Every few months, another university quietly kills its phonathon. And just like that, inboxes everywhere light up:

• Do we even need calling anymore?
• Isn’t this outdated?
• Should we just move everything online?

​Let’s set the record straight.

Phonathons are not dead. And many of the arguments used to declare their demise are based on myths – not real data, not field experience, and definitely not what’s actually happening on the ground at most institutions.
So let’s bust some of the biggest myths I hear over and over again:

Reality: Pick-up rates (contact rates) are absolutely impacted by things like caller ID, time of day, area code, and list segmentation. But even in the post-pandemic world, institutions are still having real, quality conversations with alumni, parents, and friends. When done right, phone outreach still delivers contact, conversation, and conversion.

In fact, one partner institution recently doubled their call completion rate within a single year, simply by improving their strategy – things like making more attempts per record, using smart list management, and building trust through clearer caller ID.

The problem isn’t that people don’t pick up. The problem is we’ve stopped giving them a good reason to.

Reality: This one usually comes from someone who hasn’t worked a call shift or analyzed the pipeline lately.
If you’re serious about long-term fundraising success, you need phone outreach. Here’s why:

• Data Integrity: The call center is often the only channel regularly updating email addresses, employment info, and demographic data straight from the source.
• Lead Generation: Trained callers can surface major and planned gift prospects who would never flag on your radar otherwise.
• Pipeline Health: If you’re not engaging younger donors now, good luck finding them when they turn 50 and have capacity.
• Scalability: Personal donor contact at scale is rare. The phone still offers that sweet spot between high-touch and high-volume.

​One institution I advised recently saw a huge bump in average gift size – up over 50% – and their calling center is now on track to exceed their full fiscal year results any day now. You can get great ROI from calling… if you treat it like the professional fundraising channel it is.

Reality: It’s supposed to break even – or come close. Phonathon isn’t just about the immediate dollars in the door. It’s about the long game: donor reactivation, new donor acquisition, pipeline building, and massive volumes of updated data. That work fuels years of future fundraising success.

If your phonathon is consistently losing money, the issue usually isn’t the channel – it’s the execution. Maybe your manager is under-supported. Maybe you’ve got outdated or clunky software that makes it impossible to track results or process credit cards smoothly. Maybe you aren’t calling enough to make your fixed costs worthwhile.
​
But let’s be clear: the blame doesn’t lie with the callers – or with the channel itself.

Reality: Running a call center is one of the hardest jobs in advancement. It demands a unique skill set: donor communication, hiring and training, shift logistics, data reporting, budget management, and tech troubleshooting – just to name a few.

And yet, too often this role is underpaid, undervalued, and handed off to someone with no real support or path for growth.
​
Here’s the truth: If you want your phonathon to succeed, you need a strategic leader managing it. When that happens, everything gets better – culture, results, retention, and ROI.

​Reality: I support multichannel fundraising 100%. Donors need options. But cutting your call center with no plan to replace what it actually does isn’t innovation – it’s just short-sighted.

If you eliminate phone outreach, here’s what you’re walking away from:

• High-quality data updates
• Scalable relationship-building
• Lead generation for your major and planned gift teams
• A training ground for your future advancement professionals

​Ask yourself: What’s the plan to make up for all of that?

If your phonathon isn’t performing, it’s not because the channel is dead. It’s probably due to low volume of work, poor strategy, clunky systems, undertrained callers, or a lack of clear goals. All of those are fixable.

That’s what I help institutions do every day – reset, retool, and rebuild programs that actually work.

If you’re ready to stop chasing trends and start making smart decisions about your donor outreach, let’s talk. Whether you need a strategic audit, caller training, or a full-scale turnaround, I’ve got your back.

Bottom line: Phonathon isn’t broken. The way it’s managed might be.

And with the right approach, calling still works – and it works beautifully.

Cheers!

