The Phonathon Planner: A Manager's Best Friend

For some managers, planning a phonathon program can be a bit like herding cats.  Lots of work, but at the end of the process all you have is a notepad full of good ideas and a cloudy understanding of exactly what to expect for the upcoming year.  I wrote a book two years ago called The Phonathon Manager's Planning Handbook (published by CASE) to help those manager's who were looking for answers to the most common question I am asked on every consulting visit:  How can I hit the goal given to me by our Director or Vice President?

Enter the Phonathon Planner...a comprehensive spreadsheet I created that looks at the available calling calendar, segmentation setup, forecasts results, helps schedules calling, and even has a few executive summary reports to help show the numbers in a graphical/chart format.  It allows the manager to see the entire year's calling plan in one Excel document, which helps them visualize the key metrics they will need to have in place to run a quality phonathon program.

Please understand that I believe phonathon planning is a comprehensive process.  One spreadsheet will not solve all your problems, nor will it completely organize your entire calling year.  Nothing but a thorough review and time spent analyzing your results will do that.  However, I built this spreadsheet several years ago to help manager's with the most under-utilized tool of phonathon fundraising: forecasting results.  If more managers understood in August what their program would likely produce, they would make the necessary changes early rather than wait until the end...only to realize they had run out of time and money heading down the wrong path.

Here are a few examples of the various components of the Planner.