If you haven’t heard, Stanford University ruffled some feathers last week by announcing that is doing away with its phonathon. Here's the announcement from Stanford. Donor Relations Guru and Annual Giving Network wrote about it.

Here’s my take. Stanford is not the first to get rid of their phonathon and they won’t be the last. Does that mean that phonathon is dead? No way!

One friend of mine said “So It Begins” on Facebook about this because with such a high profile university ditching their phonathon, annual giving specialists all over the country will have to go into a new cycle of justifying their programs to administrators who think that their universities are also Stanford.

The truth is that Stanford could afford to stop fundraising full stop and they wouldn’t lose any market share for years. Eventually revenues might drop, but it would take a while. The loss of new fundraising revenue wouldn’t seriously impact their rankings or ability to recruit students for decades probably.

Stanford has two very powerful things that your university probably doesn’t have that make it possible for them to say to donors: “You meet us on our terms. We don’t feel like calling you anymore.” Or as they put it in their paperwork. “Give online. It’s the modern way to give!”

• Brand recognition

They are #5 in the nation. They are in the company of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and The University of Chicago. They completed a $6 Billion (with a B) campaign in 2012, which means they raised all that money during the economic downturn. If we looked honestly at the brands of our institutions, most of us are regional or national institutions at best. Stanford is a global brand. The simply don't need phonathon to communicate and shore up their brand.

• Endowment

Stanford’s endowment is $22.2 Billion. At a 4% spending allocation per year, that would provide $888 Million annually. The annual operating budget for my alma mater (The University of Southern Mississippi) is approximately $278 Million. And Southern Miss is lucky enough to use unrestricted giving as a value-add and not require those funds to meet that operating budget. Many colleges and universities NEED that unrestricted income and they need to continue to educate their constituents about their needs. Stanford could fund THREE mid-size universities every year with just 4% of their endowment revenue (without touching their corpus).

Donor Relations Guru makes the point that we should be multichannel and of course we should. Giving donors options and honoring their choices should be part of your plan. But if you aren’t Stanford and you don’t have a long game plan to replace the things that phonathon brings you (up-to-date data, donors, positive public relations, dollars, and donor education) proceed with caution. Don’t get rid of any medium that you can afford that gives your donors another way to give. I work for an institution that stopped communicating with donors via phone a while back and now we have to rebuild and repair those relationships. 

Phone calls have significant advantages that haven’t changed:

• It’s personal (much more than a mailing or a Facebook post)
• Dialog not monologue (Phonathon is not passive. It’s active. It’s asking.)
• Cost effective and scale-able (Compared to major donor visits)

Imagine if we just gave up trying to visit major donors and just decided to tell them all to give online. I don’t think we would clutch our pearls. We would laugh and wish that institution the best in their experiment. (I guarantee that political candidates aren't even considering giving up their "Get Out the Vote" phonathons!) Personal interaction works best. We know this because fundraising is about relationships. But it is also about asking. Phonathon allows us to do both and reach a large amount of people at the same time. No other medium does this.

If your phonathon isn’t working, it probably isn’t because the medium is dying. It’s more likely that the problem originates from poor caller training/management, you have poor contact rates or ironically, you aren’t calling enough to make your fixed costs worthwhile. There are solutions to all of these issues. 

Over the last few weeks, I've been posting about a wide variety of best practices to improve contact rates in phonathon. This post will serve to consolidate this information and recap the recommendations. 

It is not possible to raise money from someone that you can't get in touch with, so contact rate is crucial to a healthy phonathon. When your contact rate improves, you will raise more money even if call quality doens't improve at all. It is not optional. You must have a plan to get your data clean and valid and keep it that way. 

First Steps to Improve Phonathon Contact Rates: This post outlines the importance of contact rates and details the basic research processes that every phonathon should be doing prior to loading data for the year. 

Next Steps to Improve Your Phonathon Contact Rate (Wireless ID and Wireless Append): This post lays out the trends with respect to households transitioning to wireless only. Your database must manage phone types properly to accommodate this shift. There are also new data research tools that you need to make use of to acquire cell phone numbers.

Continuing to Improve Phonathon Contact Rates (Most Best Practices): In this installment, I recommend that you manage your data so that you do not load known invalid phone numbers for calling again. Once you remove those invalids, you'll need to find more groups to call and I show you how to lobby to call new colleges, schools or units. 

Improving Contact Rates in Phonathon with Where-Are-You-Now Emails: Besides making good use of data research services, you should also go to your constituents and ask them to update their information. In this post, I give an overview of sending next day "where-are-you" emails and "where-are-you" email blasts. 

​Young Alumni, Contact Rates and the History of Cell Phones: This post shows why young alumni are a strong group for contact rate and gives a comprehensive argument for why you should not remove young alumni from phonathon.

I hope you find these tips helpful. If you implement these strategies, your contact rate will improve. Improved contact rate in your phonathon will mean more money for your institution. Please comment below and let me know your results.

