Effective Telephone Fundraising E-Book

Stephen F. Schatz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 447

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

An authoritative guide to boosting your nonprofit's bottom linethrough effective telephone fundraising Presenting a detailed structure for writing effective telephonecall "scripts", Effective Telephone Fundraising explains thenecessary and effective components of an effective call frombeginning to end, and provides helpful hints, detailed examples,phrases to employ, phraseology to avoid, and a "road map/chart" forstructuring effective call scripts. * This how-to manual examines in detail the various stages of aneffective telephone call from identifying the prospect andintroducing yourself; getting through screens and talking to thedecision maker; developing rapport and a creating two-wayconversation; explaining the purpose of your call; making aproposal to the prospect;the process of negotiation and effectiveclosing strategies; results of the negotiation;and ending thecall. * Examines in detail a systematic way of dealing withobjections * Deflection/decision deferral strategies, along withpsychological motivators for giving over the telephone * Reveals how to assess the giving potential of prospects * Includes sample scripts or call outlines * Effective lines that could immediately be incorporated intoexisting telephone fundraising strategies to improve results A complete, start-to-finish guide for successful telephonefundraising, Effective Telephone Fundraising helps youstructure effective call scripts for your nonprofit's bestadvantage.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Scope of This Book

The Characters

Acknowledgements

About the Author

CHAPTER 1 - The Nature of the Telephone Medium in Fundraising

Contacting Your Database of Constituents

Face-to-Face Soliciting

Direct Mail Soliciting

E-Mail

The Telephone Medium

Strategies for Using the Telephone in Fundraising Campaigns

Summary

CHAPTER 2 - Scripting Strategies

Prescriptive versus Nonprescriptive Scripts

One End of the Spectrum: The Hard Script

The Other End of the Spectrum: The Call Guide

Somewhere in the Middle: The Hybrid Soft Script or Call Outline

Final Analysis: Which Script Approach Is Best?

Summary

CHAPTER 3 - Overview of an Effective Call Process

Step 1: Identify the Prospect

Step 2: Introduce and Identify Yourself

Step 3: Build Rapport

Step 4: Explain the Purpose of Your Call—Making the Case

Step 5: Ask, Ask, Ask—The Process of Negotiation

Step 6: The Result of a Negotiation—Yes or No?

Summary

CHAPTER 4 - Identification of the Prospect and Introducing Yourself

Job 1: Finding the Right Prospect

Job 2: Introducing Yourself

Summary

CHAPTER 5 - Rapport—Developing a Relationship

Put the Prospect at Ease

Give Thanks When Due

Build on Your Existing Relationship

Closed-Ended Questions

Open-Ended Questions

Listening for Clues

Summary

CHAPTER 6 - The Purpose of the Call

The Segue to the Purpose Section of the Call

The Four Cs of Effective Case Making

Other Challenges

Brevity Is the Essence of Wit—and Effectiveness

The Purpose: Case Statement Strategies

Precall Letters: Yes and No!

Summary

CHAPTER 7 - The Ask!

The Weak-Kneed—Need Not Apply

The Concept of a “Proposal”

Make It Personal

Strategies for the First “Ask”

Summary

CHAPTER 8 - Negotiation

The Three-Ask Strategy

Other Factors Limiting the Length of a Negotiation and Number of Asks

First Things First: Setting the Stage for the Counterproposal

Articulating the Counterproposal

Increase the Urgency as the Call Proceeds

Summary

CHAPTER 9 - The Close

The Final “Spin” of Urgency—an Optional Strategy

Decisions, Decisions: How Low to Go

Articulating the Close

Prior Donors

Summary

CHAPTER 10 - The Result

What Is a Pledge?

Pledges: The Confirmation

Other Issues

Refusals

Unspecified Pledges

Summary

CHAPTER 11 - Dealing with Objections

Objections Defined

Objections Can Occur at Any Point in the Call

Objections Examined

Discovering Objections

Two Types of Objections

Strategies for Dealing with Willingness Objections

Deliberation, Delay, and Deferral of Decisions

Other Negotiating Strategies

Summary

CHAPTER 12 - Writing, Refining, and Testing Your Script

Step 1: Writing the First Draft

Step 2: Writing the Final Draft

Step 3: Role-Playing

Step 4: Live Calling Test

Step 5: Fine-Tuning the Script

Summary

CHAPTER 13 - Conclusions and Final Words

Appendix - SAMPLES AND SCRIPTS

Develop Your Own Script

Afterword

Index

Copyright © 2010 by Stephen F. Schatz. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

Cartoons, hourglass, and hand phone graphic © Jennifer A. Herman. Reprinted with permission.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Schatz, Stephen F.

Effective telephone fundraising: the ultimate guide to raising more money/Stephen F. Schatz.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-61768-7

1. Telephone fund raising. I. Title.

HV41.S247 2010

658.15’224-dc22

2009045995

This book is dedicated to the person whom I most admire, for her keen and penetrating intelligence, vast stores of knowledge, hard work and perseverance, high moral and ethical standards, selflessness, and for her support and faith in my efforts: to my best friend in life’s journey, my wife, Virginia Sacha.

