On the Line...with Jason Fisher

A Few Thoughts On Budget Shortfalls in Scripting and Direct Mail

I’m currently working with several colleges and universities that are in the middle of fine tuning their spring message and preparing their final calling scripts and direct mail pieces.  As we all know, the economy is dominating the conversation right now in higher education fundraising (and all fundraising for that matter).  Most calendar year-end appeals that I have seen either focused on a holiday message or a message asking for help due to the economy.  I haven’t seen too many fiscal year-ending pieces yet, mainly because the climate is changing so fast that annual giving directors have been hesitant to etch any idea in stone.  But that will be changing in the coming weeks as spring will bring a new sense of urgency to finishing the fundraising year on a strong note.  Many schools are behind in their goals and will use the sour economy to help craft a message in their fiscal year-ending pieces.

Maximizing Your Phonathon Upgrade Potential in a Bad Economy

Even in difficult economic times, your phonathon callers can have success in upgrading pledges.  For most programs, the main goal of the phonathon is donor acquisition and retention.  Moving people up the giving ladder is important, but perhaps is not the primary focus of the annual giving director.  But consider this point for a minute.  If finding new donors and keeping the ones you have acquired proves more difficult than in prior years, how are you planning to make up the lost revenue from those missing donors?  One way is to greatly expand the number of records you are calling.  But if your program is already calling the maximum number of prospects, or your budget is limited in how much you can spend on caller salaries, then you’ll have to find another way to reach your goal.

 

Programs that do a nice job of upgrading pledges understand the importance of cultivation.  We’ve all heard the story about the major gift that started out as a $25 donor.  Well, it’s often true.  Most people do not give their first ever gift at $25,000.  They must first be identified, convinced, and cultivated, and phonathon plays an important role in that process.  But beyond the opportunities for major gifts, upgrading pledges is just smart fundraising.  It provides additional revenue and responsibly moves people up the giving ladder at a comfortable pace.

Why Poor Pledge Fulfillment May Be Worse Than You Think

During the writing of our book, Anthony Arrington and I sat down to discuss what we felt were the essential components of good pledge fulfillment in phonathon programs.  We had discussed this topic many times before on calls and in reports that we had written, but in this case our conversation turned more towards those issues that are often unseen when a program experiences poor fulfillment percentages.  So much attention is paid to the bottom-line numbers that phonathon managers and directors tend to overlook the bigger impact that happens when prospects do not send in their gifts.

In our consulting and managing experiences, we have seen many situations on campus where fulfillment is a major problem.  Unfortunately for the institutions dealing with the concern, we believe that poor pledge fulfillment is more than just a one-year issue.  There are subtle, hidden messages that are sent back and forth between the prospect and the institution when pledges are not sent back.  In reality, poor fulfillment is a multiple year challenge.  As we see it, there are two long-term concerns that occur as a result of poor pledge fulfillment.  Neither are particularly fun topics to think about, but its important to acknowledge these potential concerns and build in safeguards to prevent them from happening.

Higher Education Fundraising and the National Day of Service

Today is certainly a special day in many regards.  In addition to being MLK Day, and the day before Barack Obama’s historic inauguration, it also serves as the recognized National Day of Service.  And for that reason, today’s entry in the Phonathon Blogger will be focused on making a difference. 

 

Phonathon and annual giving programs in higher education are a true form of public service and incredibly important to the long-term viability of the institutions we serve.  At times, we all can feel like we may not make as much of a difference as we would like.  You may even ask yourself how worthy your efforts are in the grand scheme of things considering the amount of money needed at your organization, the size of the overall budgets we deal with, the latest difficulties in closing the funding gaps, and what your position is directly responsible for in terms of a fundraising goal.  But make no mistake, phonathon and annual giving officers are vital to success of development offices everywhere- and most importantly to the success of our young people today.

Using Appreciation and Creativity to Retain Calling Staff

Improving results in the phonathon room is made much more difficult when caller turnover rates are high.  When management is constantly recruiting, interviewing, and training new employees, there is less time for coaching, motivation, and statistical analysis.  Most importantly, the learning curve that every caller experiences is always present, and as a result productivity tends to suffer.  Any improvement in the caller retention percentage can do nothing but benefit the program.

