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.

I​f 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.

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”. 

If you don’t staff up quickly, you lose valuable momentum.

My career has been in higher education philanthropy and I can attest, if you ramp up slowly and lose those early weeks in September, you’ll struggle all year to build momentum. There’s nothing quite like the feeling during that hectic back-to-school timeframe and if you miss it, you’ll lose the warm-fuzzies from donors waiting for their annual fund call. You’ll also miss out on the most competent students, most of whom will have secured a part-time job by October.

Low volume of work is the most common reason a phonathon fails.

​It’s not typically a bad script or lack of caller motivation that causes phonathons to stagnate or fail. It’s not even bad data alone. Usually, it is simply that not enough calls were placed. If you loaded 50,000 records and only complete 10,000 calls (a 20% completion rate), chances are that is why you aren’t raising any money. Sometimes, this low completion rate is due to improper budget resources for the size of your program, but more than likely it is simply a staffing issue. There weren’t enough callers in the seats and therefore not enough dialing took place.

The more effort you put into generating applications, the more selective you can be in hiring.

If you need to hire 10 new callers, and you have 14 applications on file, you’re doing pretty good, right? Wrong. You need at least 2.5 times the number of needed callers in applications. In this example you need 25 applications at minimum. This target is often a much higher number than you think is acceptable. Keep striving to recruit more applications and interview more. You can be much more selective with hiring decisions, which will save you time later dealing with bad employees and prevent turnover.

If you don’t use those funds budgeted for caller salaries, you’ll surely lose them. 

As I mentioned in #4, if you have a problem year with staffing your results will suffer. However, the problem becomes systemic when you sit down with the higher-ups to discuss next year’s budget. You had a budget for 1,250 calling hours but you only used 825. “Surely, you can get by with only 900 this year, right?” Now, even if you use all 900 hours, your phonathon will not be working to its full potential. By not staffing properly, you may hinder your phone program for years to come.

Enter to win my upcoming e-book about phonathon staffing

If you subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising, you will 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 today.

Call Center is hard work. It was where I started my career in fundraising, at the tender age of 18. I think many young people enter the philanthropy industry through the phonathon and leave feeling that this career path isn't for them. 

I'm committed to giving these young professionals the support and training they need to survive and thrive in call center, so that they can ultimately move on to other areas of development and contribute in big ways to the non-profit world. 

To that end, I'm offering some training materials. For anyone who subscribes to Real Deal Fundraising over the next month, you get two gifts from me. 

1) You will get immediate access to the e-book "15 Best Call Center Games" for FREE 
2) You'll be entered to win a free copy of my upcoming e-book "How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast: the 7 Secrets to Fill the Seats"

I hope you'll subscribe today. If you aren't a phonathon manager, please share this information with the phonathon managers and other development professionals you mentor.

Thanks! 
​Jessica

A solid strategic plan is not an easy thing to write. Ideally, it should have a balance of big picture thinking and sufficient detail so that it can be implemented. A strategic plan cannot be pie-in-the-sky but it also cannot be a user’s manual full of which button to push.

I would advise that strategic planning begin with 3 steps:

1. Undertake a benchmarking study with peer institutions. This can be as formal or informal as you have time for. Design questions that address these issues:
   1. What are the elements of their fundraising program? What are their goals?
   2. How much do they raise with their budget?
   3. Are there program elements that many peer institutions have that you do not? Why or why not?
2. Assess the culture of philanthropy at your institution. Consider these questions:
   1. Do the closest stakeholders understand the need for giving (employees, board members, etc.)? Do they actually give?
   2. Are there elements of fun around the enterprise of fundraising?
   3. Do you have an eager pool of volunteers to assist you in your endeavors?
   4. How’s staff morale?
3. Clearly articulate what your goals are for the upcoming year. Be concise and specific.
   1. Dollars or donors? Both? Alumni participation?
   2. Special campaigns? Buildings? Endowments? Operating expenses?
   3. Building or improving systems? Donor/alumni relations?

If your staff can take these three steps you are well on your way to a solid strategic plan. From here, you will need to take into account what you can afford to do next year, your budget. Your budget will drive what vehicles you can use to fundraise and how much you can do with each of those methods. Do you have major gift officers? How much can they travel? What’s a reasonable expectation of visits?

Do you have staff and budget to promote planned giving opportunities? What can you afford to do in terms of direct mail, phonathon, donor relations, etc.? Don’t forget about crucial areas like stewardship and fulfillment (pledge follow up). Also, pay special attention to data integrity and enrichment. You cannot afford to ignore those important areas.

Now, you have to combine your various vehicles for communication with the content: the case for support. What will you be focusing on this year? What are the needs of your institution? Scholarships? Program support? Operating expenses? What’s the impact that the donor will have in the world if they make a gift this year? Begin to weave these messages into thoughts about how to segment your data this year.

The final part of your strategic part is to have a calendar. You know enough now to lay out the steps. Don’t go into too much detail but have a month-by-month list of what major action steps need to happen to accomplish your goals. Review this calendar regularly at staff meetings.

