Hey you. Yes, you. Sitting at your work computer munching on your toasted bagel with cream cheese. And you there, scrolling on your phone on public transport. And you, scrolling on your laptop killing a bit of time before your staff meeting. I’m talking straight to you. All of you.
You are amazing. Really. Truly, amazing. You get up every day and do a job that most people would be scared out of their wits to do. You ask people for money and provide no tangible product in return. That’s hard work. And that work requires a broad-ranging and diverse skill set that many just do not have. The soft skills of messaging and etiquette and the hard skills of data and statistical analysis. You are also probably highly skilled at various aspect of technology too. It’s likely that to do your job you also have to have knowledge about finance, management, marketing and human resources. That’s a tall order. You are a force to be reckoned with. Your work enables students to get an education, hungry people to eat meals, animals to find homes and so many other wonderful life-affirming things. All of which wouldn’t happen without the work that you (and others like you) do. You are the superpower of the non-profit world, the engine that makes this sector move: the fundraiser. So, approach this week like the amazing being you are. At this point, you are probably sitting a little straighter, nodding your head in agreement at the realization of how awesome you are. Maybe you are claiming the amazing things your non-profit does in the world as your own accomplishments. Yes, they are yours. Own them. The more connected you are to mission, the happier you will be in your work and the more funds you will raise for your good cause. Now, ask yourself, how can I create this same feeling for each of my donors? What would make them feel amazing and personally responsible for the good things this organization does in the world? What would make them stand straighter and take ownership of the good your non-profit does? Do that and they will give more and they will feel amazing about giving, about your institution and about themselves. What follows is an excerpt from my upcoming e-book How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: The 7 Secrets to Fill the Seats. Subscribe today for a chance to win a copy of this guide to help phonathon managers get off the hamster wheel of caller turnover and begin raising serious money and loving their jobs.
Make your job "The Best Job On Campus" When a student on your campus tells other students that they work at the call center, what images are conjured in the minds of those other students? Does an image of a telemarketer pop up? Do they liken it to mind-numb drudgery like a drive-thru worker? Are they confused, not understanding exactly what they do at the call center? None of these images bode well for your future recruitment prospects. What image would you like there to be of your call center on campus? You have an opportunity to create it starting today. The brand I wanted to create at the University of South Carolina was simple. I wanted it to be seen as “The Best Job on Campus”. Nothing less in my mind was enough. To be considered anything less than that made my job ridiculously and unnecessarily difficult. I truly believed, having been a student caller myself, that this was the best opportunity on campus for student employment. What did it mean to be the best job on campus and practically speaking, how did I market that concept? Define for yourself what it is about your call center that makes it the best. Here’s some things to consider: Mission Pay Flexible Scheduling Skill Development Community Leadership Opportunities Resume Building Career Support Bonuses and Prizes Free Food (Sometimes) Communicating your brand (in words) The most important way your brand is communication is word of mouth within the student population. Make your call center as awesome as you say it is and you’ll garner the goodwill and support of your current callers as ambassadors. Don’t neglect this step. Simply listing the benefits is good but it should be as short as possible and not be a long list. Finding clever snappy ways to word the perks is essential. It will require your creativity. You have a ready-made focus group in your current student callers. Write 80-100 taglines and have them pick their 5 favorites. A shortcut to this is to name your group like it is a student organization. My call center was called Carolina Callers. The name is still in use today. It wasn’t the place that was important it was them, the callers. Being a Carolina Caller was an identity, joining akin to signing up with a student organization. When you name the group and student leaders join the group, you communicate everything you need to about your brand just by saying “Carolina Callers: The Best Job on Campus”. A good way to collect language to use is to ask your callers “What call center means to me?” or to finish the sentence, “I love being a caller because….”. When you have these quotes, you can use them in tandem with caller photographs to create advertisements that essentially testimonials for being the best place to work on campus. Communicating your brand (in images) Follow standard graphic design practices. Make sure you use consistent fonts (and not too many of them) to create your advertisements. Use classic images like simple and sleek black and white clip art or photographs of your current callers. In your images of callers, always have them wear tee-shirts of your institution in the official school colors of your institution. Don’t crowd your images. And make sure, whatever you go, that your advertisements stand out. Use fluorescent paper for bulletin board flyers. In photos, callers should have headsets on so it doesn’t look like any other job. Or maybe you show them eating pizza or cupcakes in a group to highlight that “perk”. Lastly, call center is a place where you can be a little bit silly. Find the popular meme of the moment on Facebook and create a similar one about call center. It will serve you well in social media promotions and it will show that the center isn’t too serious. One of the best things about being a fundraiser is that it largely an art and science that is handed down – taught from one person to another. It still isn’t quite institutionalized in higher education so it is a practical art taught by professional mentors.
