Case Study: International Fund for Animal Welfare achieves faster, coordinated marine mammal rescues with OnSolve’s Send Word Now

How the International Fund for Animal Welfare Uses Send Word Now to Help Rescue Stranded Marine Mammals on Cape Cod

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) runs marine mammal rescue operations on Cape Cod, where extreme tides produce frequent dolphin mass strandings. Coordinating more than 200 on-call volunteer responders across a 700-mile coastline was slow and unreliable with phone trees, so IFAW turned to OnSolve’s Send Word Now notification platform to improve speed, targeting, and accountability.

OnSolve’s Send Word Now provided multi-modal alerts (voice, text, email), Geo Alerting, Get Word Back responses, self-update links and an operator hotline, enabling IFAW to target nearby volunteers, confirm who can respond and automatically fill the exact number needed. The solution let IFAW rapidly mobilize and coordinate 200+ volunteers during a three-month mass-stranding event in 2012, reduced unnecessary outreach, and saved critical time in rescue operations by ensuring the right responders arrive quickly.

International Fund for Animal Welfare

Brian Sharp

Stranding Coordinator for IFAW