PS - I hope you’ll continue the conversation by subscribing to Real Deal Fundraising. When you subscribe, you’ll get my e-newsletter, which includes the best articles on fundraising, productivity, and cool stuff every week. The whole thing is curated awesomeness as well as freebies like webinars, instructional videos, and whatever else I can put together to be helpful to you!

PPS – If you need to freshen up your phonathon, be sure to check out my book Successful Fundraising Calls: A Phonathon Scripting Workshop available through Academic Impressions and my e-book How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast available to download instantly here in the Real Deal Fundraising Store.

If you liked this… 

• In Depth: Is Phonathon Really Dead?
• In Depth: The Five Pillars of Annual Giving
• In Depth: Rethinking How we Train Phonathon Callers
• 10 Traits All Former Phonathon Callers Share
• Phonathon During a Pandemic: Case Study from Western Carolina University

When my boss at The University of Southern Mississippi Foundation asked me to develop my goal for next year’s annual fund, I leaned into my expertise with spreadsheets and data. Piece by piece, I built a realistic projection for what we could raise through direct mail, email marketing, and our phonathon. Confident in the numbers, I presented them to him, and he was skeptical because the figure was three times more than the previous decade of annual results.

He suggested revising the estimate to a modest 10% increase, but I firmly stood by my projections, stating they were my low-end projections. He challenged me by saying, “If you hit these numbers, I’ll let you put a pie in my face.” We formalized the bet with a signed contract displayed in the office, which became a motivator for the team.

As the year unfolded, the energy around this goal grew. Even as we processed triple the usual number of gifts, everyone rallied around the challenge. My projections were so accurate that our phonathon came within $100 of my estimates, proving the strategy worked.
​
At a faculty and staff event marking the year’s end, we celebrated with the promised pie-in-the-face moment. My boss, albeit wearing protective gear, took the pie as I reveled in knowing that meticulous planning and confidence in my expertise led to such a monumental achievement.

As we enter a new year, the promise of fresh opportunities is balanced by the practical need to set realistic projections. For nonprofit professionals, this is a pivotal step in crafting a fundraising strategy that not only meets but exceeds organizational goals. Even if you are on a July - June fiscal year, now is the time to planning and projecting because you will likely need to lobby for budget resources in February or March for the upcoming new fiscal/academic year.

But let’s start with some clarity: a goal is a desired end state – what you hope to achieve. A projection, however, is an educated calculation based on data and trends – a tool to guide your way.

While these terms are related, their distinctions are critical. In healthy organizations, projections should drive goal setting. Yet, many of us have faced the challenge of working under arbitrary or unrealistic goals set without a solid foundation in data.
​
So, how do you ensure your projections are both reliable and actionable? Let’s dive into how to create, use, and leverage them to empower your program and set yourself up for success.

Whether your organization has given you a set goal or you have the freedom to build it, projections are indispensable. Even if the target feels unattainable, projections are worth your time because they:

1. Pinpoint the Shortfall
   By analyzing past performance and calculating realistic returns, projections can reveal where your program may fall short. This allows you to identify gaps, explain challenges to leadership, and show with data why certain outcomes are unlikely.
2. Identify Opportunities
   Projections force you to look at each segment of your program, which might reveal untapped opportunities. Is there a new group to solicit? A fresh strategy to implement? These insights can help you stretch toward your goal, even if it initially feels out of reach.
   
3. Tell a Story to Advocate for Resources
   When your projections highlight the potential for growth with additional resources, they become a lobbying tool. Imagine presenting leadership with clear evidence: “If we invest X dollars in this program, we project an increase of Y dollars in revenue.” This positions you as a forward-thinking fundraiser who makes decisions based on data, not guesses.

You see, this incredible story is one of many uncovered by their Chatty Cat Phonathon callers during their recent “check-in” calls. I wanted to know how they took their phonathon remote, continuing to provide student employment during this crisis while also doing important work for the university.
​​​​
Here are my questions and Jamie’s answers:

"Within the Western Carolina University Division of Advancement, we’re using our best callers to conduct ‘check-in’ calls with our alumni during this quarantine time.  They are sharing the student experience and listening to the alumni experience during these short, scripted calls."​

"The callers are finding that the alumni are pleasantly surprised by the call, and many are eager to chat and share ideas, stories, and experiences. The callers flag records of alumni who are doing unique and/or front line COVID work and those are shared with me for story leads.  