It is inevitable that you won’t get to all your great ideas in one year. I’ve found it helpful to add a section at the end of my plan called “And Beyond” where I can stash my great ideas for future years. It keeps me inspired and helps me not to forget. Encourage other staff to join you in adding to that list throughout the year.

Most importantly, the strategic plan cannot be a lifeless document. If you aren’t referencing it at least once a month (preferably more), it isn't working for you. Start over. Make it a living document that guides you to your goals.

In order to have a productive phonathon program, it is necessary to begin by answering the question: “Why is phonathon an important vehicle for fundraising?” Answering this question will provide clearly articulated goals that will help guide and drive fundraising philosophy.  
 
Phonathon is an important vehicle for annual fundraising because it uniquely provides: 

1. Lead Generation: To feed the major gift pipeline, generating leads and cultivating donors year to year;
2. Dollars and Donors: To generate dollars for philanthropic needs of your institution and provide the personal touch that goes beyond other vehicles that retains donors from year to year;
3. Acquisition: To acquire new donors and expand the donor base, increasing participation in the life of your institution;
4. Data Enrichment: To regularly update demographic information both through research and direct from the prospects over the phone; and
5. Public Relations: To foster good feelings among your alumni and educate them regularly about philanthropy.

I submit that these five pillars should drive the strategy of any phonathon. However, underlying all of this must be a focus on efficiency and budgetary constraint. Phonathon should be treated as business endeavor. Therefore, it must be profitable. This means utilizing effective and proven strategies to grow fundraising results while still cutting costs.

The five pillars listed above provide a framework for decision-making about all annual giving vehicles and thinking about how your phonathon accomplishing each of these goals will help phonathon managers and annual giving directors to lobby for the phone program, advocating for its many strategic uses throughout the year.

When you are talking with decision makers around campus, make sure you don't just focus on the dollars that you phonathon raises. Make sure you show how many new major gifts that year began as annual fund gifts. Make sure you note how many addresses you updated and emails you acquired. Make you tell how many new donors and alumni you got to make their first gift. And make sure you cite how many conversations happened (whether or not they resulted in a gift). It is almost always true that phonathon talks directly to more constituents of a university than any other single entity on campus. Make you also mention how many student jobs your call center provides. Give a holistic picture of all that a phonathon program adds to the life of your institution.

For many in the fundraising world, this week marks the end of the fiscal year and the beginning of another.

No matter how rough or chaotic this fiscal year may have been for you and your team, the good news about annual giving is that you get a chance to start over every July 1st (or whatever date your new year begins).

Not every area of development has his benefit of a clean slate each year. Building campaigns must get done no matter the date on the calendar and if you come in the middle you can't start over, you have to start where you are and figure it out.

So, take this chance to plan out your new year. Every mailing, every thing you did this year whether it was successful or not has provided you with valuable data in order to move forward in knowledge.

Like New Year's Day, make some resolutions for this new year. Resolve to have a plan. Resolve to produce quality work that raises serious dollars for your organization. Resolve to be proactive and not reactive. Resolve to make this year better than the last one.

Your phonathon contact rate is a metric that measures your data integrity. It answers the question: How often does a completed call result in a solicitation of the correct individual?

Contact rate is defined as the percentage of your completed calls that are actual contacts. The formula is number of contacts divided by number of completes. As previously stated, all contacts (pledges, refusals, etc.) are completes but there are also other non-contact completes including deceased, wrong numbers, do not calls, disconnected, etc. 

If your contact rate is 36%, this means that out of 100 completed calls, you are only asking 36 people for a gift. The other 64 calls are marked as wrong numbers, do not calls, etc. It is difficult to raise money in this data environment. A strong contact rate would be in the 60-70% range. The more times that you talk to the correct person, the more chances you have to raise money.

When contact rate improves, it becomes easier for the callers to raise money because they are making more solicitations per hour of work. When contact rate improves (even when call technique and caller performance does not improve), raising money becomes magically easier.

So, if you have a contact rate problem, what are some inexpensive ways that you can begin to improve this metric?

My first recommendation is always, begin with basic research.

Basic level research is a two-step process:​

1. National Change of Address (NCOA) research through the post office and,
   
2. A general phone append process.
   

Essentially, this process looks for people who have recently moved and then searches for whether there is a phone number at the new address. These two services are very inexpensive to undertake but are the foundation of a strong research program for phonathon fundraising.

You should check with your advancement services staff to see if NCOA is being done regularly. Oftentimes this is standard procedure for advancement services to run an NCOA but a regular phone append process is less common. If your shop doesn’t already do this, begin lobbying for this to take place. I would recommend NCOA be done quarterly and a phone append annually or once per semester.

Another thing to keep in mind as you inquire about this with advancement service staff is timing. Ideally, you would like NCOA and a phone append run in the summer as close as possible to the time that you begin you phone program for the new fiscal year. (Just make sure the results are incorporated into the database before the calling data is pulled and loaded.)

Your effort will be rewarded. Any time spent on data integrity and research is like giving your callers a magical head-start on your fundraising goals.