Free or nearly so audio conferencing

We have contracts for audio conferencing at good rates for the US and Canada. Some area offices also have contracts for their areas. I'm interested in any free or nearly free options you may have tried out. Although we get pretty good rates, this is still expensive in areas where incomes and budgets are quite low. I'd like to be able to offer them alternatives, but I don't know what they are. thanks for your help.
Shanna

Great information - we get calls on this occasionally in our department. Thanks!

Thank you for posting the information on the clerk website. The suggestions for how to conduct meetings, and the options for different meeting scenarios are very helpful documents. We just installed a Polycom system in our Stake High Council room and have started to use it for meetings so that some members do not have to travel 2 hours each way to participate in the meetings.

Great information.

I have participated in a conference call held at http://www.freeconferencecall.com/ It seem to work fine. I'd be more enthusiastic if I could understand their business model.

A google on "free conference call" seems to turn up a number of hits.

There are a couple of audio conferencing tools that are cheap to use (if not nearly free for non-profit use) which are used by gamers to chat with each other while they play in online multi-player games that do not have audio-conferencing built in.

These are:

Teamspeak and Ventrillo.

You can password protect your conferencing sites or rooms within the site. However, since the servers are located elsewhere, and it's very possible the audio is not encrypted (I know the clients send passwords in the clear), it may not be suitable for teleconferencing purposes where confidential matters are being discussed.

Justin