I work with our Marketing and Communications colleagues on bringing the strongest of these story leads to them on a weekly basis.  Completed alumni story profiles are used on our alumni website (alumni.wcu.edu), our social media channels, and our alumni e-newsletter.  

Most of the stories that our Chatty Cat callers hear are about our alumni who are teachers, nurses, public administrators, hospital administrators, researchers, and manufacturers (particularly in areas for parts for ventilators and PPE, personal protective equipment), and we’ve had some who are specialized in unique areas like funeral home owners and leaders in cruise line sanitation.  

The Chatty Cats have also spoken to several alumni who serve on our Board of Trustees, and those Trustees have provided very complimentary notes on their chats with these students.  Overall these calls strengthen our Catamount community and allow for relationship building around a common struggle for us all.  For those alumni who have said ‘how can we help’ the student callers reference one of our student emergency funds and guide the alumni to give.wcu.edu/relief for gifts."

What software are we currently using for the call center/remote calling?

• "Guided Fundraising by Blackbaud, which is what our “Chatty Cats” (student callers) traditional use in the on-campus call center.  Our Director of Annual Giving, Jonathan Brooks, has also trained some of the other development staff on Guided Fundraising for other cultivation and stewardship purposes."

Any additional training for the remote callers besides our regular training?  

• ""We set up a Microsoft Teams site for our remote callers to use as base-camp, and the remote calling is limited to our most well-trained callers. Mr. Brooks had two ‘on-boarding’ sessions before calling began. These were conducted via Zoom. The training sessions covered a refresher on the platform interface and any updates and modifications that had been made since they were last on the phone, which had been a few weeks by then because of spring break, extended spring break, and North Carolina stay home orders. The training sessions also covered new scripts and conversation guides for these simple ‘check-in’ calls, new coding, and overall expectations regarding their remote work. We extended the remote work offer to callers who were meeting all performance metrics and did not have any policy/procedure violations on their record."

How is the supervision going? Have we had to add additional supervision tools/tactics? How often do we “meet” with them as a group, individuals, etc.? ​

• ""Supervising is going well, and other than leveraging Zoom, there has been no new technology adopted to manage the callers. They formally meet as a team once per week, and our Director of Annual Giving holds formal one-on-one sessions as needed. He is on call for ad-hoc meetings at the students request 24/7.  The callers have made 3,800 calls so far, and 1,010 Chatty Cat email follow up messages have been read by alumni as well.  503 alumni have shared updates and stories with our callers."
  

​​Will the callers do any solicitation calls when you switch over to relief fundraising? 

• "Our student worker contracts end the 2nd week of May, so we will utilize them for #GivingTuesdayNow student emergency fund work, but then we’ll run out of time."

"Yes, our development officers have each used this same ‘check-in’ call model to call through their portfolios, and most have followed these up with emails for next steps.  Our front-line fundraisers have noted the great ability to learn more about their donors and prospects with these simple calls, and have been encouraged by the donor’s willingness to really connect over the phone.  Most have been happy to have someone to talk to.  ​

​Our Director of Donor Relations is mailing handwritten notes to hundreds of donors who give unrestricted gifts as an extra touch-point during this time as well.  Our Alumni Engagement Office has partnered with Development Staff to create Alumni Zoom Socials, which we launched with our Triangle Alumni Club (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill area) last week.  We have 16 additional Zoom social hours scheduled for the next 3 weeks to connect with our alumni."