I know this has been true for me and I’ve been lucky to have some wonderful mentors and colleagues that have given me so much knowledge. It’s also been a joy of mine to teach others and see those I have mentored go on to do amazing things in the world of fundraising. Today I thought I would share some of the lessons that I learned from my major mentors. Here are three of my favorite mentor takeaways On time is not on time. Early is on time. – Joe Marruchella Promptness never goes out of style. It is the one sure way to show respect for your colleagues’ time and contribution. Come early and be prepared. It’s also true for donors. Never be late to a meeting with a donor. Nothing you say after can make up for keeping them waiting. This advice is perhaps even more relevant for the technology infused world we live in. It is even more frustrating when folks are late to conference calls and Skype calls. Log in 5 minutes early to any conference call. Have your software loaded up and ready to go 5 minutes before a Skype call. Of course, sometimes you cannot help it. Things happen. Once you suspect you will be late, how you handle it says volumes about the kind of professional you are. If you are delayed while traveling, you should reach out the person you have an appointment with and inform them of the delay. Ask politely to reschedule. Don’t assume they can “squeeze you in” whenever you arrive. Your preparation on the front end will help in case of a delay because you should always have the cell phone numbers and email addresses of everyone you plan to meet with either saved in your phone or printed out on paper – or BOTH, preferably both. Correspondence (and the way it looks) is still very important. – Bob Pierce Make you correspondence top-notch. It’s still so very important. Mail and print pieces are tangible items you can hold in your hand or store in a memory box. These items have an emotional weight that makes video and electronic communication look ephemeral. Use a serif font that looks lovely and lay out your text in a pleasing way. Set up rules about graphic and correspondence standards and stick to them. If your handwriting is lovely, write your notes when possible. If not, type it and sign it. Always sign in blue ink. It signals immediately to the recipient that you actually signed it and didn’t just print your signature. Email, social media and the like are certainly important but print is forever in a way that e-communications aren’t. If someone hates your letter and sends it along to the president of your institution, that carries more weight than a forwarded email. You must become conversant with the new media while still retaining respect for and proficiency with the old media. Be courteous with technology (filenames, etc.) – Joe Marruchella People have a ton of files on their computers. Before you send a file, take a moment to consider the recipient(s) of that file and where and how they might store it. Take the time to name image files something meaningful. Add your name to the beginning of filenames whenever necessary to help the recipient organize. Add dates to the end of the files and add notations about versions when appropriate. I would recommend developing naming conventions for files that are routinely shared within your office. You don’t want to be thinking “Is that report called the monthly giving report or the donor report by month?” when you are rushing to a meeting. I might name a file that I have to send to my boss (who might have several direct reports) as follows: Cloud, Jessica June Monthly Numbers 07.08.2016 FYI: Naming your file with your name first (last name, first name) is extremely important when sending out resumes. The person screening doesn’t want to have to rename 100 files all called “Resume 1”. Be courteous and you’ll stand out from the moment that screener downloads your file. I might name a file that I am sending to a donor as follows: Last Donor Name, First Donor Name – SKSM Gift Acceptance Form 07.08.2016 version 2 Finally, make sure that any files you attach to emails are “reset” meaning that they are scrolled back to the beginning of a PDF or Word document and that you put the cursor in an Excel spreadsheet back to the A1 cell of the first worksheet within the spreadsheet. Again, this helps your recipient find their place in the file more quickly and is less disorienting for them. What lessons have you learned from your mentors? What do you try to impart to those who work and study with you? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising! :) ![]() This is the third in a five part series about ways to improve phonathon contact rates. Contact rate is one of the most important metrics in phonathon. To read the introduction to contact rates and first steps to take in improving them, click here. For more information about managing and acquiring cell phones numbers, click here. Remove known bad numbers from your calling pools A certain of the records loaded in last year’s phonathon were coded as invalid numbers. You should research them and only load those that you find a new number for this year. Don’t pay callers to re-code known bad numbers. This process is known as removing the “historic deletes” or "invalids". No numbers known identified as invalid should be loaded for calling this year unless a new number is found in the research process. Calling repeat invalid numbers is unproductive for callers but it is also is a budgetary drain on your program and lowers caller morale because they get very bored. The marking of bad numbers found through phonathon in your database (Banner, Raiser’s Edge, etc.) and then excluding them from new phonathon data loads should happen anytime new data is loaded, not just at the beginning of the fiscal year. Diversify your constituencies Is there a school/college that you don’t call for? Could you approach them? Do you call parents? What about friends? Removing these invalid records from the pool available to call will lower your record counts for this year, until you are able to undertake an adequate amount of research and initiatives to recover good phone numbers for your lost alumni. Therefore, I recommend that you diversify your constituent base by adding calling for new colleges, schools