 

Getting callers to stay is more challenging than just offering a higher wage or giving out incentives to make them happy.  It takes a combination of several factors to keep turnover low, not the least of which is thoughtful planning that incorporates both a message of appreciation to the caller and building a positive atmosphere where students want to come to work.  It is in that spirit that I learned of a simple tactic with a resourceful twist that was implemented by a familiar college to improve caller retention rates.

 

Innovation in Action- One University's Experience with Identifying and Capturing Cell Phones Using Phonathon

The wonderful thing about working with so many schools is that I occasionally see innovation in action- institutions that are willing to try new ideas and strategies to improve their fundraising and stewardship capabilities.  Sometimes the ideas work and sometimes they don’t, but pushing the envelope can only lead to a greater understanding of how productive the phonathon program can truly be.

 

I’ve been fortunate to have a long-standing relationship with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation.  Over the past 12 months I have been working with Diane Doudna, the Director of Annual Giving, to come up with strategies to improve their participation rates (young alumni in particular) as part of a comprehensive effort to maximize the potential of their program.  Since the phonathon is the dominant donor acquisition and retention tool in annual giving on most campuses, it made sense to use the phone program as the primary outreach mechanism to accomplish this goal.  But to improve recent graduate performance, we first needed to address the traditional problem most phonathons have with this constituency- good data.  Young alumni are not hooking up land lines when they graduate- they’re keeping their cell phone as their primary contact tool.  Here is a closer evaluation of the steps we took to address this problem.

Understanding Decreasing Participation Rates- The Philanthropic Priority List

If the average college or university annual giving program achieves 20-30% participation, does that mean that 70-80% of the people are not loyal to the institution?  Of course not.  But as fundraisers, we sometimes struggle to find answers to the tough questions surrounding low participation- especially in phonathon.  We wonder why our nondonors cannot consistently break double-digits, and why our lybunts simply don’t renew every year.  What caused those sybunts to suddenly stop giving?  If you’ve ever asked these questions of your own program, you’re not alone in your thinking.

 

The answers to these questions are a bit of a mystery for each institution, but I’ve developed a philosophy over the years that helps explain why higher education in general has taken steps backward in alumni pledge rates. I call it the Philanthropic Priority List.  It works like this.  Everyone has multiple interests in life.  As a 22 year-old student these interests may be fairly narrow, but they tend to grow with life’s experiences.  Receiving a graduate degree, getting married, starting a family, building a career, and expanding friendships all add to these interests as a person ages.  Before long, a person has a list of charitable groups that they consider giving to every year.  These include undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, fraternities and sororities, churches, children’s private school or public school fundraisers, national non-profits like United Way or the American Cancer Society, local community organizations, political campaigns, interest groups, and world social change organizations.  Higher education is in competition with all of them, and where your institution falls on their priority list will determine if you get a gift and how much that gift is worth.  Your caller’s job is to persuade the alum to move their alma mater a notch or two higher, thereby increasing the chances of gaining their support.

Why Phone Monitoring Equipment is Worth Every Penny

Telephone monitoring equipment should be considered a necessity, not a luxury.  Unfortunately, many phonathon programs still do not take advantage of this important technology for a variety of reasons, often revolving around the misperception that the price of the equipment is too high or that management can get by without it.  But while you can technically run a phonathon program without phone monitoring, I’m going to try to convince you why you shouldn’t.

 

Being able to listen to both sides of the conversation is invaluable for a phonathon manager.  Verbal clues that the prospect will give callers cannot be heard by the person coaching unless they have access to hear how and what the prospect is saying.  And while the caller may indeed be able to fill you in on some details after the call is over, they’ll never be able to re-create precisely what happened.  They may even leave out the negative details on purpose.  That leaves the supervisor or manager who is coaching to make assumptions or simply guess how the caller could have performed better.  It’s unfair to the caller not to give him or her all the assistance they need to be a great fundraiser, and it’s unfair to the manager who works hard to raise every donor and dollar possible.