As a higher education professional for over 17 years, Jamie Raynor gained early experience in academic affairs for several years before turning her focus and her profession to development and advancement initiatives. In her temporary role, she currently serves as the interim vice chancellor for WCU's Division of Advancement for Advancement Services, Alumni Engagement, and Development staff, also serving on the Chancellor's Executive Council. Her permanent role as Assistant Vice Chancellor includes the supervision of major, planned, and annual giving professionals in the development office. She also manages a portfolio of corporations, foundations, and individuals to secure major and planned gifts. 

Have you been utilizing the unique talents of your phonathon callers during this crisis? Why or why not? Did this case study make you feel any differently about trying it out? If social distancing measures persist into the Fall semester, how do you plan to handle your phonathon? Let me know down in the comments.

And if you liked this content, please subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising. You'll get my FUNdraising Friday emails, which are jam-packed with interesting, useful, and funny content to keep you sharp and motivated!

Cheers, 

PS - If you liked this article, you might like: 

• Is Phonathon Really Dead?
• Planning for the Unexpected
• The Only 3 Interview Question You Need to Hire Phonathon Callers Who Stay
• 10 Traits ALL Former Phonathon Callers Share
• What makes for great rapport building? Plus, a list of rapport building questions

PPS - Want to use your time isolating at home to become an All-Star fundraiser? Join me for my new course, All-Star Annual Giving. Registration just opened! All-Star Annual Giving is a fully online 12-week course with 9 modules covering all areas of annual giving strategy and execution. If you want to roll into the semester with a fully fledged plan to raise more money than you've ever raised before in your annual giving programs, you need to be in this course.

Connecting with a donor or potential donor is so vital before you ask for a gift. It's like removing many of the roadblocks between you and that "YES!" response you want.

People want to give to people they like. It's not much of a secret. Ultimately, as a fundraiser you are a conduit for the relationship between that donor and the institution (not with you personally) but they must enjoy speaking with you to want to continue a relationship with the institution.

This is an important skill for any fundraiser to develop, from phonathon callers on up to executive directors, deans and development officers.

I have been to MANY call centers where they use the same tired rapport-building questions year after year after year. We cannot let this happen. No one wants to spend their precious time telling a new person why they haven't been back to campus lately just like they did last year.

Bad rapport-building has the opposite effect on the donor than that which we wish to cultivate.

The first rule of building rapport is it must be DIALOG not MONOLOGUE. You must ask questions that will solicit meaningful conversation and back and forth. You (no matter if you are a student caller or the Vice President of Advancement) must not deliver a litany of great-stuff-happening-at-our-institution without stopping for breath.

So, following this rule, we must construct meaningful rapport building questions.

The second rule about rapport building is that these questions get stale. Every year (at least) new rapport builders should be generated and put into rotation.

Here is some guiding criteria for generating these questions. Rapport building questions should:

• Extract meaningful information (like employment and campus affinities).
• Make the prospect like the caller/staffer as quickly as possible.
• Be delivered in a genuine way.
• Not be able to be answered with “Yes” or “No”.
• Not merely deliver talking points about the college or university.
• Provide opportunities for smooth transitions to the first ask.
• Collect new demographic information about prospects and verify current info (but not in a “canned” or perfunctory way).

What are some examples of strong rapport-building questions?

• Were you close to any faculty members while you earned your degree?
• Are working in the same field in which you earned your degree?
• Did you know that the <> recently <>? Isn't that great?
• I thought you might like to know that we've had a lot of success in <>. What do think about that?
• I see that you attended our recent <>. Do you have any feedback for <> about that event that I could pass along?
• You know, I am not sure about the answer to that question. But I can get back to you if I could get your cell phone number or email. I'll research that and contact you.
• Why did you make your first gift to <>? What keeps you giving?
• What are you most passionate about here at <>?
• I see you are <> as I was/am. That's wonderful to know. Do you know <>?

Does your rapport building need a refresh? Do you have some favorite rapport-building questions that I forgot to mention on my list? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers,
​
Jessica Cloud

PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these:

• 5 Ideas to Improve Mock Calling
• Annual Fund versus Annual Giving: What's the difference?
• The 30 Minute Fundraiser

PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my guide to Call Center Games for Free!​​

Don’t get me wrong. I am a fan and advocate of automated calling software. And I’ve been spoiled in my career, working for large state universities with the resources to either outsource the calling program or to have an in-house program with appropriate calling software.