or units that you have not called for in the past. I encourage you to break through the campus politics in order to grow your phonathon. At the very least, approach these colleges, schools and units who are not currently part of phonathon about conducting a statistically significant test. This would be beneficial for all. It is a commonly held fallacy that you need callers from a particular program to call a particular group. (For instance, law school students calling law alumni.) What is most important is that you need well-trained and well-coached callers in order to produce great results. By doing a test, you are able to bring in some funds for the unit and you have a chance to prove the worth of phonathon with statistical results. It also gives phonathon the opportunity to clean-up the data for these new colleges by identifying and marking their invalid numbers while they collect new information (such as cell phone and employment) from the alumni they do reach. When you report back to them, don’t just focus on dollars and donors. See my post on the 5 pillars of annual giving. By adding in new groups you will offset the potentially damaging effect of lower record counts due to historic deletes. This will mean that instead of calling invalid numbers or running out of records to call by the end of the year, your callers will have new, fresh groups and new challenges to undertake. This will make for good call center morale while you rebuild your contact rate. If you found this article helpful, sign up for my mailing list to keep in touch. You will immediately receive a free e-book, "15 Best Call Center Games" and you'll be entered to win a copy of my upcoming e-book "How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: The 7 Secrets to Fill the Seats". Click the button below to sign up. I love to learn new tricks in MS Excel. Learning about how to use filters and specifically the "filter by color" function has helped me to stay organized in my work. In this video, I show you how I use Excel to get my visits for donor trips, including how to use filters and "filter by color".
If you found this video helpful, subscribe today to Real Deal Fundraising. You will immediately receive a free e-book, "15 Best Call Center Games" and you'll be entered to win a copy of my upcoming e-book "How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: The 7 Secrets to Fill the Seats". Click the button below to sign up. If you don’t know Adam Grant, let me brighten your Monday. He’s a powerhouse business writer and an amazing TED talk speaker. Today I want to walk you through three takeaways from his book, Give and Take.
Grant states that people can be divided into givers, takers and matchers based on whether they are motivated by giving, getting or some combination thereof (respectively). In one chapter he looks at the concept of burnout and he ends up (of all places) in a university call center. He assessed whether the callers were givers, takers or matchers. He assumed that the takers would not be good at the job but is surprised to see that the way in the job is marketed (highest paying job on campus) and the way the motivation is structured ("win", "be the best") is actually highly motivating for the takers. Grant wonders what could be done to improve the results of the giver callers. What he finds is remarkable: spending 5 minutes reading letters from scholarship recipients motivated the giver-callers to close the performance gap between themselves and the taker-callers in ONE WEEK! So, Grant brought in an actual scholarship recipient to chat with a random group of callers about the impact that the funds they were raising had made in their lives. All callers (regardless of motivational type) saw a drastic increase in performance (as measured in calls per hour, number of minutes on the phone and dollars, which quintupled versus the control group). Givers saw an even more dramatic increase in performance. Then Grant writes a line that takes this lesson far beyond call center: “The turnaround highlights a remarkable principle of giver burnout: it has less to do with the amount of giving and more with the amount of feedback about the impact of that giving.” (Page 165). Wow! Takeaway #1: Many, if not most, of our donors are givers. So, what Grant is saying is that DONOR burnout is within our control. Make it your goal this year to make your donors as aware of the impact of their gift as possible. If 5 minutes reading a note from a scholarship recipient can make a huge difference in the performance of a student caller, what could consistent, impact-oriented messaging around these issues do for your donor’s happiness and willingness to give again? Takeaway #2: Think about the ways in which we are marketing the student jobs in our call centers. Are you only recruiting and motivating for the takers/matchers? What are you doing to be mission and impact focused in your recruiting and training materials for callers? What are you doing for all of the students to reconnect them with the mission and impact during the normal shift? You should incorporate strategies like Grant suggests not only because you have giver-callers who need the motivation but remember ALL the callers saw an increase in performance when given explicit and emotional examples of impact. Takeaway #3: Here's one last thing to think about: What type are you? If you are a giver and you're feeling burnt out, what can you do to connect back to the mission? Maybe you need to take a walk on campus and go speak directly with students and faculty, the beneficiaries of all of your hard work. Nurture yourself to your type so that this important work can be completed. If you like Adam Grant, check out his TED Talks here. If you found this information helpful, please consider subscribing to Real Deal Fundraising by clicking the button below. You’ll immediately get a copy of my e-book, “15 Best Call Center Games”. All year I look forward to summertime because So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) comes on. I absolutely love this show. All the various styles of dance and the surprises of dancers who become standouts, especially outside of their main style. This year, they are showcasing kids, ages 8-13. It’s amazing.