​This is the final installment of my series on improving phonathon contact rates.
 
With average student loan debt loads reaching astronomical levels, many institutions have questioned whether they should give their new graduates a break and exclude them from traditional solicitation methods like mail and phone. (Click here, if you’re interested in learning more about student loan issues.)
 
This is a dangerous consideration for the immediate profitability and long-term viability of phonathon programs. The reason why lies in the history of cell phones. Here’s a quick history lesson and some other reasons why I don’t think you should stop soliciting your young alumni through mail or phone (regardless of student loan status).
 
As I’ve discussed in this series, contact rates are a key statistic that governs the productivity of phonathon programs. Two macro-forces are at work which make young alumni some of the best pools for contact rate these days.
 
Wireless number portability
 
In 2003, it became mandated that users could keep their cell phone number when they transferred wireless vendors. Before that, cell phones numbers were much less stable. Today’s student will likely keep their cell phone number well into adulthood if not forever.
 
The Virginia Tech Effect
 
Since the shootings at Virginia Tech (2007), universities have been implementing systems to collect student cell phone data so that mass text alerts could be sent out on safety issues. The long-term implication of this process is that the numbers (at many institutions) migrate over to the alumni database upon graduation, which is great news for phonathon programs.
 
ACTION ITEM: Check with Advancement Services to make sure that when they undertake their “grad loads” the cell phones on record are coming over as well and are being coded properly.
 
Size of young alumni pools
 
Aside from your institution being able to contact these alumni more easily, these are also probably some of your largest groups. Most institutions have grown leaps and bounds over the last 30-40 years. It’s likely that your organization graduates many more alumni each year now than the institution did 20-50 years ago. If you hopes to keep pace with peer institutions in terms of alumni participation, calling these large, well-connected groups is essential.
 
ACTION ITEM: Do a quick experiment, find out how many alumni have graduated in the last 10 years and then see what just those alumni represented to your phonathon in terms of contacts, dollars and donors. The significance of the number will likely surprise you. Although the average gift is often lower than other groups, participation is usually higher and volume is on your side. Totals add up fast when you have such large groups.
 
Case Building and Setting Expectations
 
Even if a prospect tells you no this year, an important process of philanthropic education occurs. The student caller has still presented the needs of the university and planted a seed which may grow into future giving. The benefit of this cannot be overstated. Solicitation is important even when it results in a refusal.
 
If, for instance, those with student loan debt cannot give this year, having a phone call begins a process of case-building which may resonate in the future when they are able to give.
 
ACTION ITEM: I recommend capturing refusal reasons so they can be tracked over time. If possible, I recommend adding a custom refusal reason for student loan debt and utilize this over the next 3 years to track trends with respect to this refusal reason as an analytical tool. However, restricting solicitation is not the best method for dealing with this refusal. Building a better case over time would be a better way to handle it.
 
Long-term lead generation
 
A report on Cultivating Lifelong Donors (2010) from Blackbaud states:
 
“Research shows that donors make $1,000 gifts to organizations most often when they have already been giving to the organization for about seven years. Long-term research with successful nonprofits also shows that those very same donors are approximately 900% more likely to make a major gift in their lifetime than individuals without that progressive history.”
 
For those of us in higher education, this means that we must acquire our new alumni very soon after graduation. Otherwise, they will develop a habit of giving to another non-profit organization and any major gifts they might make later in life are less likely to be given to our institutions.
 
I hope you found this blog post insightful and helpful. If you did, please subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising. 

This is the fourth 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 other posts in this series, click here.

Where-Are-You-Now (WAYN) Next-day emails

Beyond properly employing all of the data research tools available, you can also improve your data integrity by systematically asking your alumni to update their information. One of the best practices for this is implementing a “Where Are You Now?” next day email to all prospects marked as wrong number, reassigned number, disconnected, or whereabouts unknown (for whom you have an email address on file). This email would basically explain that the institution was unable to reach them and direct them to a website where they could update their demographic information.

I marketed the update website as a “Reconnect” website and promoted it throughout the year not just in these emails but also on direct mail pieces and at the bottom of other emails. These next-day auto-responder emails to newly coded invalid numbers should be an on-going part of your program which supplements the data collection your phonathon callers do on the phone and your data research program.

Where-Are-You-Now (WAYN) Email blasts to lost alums

I recommend sending a bulk “Where Are You Now?” email blast to all prospects not loaded due to status as a “historic delete”. (A historic delete is a constituent that you did not load for phonathon calling because you know all their numbers were coded as invalid in previous years. See post about that here.)

The process for a WAYN blast is very similar to the WAYN next day emails. This should be done sometime in the mid-fall semester so that results can be incorporated into the database in the spring. Load a segment in the spring semester called “Fall Updates” which consists historic deletes for whom a new phone number was found during the fall semester. This makes sure that those who update don’t go an entire year without a solicitation and gives you a few more records to call in the spring.

​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.

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.

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.

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.