In the past, I would cringe when a colleague would tell me they were running a manual/paper phonathon.

But there’s a reason why they say necessity is the mother of invention. I now work for a small independent seminary that is on a shoestring budget.

This summer, I did some analysis and determined that what the program really needed was a phonathon. I decided this for a few reasons:

1. The school had not had a calling program in at least 8 years and many donors had fallen off of giving in that time. We needed to reconnect with those donors in a more personal way than mail could do.
2. The school had been through some rough times, including a presidential transition and controversy. They needed the public relations aspect of phone calling.
3. The school needed some work in specifically the alumni relations area. See #2.
4. We were working on growing a recurring gift program and phone is one of the best ways to acquire new recurring monthly donors.
5. And, we had some “dirty” data and needed to clarify and correct demographic data while eliminating bad information.

These are compelling reasons. But, I knew we had not budgeted for a phonathon program. I had some extra resources (only $5,000) but I knew that would not be enough to outsource or purchase software. How could I get a phonathon program off the ground quickly, easily and cheaply?

You really only need 3 things to have a phonathon:

• Callers
• Phones
• Prospects

CALLERS
I figured out my maximize number of callers and caller hours that I could afford to pay based on a competitive hourly rate for the location (Berkeley, CA). Then I set about recruitment. Here are some of the graphics I used to recruit students callers.

I used my 3 favorite interview questions for student callers. You can read about those here. I hired 4 students and 1 graduate who wanted to volunteer her time as a service to the school.

EQUIPMENT
Now I needed equipment. At first, I was thinking through how much long distance would cost and whose offices we could use in the evenings. Then I went back to drawing board: Why was thinking landlines when I preach all the time that cell phones are the future of phonathon?

I decided to go mobile. I ordered simple, Samsung flip phones which had a headphone jack so we could utilize headsets. I bought these Voistek noise cancelling headphones that would work with the phones and free the caller to move anywhere in the room. I bought some of the headsets with only one ear pad and some with two. The callers overwhelming preferred the double headset. The headsets, while very affordable ($29) also had good sound quality. Here are the links for the phones and headsets I selected.

(Yes, these are affiliate links. I've actually used these products and I'm sure they'll help you start a pop-up phonathon. If you purchase, I get a small percentage to keep the choice content coming here on Real Deal Fundraising. Fair trade, huh?)

These phones are already configured to work with a Verizon go-phone plan, which was far cheaper than long distance fees. They are also used phones so they are super-cheap – less than $17 each. My phonathon campaign was scheduled to be one month long so we paid for one month of prepaid phone access: $50 for each phone. Bonus: when you go to the Verizon store to sign up for your multiple prepaid, burner phone plans, you feel like a bad guy from a Law and Order SVU episode!

Total for each phone “station”: $96

Total to equip my five callers: $480

OVERALL SHOESTRING BUDGET
I also spent $100 on 4, $25 gift certificates to use as weekly incentives for performance.

Overall my budget looked like this:

• Equipment: $480
• Motivation: $100
• Food for Callers: $500
• Caller Wages: $3,920 (which would provide 245 calling hour at $16 per hour)

And remember that one of my callers was committed to calling as a volunteer. And the equipment itself is a one-time expense. We plan to use the phones and headsets again soon. More savings and value!

PROSPECTS
As for data, I pulled the prospects via queries in Raiser’s Edge and then used that spreadsheet to create calling sheets via a mail merge. We went through a couple of iterations to get the information in the most intuitive place for the callers but ultimately it worked well.

Overall, the program raised over $15,000 which was a great return on investment and we added over 25 new recurring gift donors as well.

If your institution doesn’t have a huge budget but needs the personalized contact that a phonathon program provides, you can create a “pop-up” phonathon program on a shoestring budget that is efficient and effective.