One my favorite dancers ever is Gene Kelly. One of the many reasons he is so admirable is that he became proficient in several different areas: dancer, actor, singer, choreographer, director and more. I realize this is part of the reason I love SYTYCD. The emphasis on versatility and stretching your talents into new territory draws me in. In this there are important lessons for fundraisers. Fundraising is inherently multi-disciplinary, drawing on a panoply of skill sets. You can be a super-star at the soft skills: active listening, securing the meeting, chatting up donors, asking. But you also need to be at least proficient at the hard skills: data analysis, research, calendar planning, financial literacy (like endowments). In certain areas of development you also need be somewhat of a graphic designer, web designer, copy writer, event planner, and human resource professional. On the show SYTYCD, hip hop dancers with no formal training are sometimes thrown into jazz or contemporary routines. They have to do lifts and point their toes and move in a way that is a whole new vocabulary for their bodies. Dancers of many different styles must pull off Bollywood routines and ballerinas must master hip hop. The dancers that succeed on the show not only work very hard and practice incessantly to master the new style but they approach the new style with a spirit of fun and challenge. And most importantly, when it comes time to perform, they carry off the routine with confidence. And when you are in your own style, you have to SHINE! You maximize your impact when you are playing on your home turf. Throughout my career, I seem to have alternated between jobs that allowed me to do a “dive deep” into an area where I have a good deal of confidence and jobs where I had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at me. In those “stretch” jobs, I learned so much and developed that sense of versatility and confidence. That confidence allowed me to shine when I was in a role with a more narrow focus. You might be a people person but your boss gives you a grant to write. This is one more chance to expand your scope and skill set. You might be an introvert but you have to plan a huge event. Embrace this. When you are back in your “style” maximize your impact and wow everyone. Advancement Services, Information Services, the database folks: whatever you call them, the partnership between fundraisers and this team is crucial. Make or break. Critical.
Usually, this group includes prospect research, gift processing, and those that do the demographic updates. Sometimes it includes those that maintain your website and other tech resources. These professionals create the reports and files that drive the work of fundraisers. These professionals go out and get the information you need to succeed. If you trust them, you trust the data you see in the database. If you trust them, you know they will take care of your donor’s gifts just as you would. I’ve seen great partnerships between the development staff and advancement services. I’ve also seen departmental relationships which could best be characterized as Shakespearean (meaning you aren’t sure how many people might be dead before the meeting is over). Would you place a bet on which shop raised money more easily? Which group had a better time at work? It’s a strange thing. The more successful a fundraiser is (in any area of development) the more work it is for these staffers. You need them to be fully invested in your success, despite the fact that they will end up doing more work. Reach out to these folks. Start by making an effort to fully understand their policies and processes. Show an interest in how they want you to request things and why. Bring back useful information that enriches the database. You make the first move by being a truly valuable partner. Make them love working with and for you. Then be a friend. Acknowledge when you are making more work for them. Bring them cupcakes after you past milestones or significant deadlines. The effort you put into making this departmental relationship into a true partnership will be worth it. I promise. In-Depth: Next Steps to Improve Your Phonathon Contact Rate – Wireless ID and Wireless Append7/6/2016
This is the second in a series about ways to improve phonathon contact rates. Contact rate is one of the most important metrics in phonathon. To read the introduction to contact rates and first steps to take in improving them, click here.
