California Community Colleges Partners with Waterfall Mobile to Offer the AlertU Platform
Partnership will enable nation’s largest higher education system to enhance its emergency communications strategy
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The Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC) announced today that it has awarded a statewide emergency alert notification contract to Waterfall Mobile, Inc. The contract establishes Waterfall Mobile’s AlertU as an approved technology through the Foundation for the California Community Colleges, which is the official non-profit foundation for the California Community College (CCC) system office. Through this partnership, individual colleges may directly implement valuable emergency communication services, eliminating the lengthy technology evaluation and RFP processes. With 72 districts, 110 colleges and over 2.6 million students, the CCCs make up the largest system of higher education in the United States.
“A significant priority for all California Community Colleges is ensuring a safe learning environment for our students,” said Dr. Paul Lanning, President of the Foundation for California Community Colleges. “Presenting the state’s 110 community colleges with the opportunity to implement AlertU, Waterfall Mobile provides an easy and effective way for the colleges to communicate with students, faculty and staff in emergency situations, something that is of critical importance on each and every California community college campus.”
AlertU provides participating California Community Colleges the ability to send critical text message alerts and emergency updates to the mobile devices of students, faculty and staff in real-time. CCC administrators can create detailed emergency text messages, send alerts to targeted audiences or broadcast school-wide emergency communications. AlertU has advanced reporting and analytics providing detailed real-time tracking and monitoring. These features, combined with a patent-pending two-way messaging system, enable colleges to obtain and respond to critical tactical information from first responders and students. AlertU is already deployed across 35 CCC campuses, comprising more than 500,000 students, faculty and staff.
“Representing the largest higher education system in the country, the Foundation for California Community Colleges underscores the system’s commitment to leadership in new technology adoption by partnering with Waterfall Mobile to use AlertU to enhance campus safety and emergency communication,” said Matthew Sechrest, CEO of Waterfall Mobile. “We are proud the FCCC has selected the AlertU enterprise-class platform and look forward to contributing to the safety of more than 2.6 million California community college students, faculty members and their families.”
AlertU is an easy-to-use, web-based, emergency text alert notification platform architected by Waterfall Mobile for enterprises, municipalities, colleges and university communities. Built with integrated security, scalability and fault tolerance, AlertU offers a robust platform that requires no technical integration and is easy to deploy and administer. There are no fees to subscribers for enrolling in the service, however standard text message rates apply.
About the Foundation for California Community Colleges
The Foundation for California Community Colleges is the official foundation to the California Community Colleges’ Board of Governors, Chancellor and System Office. The Foundation’s mission is to benefit, support and enhance the missions of the California Community College system, the largest higher education system in the nation. Incorporated in 1998, the Foundation works with Community Colleges and partner organizations to manage donations, grants, programs, and services that drive excellence in education while saving millions of dollars for colleges each year. The Foundation is a 501(c) (3) tax-exempt non-profit corporation and receives no direct state or public support. For more information, visit http://www.foundationccc.org.
About the California Community College System
The California Community College System is the largest higher educational system in the nation comprised of 72 districts and 110 colleges with more than 2.6 million students per year. Community colleges supply workforce training and basic skills education, prepare students for transfer to four-year institutions and offer opportunities for personal enrichment and lifelong learning. The System Office provides leadership, advocacy and support under the direction of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges. For more information about the community colleges system, please visit http://www.cccco.edu.
About Waterfall Mobile
Waterfall Mobile, an innovative enterprise mobile technology company, empowers marketers and emergency administrators to easily manage mobile communications, distribute multimedia content and analyze real-time results. The company’s patent-pending technology platform has been deployed by hundreds of enterprises nationwide to manage mobile initiatives. Waterfall Mobile has set the new standard for direct-to-consumer mobile with the first robust enterprise, cost-efficient, on-demand solution of its kind. The Waterfall Mobile platform powers two leading products, Msgme for mobile marketing and AlertU for emergency communications.
Waterfall Mobile was founded in 2005. Backed by Vista Equity Partners, a global technology investment fund with over $2 billion under management, the company has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.
For more information on Waterfall Mobile, AlertU or Msgme, please visit http://www.waterfallmobile.com, http://www.alertu.com or http://www.msgme.com.