Do you outsource, use automated software or have a manual phonathon? Or do you need to start a pop-up phonathon for your institution? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers, 

Jessica Cloud  

PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these: 

• Is phonathon really dead? 
• Launching a phonathon program (Interview with Markus Jones)
• How to Use Economic Impact Data to Get Incentives for Student Callers

PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my  guide to Call Center Games for Free!

• A near-pathological imperviousness to being told “No.”

I’ve said many times that every new major gift officer should be required to work at the phonathon for a week so that they can be told “no” hundreds and thousands of times. It’s de-sensitizes you to the fear of rejection.

Once you’ve been told never to call back, been hung up on countless times, and told “no” in so many variations ranging from “I’d love to, but I can’t afford it” to an expletive-filled, irrational rant, you just don’t worry about it anymore.
​
Callers carry this confidence into their working life whether they remain in fundraising or not. It’s like a secret superpower from working in the call center.

• Smile When You Dial!

“Smile When You Dial” becomes more of a life philosophy than a cheery fundraising maxim after you’ve worked in the call center for a while.

Not only do former phonathon callers have mad phone skills (friendly, engaging, polite, etc.) they have a rocking perspective on how to approach difficult situations.

Smile and you will change your chances of getting what you want. Believe you can do it and you can.

• The need for quiet, alone time

This is the flip-side of being in the conversation business. After 3-4 hours on the phone with alumni, you just need a break.

I still talk on the phone for hours a day as part of my job. Even though I’m an extravert, after I’m done with work, I’d rather have my nails pulled out than talk on the phone for “fun”. This pattern plays out amongst my friends who worked in call centers too.

• Competitiveness

​Phonathon might not create hyper-competitiveness among former callers. It might be correlational. What I mean is I think the position attracts competitive people and those are often the ones who stay working at the phone center for longer than a couple of weeks.

Either way, though, call center work can take a naturally competitive person and turn them into an Olympic champion of smack-talk.

If you were a caller, you wouldn’t think twice about kicking your friends off the island if it meant they stood between you and a $25 Red Lobster gift card. Former phonathon callers exhibit this good-natured ruthlessness well beyond college and employ this trait in many different fields of endeavor.

• Ability to tune out distractions

Holding a complex conversation leading to a $1,000 donation on a credit card while your esteemed colleagues play wastepaper basketball behind you is no problem for a phonathon caller.

Doing all of this when you know that your supervisor is listening in and you’re being evaluated, also no sweat. Phonathon callers can get it all done flawlessly.

• Sense of humor

Once you’ve muddled up a prospect’s name so badly that it becomes a call center legend, it’s easy to laugh at your own mistakes.

Everyone who has been a caller has selected the wrong script, got lost in the middle of a sentence, drawn a blank on the name of the institution they are calling for, or called the prospect by the wrong name.

If you take yourself too seriously, you just won’t survive in phonathon. A sense of humor is a must.

• Coachability

Phonathon callers want the constructive feedback. The thing about fundraising is that you know when you aren’t successful. It’s not subjective.

Student supervisors and call center managers give callers tips on everything from overcoming objections to how many times you say “umm” in a sentence to the quality of your voice itself.

You can spot a former phonathon caller anywhere because they come to crave the kind of pointed and applicable feedback they got in the call center. They crave it because when implemented it immediately impacted results in a positive way.

• Multitasking successfully

Related to tuning out distractions, former phonathon callers are masters at multitasking.

Many great callers learned to read or complete homework assignments while the phone was dialing. You also learn to prep your script, ask your supervisor a question on mute, and place a bookmark in your chemistry book all while your prospect tells you about the Homecoming court of 1954.

When you’re done with all that, you seamlessly transition back into the conversation with a “How wonderful! Mrs. Smith, I don’t want to take up too much more of your time tonight. Let me tell you why I’m calling…”

• A fondness for elementary-school style posters and goofy clip art

Most of the former phonathon callers I know love a visual aid for reaching goals.

