Case Study: Human Utility achieves fast, scalable access to water for underserved communities with Twilio

Coding The Way To A Human Right Human Utility Gives Underserved Communities Access To Water

Human Utility (formerly the Detroit Water Project) is a nonprofit that crowdfunds to help low-income residents pay water bills. They faced a scalability and access challenge: thousands of callers—many without reliable internet or smartphones—needed immediate updates on emergency water assistance, and ad-hoc solutions (a founder’s personal number, Google Voice, outsourced call centers) couldn’t handle volume or provide context.

Human Utility implemented a Twilio-based system with a single phone number that authenticates callers by their phone number and uses a programmable IVR to deliver application status and benefits instantly. The change removed long waits and manual authentication, centralized communications, made support scalable, and has enabled expansion of the model to other cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Human Utility

Tiffani Bell

Human Utility