones.
That led the team to Sinch Engage (formerly MessageMedia) through its integration with Act!, the CRM already used to manage student information and program activity. By bringing SMS into that system, trainers could communicate more efficiently with individuals, groups and full program cohorts while keeping everything connected in one place.
More timely communication, less admin
With Sinch Engage, Youth Opportunities could use SMS for both practical logistics and ongoing encouragement. Trainers were able to send reminders about upcoming sessions, share updates, prompt participation and stay in touch with students after workshops had ended.
That mattered because the support model extended beyond the classroom. SMS gave trainers a simple way to keep reinforcing key messages and maintain a connection with students in a format young people were already comfortable using. Instead of asking students to check email or wait for a phone call, Youth Opportunities could reach them more directly and with far less friction.
At the same time, the change saved a significant amount of staff time. According to Training and Program Administrator Nina Pullen, adding SMS led to time savings of hundreds of hours. For a nonprofit team balancing program delivery with limited resources, that kind of efficiency creates more room to focus on students rather than admin.