In the call center, we become emotionally dependent upon thermometers, countdowns, and other displays of our progress and performance. For me, it manifests in the use of my bullet journal with lots of colors and goal charts.

Likewise, I love old school, goofy clip art with simple cartoonish lines. I like to use them in presentations to make folks laugh but also it brings me back to my call center days when results were often tied to being as goofy as possible to get the attention of the group.

• No fear of negotiating or talking about money

Callers learn that those who get comfortable with talking about money fast will enjoy rewards.

This benefits these individuals later in their life because they aren’t afraid to negotiate for a raise, ask a spouse about preparing a will or be persistent to get a sale.

I hope you had as much fun reading this post as I did putting it together. What other traits do you think come from working in a call center or in fundraising in general? If you were a phonathon caller, do these seem true for you? Comments and questions are, as always, welcomed and encouraged!

Cheers, 

Jessica Cloud  

PS - If you liked this post, you might also like these: 

• People give because they are asked
• Branding your phonathon
• Quiz: Assess Your Phonathon Scripts
  
• How to Staff Your Phonathon Superfast: Seven Secrets to Fill the Seats
  
• Is Phonathon Really Dead?
  

​
PPS - If you found this article helpful, please comment and let me know. Also subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising so you don't miss a post! You'll get my  guide to Call Center Games for Free!
 

You know what kind of person makes a great phonathon caller. It's easy to spot characteristics such as confidence, sincerity, and enthusiasm in any conversation. But the most important variable to the success of a phonathon caller (or any fundraiser) isn't personality or even work ethic, it's RETENTION. Whether or not they stick with job will largely determine their success and yours.

So, in an interview process, the content of your questions should be about the potential longevity of the candidate. You can assess the other qualitative characteristics while you are talking about other things. 

I'm hiring right now to build a phonathon program for the seminary I work for and these are the only interview questions I am using and I know I'm getting the best team players with this method. I've used these three questions for a long time and they help you find awesome callers who will stick with it and learn to be outstanding young fundraisers. In fact, they are actually great questions to ask candidates for any position. None of them are specific to call center or fundraising. They are all about how the candidate views work and keeping their commitments.

• Why do you want to work here? How does this position fit into your long term goals?

This question gets at motivations for working. Is this student working only because their parents told them they had to get a job or just for pocket money? Or will this be just a job that they need to keep, either to build their resume or because they need the funds?

Better yet, do they indicate an interest in the business of philanthropy or an understanding of how the skills gained by working at the call center will help them long term?

• How do you keep yourself organized?

I love this question because the answer gives you a window into how a candidate thinks. Some will be very specific and detailed: “I write everything in my planner and I compose a new to-do list every morning so I know what I need to accomplish each day.”

Other answers will be more vague and abstract. I won’t say that these are not a good match for call center work, but these more abstract students may need more structure and guidance. If, however, you see an over-involved, over-scheduled student who can’t answer this question concretely, that’s a problem.

• Tell me about a time when you displayed a high degree of personal integrity. 

This question strikes at the heart of whether this potential employee is a professional. If they can cite a concrete, specific example of this, you'll know you have someone you can trust. I had a candidate once who told me about busting up a back alley, ticket selling ring at the Chuck E. Cheese she worked for. This is by-far my favorite answer ever to this question. Although at the time she was only a freshman and quite shy, I took a chance on her and made her a call center supervisor. I never regretted that decision. 

Those who have a high degree of personal integrity and can articulate their values in a clear way are loathe to quit when they have committed to something important. They can become the trusted core of your team.

What are your favorite interview questions and why? Try these questions out and see if you don't make your interview process more efficient by both saving time and getting better callers through the hiring process. 

If you liked this post, you will probably love my book How to Staff Your Phonathon Super-Fast, Seven Secrets to Fill the Seats. It's full of information on how to find your staffing targets, generate tons of applications, interview fast, hire for retention and keep great callers! Purchase your copy today.

