Case study: How WIRES expanded its communication capabilities

WIRES has more than 5000 volunteers nationally and with its new communication platform, the organisation was able to extend its impact to help rescue more wildlife.

Kyla Shelley, chief operations officer at WIRES spoke to Digital Nation Australia about how the not-for-profit improved its communication platform.

“We have about 10 external organisations that we've got using the [Everbridge] system as well. That's been one of the amazing things of their partnership with WIRES as well as that they've helped us to extend our impact nationally to help wildlife,” Shelley said.

“We're helping a lot of other groups also by giving them access to the way our instance is set up. It has been tailored to supporting that wildlife rescue process and that has meant other groups as well as WIRES with our volunteers have all been able to do better and faster to rescue wildlife.”

Shelley said with the new communication platform, volunteers are able to see which jobs are outstanding.

“If [volunteers] are using the app, they can see what rescues are still outstanding at a given point in time, which is great because they might be in a meeting at work right now. But then they might finish work and think they could do something on the way home,” she said.

“It’s an easy way for them to be able to see what's still active that they might be able to respond to and accept.”

Shelley said when WIRES was looking for solutions, they wanted to transform communication with volunteers.

“When we were introduced to xMatters, which is part of the Everbridge suite, it was a great solution for us to implement at that time. We began using it really very late in 2014 and 2015.

“The way the system is set up for us means we can very quickly contact every available volunteer who was trained to rescue a particular species instantly across the region. We can do it across multiple devices,” she said.

What this means for the rescue team is that they can simultaneously send out an alert to every available person and then it will also escalate to different people who play overseeing roles, Shelley explained.  

“If volunteers weren't available at that point in time, other people would then get to see it and help resolve that rescue as quickly as possible. It has completely changed the way we operate and it's enabled us to rescue a lot more animals faster. It's just been such a significant part of our growth,” she ended.