The next steps to take (budget allowing) are to undertake wireless ID research and wireless append research. If you want to implement these strategies, you should be doing them now and coordinating the timing with your Basic Research and your Advancement Services department. Wireless ID research Wireless ID research should be added to your overall research program. This process looks at the numbers you do have on file and then tells you whether or not the number is a cell phone number. This research is very inexpensive and quick to undertake. You should do this step immediately after the results from your basic research (National Change of Address and phone append) have been integrated back into your database. Does your database differentiate between a cell home and a home phone or does your database code primary phones as “preferred”? If so, you are making a grave error that could be damaging for your phonathon long term. The number marked as “preferred” could be a home phone, cell phone or business phone. While this method has other advantages, it can be a dangerous practice where phonathon is concerned, especially with the rise of cell phones as the dominant form of phone communication. Consider a scenario where you have a cell phone number marked as preferred without knowing that the “preferred number” is a cell phone. You find a new land line through the research process. You then replace that preferred number (which is a cell phone) with the new land line. However, many newly acquired land lines are kept only for home security systems and not for taking calls. Now, your institution is providing phonathon with “preferred” data that is inferior for actually reaching prospects on the phone. You should know when you have a cell phone number and never replace a cell phone number with a land line. I would recommend undertaking wireless identification research this year and using it to re-code all known/found cell phone numbers as “cell phone” (not as “preferred”). This process may be tedious the first time you do it and may involve changing some of the processes by which data is pulled and transferred to your calling software but it is necessary for the long-term health of your phone fundraising program. Make sure you coordinate and partner with Advancement Services to get this done. Wireless append research When I began full-time work in phonathon in 2005, wireless append did not even exist. You could undertake advanced level research but only to find a new land-line. According to a study conducted by the CDC, 35.8% of American households are cell phone only households. In the South, households are more than 37% wireless only. The CDC also tracks “wireless mostly” households which primarily take calls on a cell phone. For households nationwide, when you combine wireless only and wireless-mostly households, over 53.4% of households use their cell phones for most or all calls. Given this strong demographic shift to cell phone usage, it is imperative that institutions undertake a strategic research plan to acquire cell phone numbers. However, few institutions can afford to send their entire database through wireless append research. I recommend being strategic with the groups that are sent off for wireless append research. The first group that should be sent are those known as “historic deletes” (also known as invalids or lost alumni) for whom you have no good phone number on file. This will build your record counts of callable alumni over time. Then you should work your way down the donor ladder, sending lybunts (last year but unfortunately not yet this year), followed by sybunts (“some year but” 3-5 year past donors) and then lapsed and future donors, as budget allows. The future donors (non-donors) can be prioritized by graduation year, sending your lowest contact rate decades first. On average, Ruffalo Noel Levitz clients using cell append raised $78,982 from 876 pledged donors that were unreachable before. We did a wireless append project when I worked at Southern Miss. We spent roughly $8,500 and made all of that back and more in only a few weeks of calling those records. The next year saw an increase of over 25,000 new records for calling. A big win all around! Budget allowing, you should do some strategic wireless append research every year. You can undertake this research anytime and then load the “found” records into a special calling pool. This way you can track the dollars raised from these records and easily assess the return on investment on the research. If you found this article helpful, sign up for my mailing list to keep in touch. You will immediately receive a free e-book, "15 Best Call Center Games" and you'll be entered to win a copy of my upcoming e-book "How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: The 7 Secrets to Fill the Seats". Click the button below to sign up. One my first supervisors asked me to prepare a file folder for him with the details of his upcoming trip. He was ridiculously specific in how he wanted it done. At the time, I thought he was crazy. But the next time I traveled for work, I tried it just to see what was so great about it (if anything).
He wasn’t crazy. I’ve now prepped for my travel this way for over 10 years. Increasingly, I don’t need my printed details as much. There’s any app for everything, including your boarding passes and hotel arrangements. However, out of my last three business trips, my iPhone was stolen once and my new iPhone became a brick on me another time. Really, twice in the last few months, I have been traveling and stranded without a phone. So, let’s say I have a renewed appreciation for having print-outs of your travel arrangements readily accessible. I would like to share how prep your travel details the way my boss taught me years ago. Any standard file folder will work but I tend to like to use red or bright yellow, so that I can see it in amid the chaos of my travel bag. On the tab, put the name of your trip and the dates. If you travel a lot, this will help you stay organized before you go. On the right hand side, you will print out the travel details for your flight. Staple it on the top two corners of the papers. (See photo above.) Then print out your rental car details, hotel details and any other relevant appointment information. Stack them in order with the transport documents on top, followed by accommodations as this is the order that you will need them. Staple them to the left hand side of the open file folder just as you did the flight arrangements on the right hand side. The beauty of this system is not only that you have all the details if your phone fails and you need to reference them (confirmation numbers, loyalty program details, addresses, phone numbers, etc.) but you can grab them quickly and easily. No papers are loose so they won’t fall out on the floor of the airport. And you can choose to peel off the papers you don’t need as you complete flights and check in to the hotel or to keep everything in one place and use these print outs for your expense reports. The folder also becomes a catch all place to store important documents as I’m traveling. I stow baggage claim info and boarding passes for later flights in the folder. If I’m driving, I replace the flight info with Google map directions. (Again, if you phone dies or is stolen, you’ll be glad you did this step.) This method takes 10 extra minutes but it does bring significant benefits while on the road and peace-of-mind when technology lets you down. Try it yourself and let me know if you value it as much as I do. |
Jessica Cloud, CFREI've been called the Tasmanian Devil of fundraising and I'm here to talk shop with you. Archives
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