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ast week, I argued that predictive modeling is not as intimidating as it sounds. In fact, you don't need a consultant to build your models and you are the best person to do it. 

You are the best person to build your projections for a couple of reasons: 1) You do/should have the most knowledge about how your program has historically performed and your strategies going forward. 2) You will be the person working with those projections throughout the fundraising year as living documents to guide your path to optimum performance. To work best with the predictive model, you should build it and understand it from the ground up. 

A great report (if you can easily get it) is a projections versus actual report that shows you segment-by-segment, side-by-side, where you thought you would be and where you are currently. But if you can't get a report like this designed, no worries. You can easily have your projections (your predictive model) in one hand and your up-to-date actual results in another. 

You should do a P v. A (Projections versus Actual) analysis at least quarterly but ideally monthly. My recommendation would be to work up to more frequent analysis if you aren't currently doing it, as it can be overwhelming and time-consuming in the beginning. The benefits are abundant, though, as I will articulate.

Here's how this works on the segment level: I'll use phonathon segments as an example, but this could be anything (direct mail, email, leadership giving, etc.) Say you are getting close to finished with the College of Business but it doesn’t look like you are going to reach your total dollars. You can now use your projections to pinpoint where the downturn occurred and proposed pointed solutions. (See charts above.)

You notice that you are very close to finished (completion rate) and therefore you aren't going to have that many more calls in order to make up lost ground. The next thing that pops out to you is that contact rate didn't perform to expectations. This signals one major thing: lack of data integrity. Lastly, the participation rate for this group is much lower than projected. You have isolated the two major issues with the College of Business results thus far. If you never had the projections, your report to the Dean of the College of Business would probably simply be, "I'm sorry but we are going to fall short this year." Or worse, you might feel the need to follow that up with a bunch of speculations and excuses. 

Instead, you are armed with information and can break bad news with prepared data-driven solutions. So, a conversation with the Dean of the College of Business might go like this: “It appears that we may fall about $2,000 short of our goal for your college. This is due in part to our contact rate being lower than expected for the college overall and a slightly lower participation rate than we hoped for in the future donors. So, I would recommend that we send out a 'where are you?' email to try and get updated phone numbers for all of your graduates and we may lower the ask amounts for the future donors to help improve acquisition for this group.”

This works the same way with your higher-ups. You will be able to show which metrics and schools are under-performing and explain the statistics rather than provide anecdotes or excuses.

It works the exact same way if your results are amazing! You are able to report on where and how you beat the goal and therefore where the areas of opportunity are for the future. This perspective can change the course of your career because you will become the most trusted person in your organization. You are informed, realistic, and have solutions and analysis galore! 

Try this with your next project. Let me know how it goes. 

I'm on record defending both phonathon and direct mail as useful vehicles for fundraising. So out of fairness, I thought I owed my readers a post where I asked the question, "​When is it time to throw out a medium?"

To figure this out, I first needed to consider a communication technology that is no longer relevant for fundraising marketing. So, please consider for this example, the telegraph.

The telegraph was the first method of instant communication in the world. As such it was tremendously important during its heyday. We now have so many methods of instantaneous communication today that we can't fully appreciate what a marvel it was at the time.

Still today, if we need instant communication, telegraph isn’t our only option. Email, social media, text messages, do the same thing as the telegraph but they do it with significant advantages. For instance, telegrams don’t contain visual content and they require a translator for the Morse code. Technology has far outpaced the telegraph as a medium for public relations, communication and fundraising.

The reason we still use the telephone and direct mail for fundraising is because they still maintain significant advantages over other vehicles, despite the proliferation of those alternate vehicles. As I have stated elsewhere, phone calls are active asking, two-way personalized communication.  Yesterday, I laid out exactly what qualities make mailings still relevant.

It’s important that we are continue to be critical of each media we use for our message. We must be good stewards of the budgetary resources we are entrusted with. However, the fact remains that the more valid vehicles we use to ask for money, the more money we will raise overall.