Synagogue Calling Service: How It Works for Tickets, Dues and Events

What is a synagogue calling service?

A synagogue calling service phones your members for you about the things that have a date on them: High Holiday tickets and seats, membership dues, and events like a Sukkot dinner or a Pesach seder. It is not a recording played at people. A member can answer, ask a question, say they already bought their seats, or tell you they've moved, and get a real answer.

It works as one thread: a call, then a voicemail in your director's own voice if nobody picks up, then a text with your own ticket or registration link. Members reply on whichever one suits them, your staff can step into the same conversation, and the office gets one plain list each morning.

What do synagogues use a calling service for?

• High Holiday tickets and seat reservations: seats often depend on dues and a hard deadline, like "At least 1/2 of member dues must be paid by September 15, to receive High Holiday tickets" (Pleasantville Community Synagogue). Guest tickets are real money too: "$565 for one year" for non-members at Beth Tfiloh.
• Membership renewals and dues: "$1,420 dues each" per adult at Har Zion Temple. The call follows up on the statement your office already sends.
• Event invitations: Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim and Pesach seder reservations, each with its own date and its own link.
• Keeping the member list accurate: who has moved, which numbers are wrong, who asked not to be called. ShulCloud's own "10 Commandments of Annual Billing" shows how much of this is done by hand today.

How does a synagogue calling campaign work, step by step?

1. You share the member list and the event: what it is, the date, the price if there is one, and the link members use to buy or register.
2. You approve the script, word for word. Nothing goes out that you haven't read.
3. Members get a call. If they answer, it's an ordinary conversation about the event.
4. No answer means a voicemail in your director's own recorded voice.
5. Then a text with your link, so members can buy tickets or register in a minute.
6. Replies come back on whichever leg the member chose, and your office can answer from the synagogue's own number.
7. Each morning your office gets one plain list: coming, maybe, bought tickets, wants a call back, moved, wrong number, can't afford it this year, remove me.

What happened in one synagogue's High Holiday calling campaign?

These are real numbers from one congregation's campaign, across roughly 1,900 members:

• A person answered on 26% of calls. Plan on about a quarter for live conversations.
• About half of the calls went to voicemail instead, so roughly three in four members heard from the synagogue in some form.
• 966 voicemails were in the director's own voice. On the biggest part of the campaign there was no synthetic voice at all.
• 155 members called back to carry on the conversation, and several said thank you.

Why did the Sukkot invitation get most of its replies by text?

Because the people who didn't pick up the phone still read the text. On the Sukkot invitation that followed the High Holiday campaign:

• 115+ text replies came in on the first day, most of them from members who hadn't answered the call.
• The call still mattered: older members engaged well on the live calls, so a text-only invitation would have missed them.
• So it isn't calls versus texts. It's one thread (call, voicemail, text) where each member answers on the channel they actually use.

Calling service vs. voice broadcast vs. text blast: what's the difference?

Synagogues already use two of these. The difference is whether anyone can answer back.

When should a synagogue call members about the next holidays?

Dates below are Diaspora dates, verified against Hebcal. Each holiday begins at sundown on the first date.

• Chanukah, 4 to 12 December 2026: call about Chanukah events in late November.
• Purim, 22 to 23 March 2027: invitations in early March.
• Pesach, 21 to 29 April 2027: seder reservations and tickets from late March to mid-April.
• Dues and seats for 5788: mid-August to 1 October 2027, the most valuable window of the year.
• Rosh Hashana 5788, 1 to 3 October 2027, and Yom Kippur, 10 to 11 October 2027: about three weeks later than this year, because 5787 is a Hebrew leap year. A schedule copied from this year's civil dates would call three weeks early.
• No calls after candle-lighting on a festival eve. Observance starts the evening before the date most people quote.

What do members hear on the call?

• Who is calling, first: "This is [your synagogue's name] calling about the Pesach seder." Members should know in one sentence who is calling and why.
• The date and the easy next step: "Can I text you the link to reserve seats?"
• Your own word for your community: shul, temple or synagogue. "Shul" skews Orthodox and "temple" Reform and Conservative, and members hear the difference.
• Never a false identity: the call never claims to be a member or a volunteer. Whether it says it's an automated assistant is your decision, written into the script with you.
• Never money language that sounds like a bill: no "past due" or "final notice." Tickets and dues are presented as part of the holiday, not as a debt.

Does a calling service take payment for tickets?

No, and that's deliberate. Members buy tickets, reserve seats and renew through your own link, which the call offers to text them.

• Money never passes through the calling service. Your own system stays the record of who paid.
• Your ticketing and seating stay exactly as they are, whether that's ShulCloud, ShulSuite, Rakefet or your own website.
• The morning list shows who said they'd buy, so your office can check it against who actually did before the next round of calls.

What happens when a member says they can't afford tickets or dues?

The call stops asking. Synagogue dues policies already route this to a person: "If you are unable to pay the required amount, even over the course of the year, please call [the Executive Director] or [the Rabbi] to discuss alternative arrangements" (Ansche Chesed).

• Dues asks stop for that member for the rest of the campaign.
• Event invitations keep coming. They are still part of the community.
• A private conversation with your director is offered by name, and it lands on the morning list so someone follows up.

For what's permitted when members fall behind on dues, see Synagogue Dues Collection: What's Actually Permitted, and What Isn't.

How much does a synagogue calling service cost?

• Member calling starts on the $60/month plan, which includes 220 minutes of calling. A $150/month plan includes 360 minutes. For a big month like the High Holidays most congregations add credits, then drop back.
• Compare cost per result, not cost per call. "A platform advertising '$0.05 per call' may actually cost more than one advertising '$0.03 per minute' depending entirely on how long your calls are and how their billing rounds" (RoboTalker). A conversation runs minutes; a broadcast runs seconds.
• Count what one result is worth: a single household that renews instead of drifting away brings in $1,400 to $2,140 or more, and a family that reserves seder seats instead of forgetting is a table filled.

Do you need members' consent before calling?

Plan on it. This is a summary of public regulatory material, not legal advice; talk to TCPA counsel before your first campaign.

• AI voice counts as "artificial" under the TCPA, per the FCC's February 2024 ruling (FCC 24-17).
• The exemption for tax-exempt organisations is narrow: up to three calls in any 30 days to landlines, and it may not cover calls that sell event tickets at all. Mobile numbers, which most member lists are, need consent.
• The fix is simple: add a consent line to the renewal form and High Holiday seat reservation form you already send each year.
• Register texting well before the holidays: carriers have blocked unregistered business texting outright since 1 December 2024, and registration takes time.

More detail is in Synagogue Membership Renewal Reminders: How to Follow Up When the Email Is Ignored.

What should a synagogue look for in a calling service?

• Two-way conversation, not a message read aloud.
• Voicemail in your own director's voice, not a stranger's.
• "Can't afford it" routed to a named person, never pressed.
• Campaign dates checked against the Hebrew calendar: Diaspora dates, sundown cut-offs, and next year's dates, which move.
• Your own ticket and registration links, with no payments passing through anyone else.
• One plain list each morning, not a dashboard your office has to decode.
• Opt-outs honoured the same day, and a clear plan for consent.

See how the calls, voicemails and texts run for a congregation: visit the synagogues and congregations page.