Foreword

In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes, newly elected as the 19th U.S. President, became the first commander-in-chief to use the telephone. With Alexander Graham Bell at his side, President Hayes placed a call from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia. Following the demonstration, an impressed President Hayes turned to Mr. Bell and said, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?” A Western Union internal memorandum from the same year stated, “The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered a means of communication.”

Fast forward to 2009. I was sitting in my Philadelphia office working on my upcoming book about donor-centered planned gift marketing when I read an interesting post on GIFT-PL, the listserv for gift planning professionals hosted by the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning. Kaye C. Stackpole, Director of Gift Planning at Westminster College, wrote, “We reviewed our metrics last year and added a new category—Extended Phone Call (EPC) that can count the same as a personal visit. With travel budgets restricted last year, we discovered, for stewardship calls especially, donors appreciated our updates by phone and respected our efforts for implementing cost saving ideas.”

The telephone is indeed an amazing invention. Unlike the executives at Western Union in the nineteenth century, today’s development professionals recognize the telephone for the powerful communications tool it has become. Today, the telephone performs many varied functions in the nonprofit development office. One of the major applications of the telephone medium is solicitation, whether for annual donations, capital gifts, memberships, or planned gifts.

While fundraising phonathons of one sort or another have been with us for a very long time, telephone fundraising as we know it today can be traced back to the Yale University capital campaign. In 1977, the major-gift consulting firm IDC was brought in to help Yale develop a strategy to give alumni who could not be visited face-to-face an opportunity to support the campaign. Under the direction of Bill Freyd, IDC developed the first personalized methodology for the public phase of a capital campaign. Yale combined the use of letters and telephone calls to simulate the steps used in major-gift cultivation and solicitation.

In 1980, Steve Schatz and I worked together at Temple University during its Centennial Challenge Campaign. Temple was the first non-Ivy-type university to implement a professional telephone fundraising program. The approach that worked so well at Yale, asking alumni to donate 2 percent of their gross annual income for each year of the next five years, resulted in a great deal of foul language and hang-ups when tried at Temple. As you may guess, Ivy Yale and state-related Temple do not have much in common, culturally speaking. Steve and I worked tirelessly to effectively adapt the program implemented by Temple’s consultant, Philanthropy Management Inc. By adopting donor-centered strategies, we were able to achieve great results.

Penelope Burk, in her book Donor Centered Fundraising (Burk & Associates Ltd., 2003) describes what she means by the term, “Donor-centered fundraising is an approach to raising money and interacting with donors that acknowledges what donors really need and puts those needs first. Donor-centered fundraising impacts fundraising success in three ways. First, it retains more donors longer, giving them time to develop their own philanthropic resiliency; second, it causes more donors to offer increasingly generous gifts; and third, it raises the performance of even the most active and loyal donors to a new standard.”

In 1982, following our success at Temple University, Steve and I created Telefund Management Inc. which we later renamed The Development Center before selling it years later. We retained our innovative, donor-centered spirit. We were the first to apply professional telephone fundraising techniques to the museum world (The NSFRE Journal), and among the first to bring such techniques to the performing arts world, social service agencies, and, of course, other colleges and universities. Because we had very good competitors, we had to be innovative not only to survive but to thrive. We generated tremendous results for our clients and were ranked among the most cost-effective professional solicitation firms in the nation in various state attorney general reports. Along the way, we developed powerful telephone fundraising techniques, many of which are now so commonly utilized as to be taken for granted while other valuable tactics are less known and, therefore, less practiced.

In this volume, Steve shares the secrets for making the most effective calls possible. While acknowledging the different applications for the telephone and the different styles of calls, Steve writes with a particular point of view that, over years of crafting great campaigns and training excellent callers, we found to be the most fruitful. Regardless of the application or style, the most productive telephone fundraising will always be donor-centered at its core.

When I was a child first learning how to use the telephone, my mother instructed me to greet the recipient of my call, identify myself, and ask permission to speak. Guess what? Good manners still make sense. Just one of the techniques that Steve advocates is asking permission to speak. It is a simple technique. It is donor-centered. It leads to better conversations and, therefore, produces stronger results. Yet, so few telephone fundraising calls today start this way. Steve dissects the telephone fundraising call. In doing so, he provides many simple as well as complex techniques for enhancing the quality of your telephone fundraising efforts. He does so step-by-step and with humor. In all cases, his core strategy is donor-centered.

Today, there are over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations. Anthony Alonso of Advantage Fundraising Consulting has pointed out that over half of all nonprofit organizations in the United States use telephone fundraising. Americans donate over $1 billion annually to charitable organizations through telephone fundraising programs run by professional companies alone. Over 60 percent of all U.S. households were solicited for donations in 2005. In other words, a lot of people are receiving a lot of calls for contributions to a lot of organizations.

To be effective, truly effective, nonprofit organizations must make better calls. Simply put, good enough is no longer good enough. To secure more donors, raise more money, and build donor loyalty, nonprofit organizations must become better communicators. If your telephone program is already good, this book will help you make it better. If your telephone program is weak, this book will show you the practical steps you can take to make it stronger. If your organization does not yet have a telephone program, this book will help you create one that is highly effective from the start.

This volume will provide you with practical, fundamental information in an easily accessible way. You will learn things you are doing right, so you can keep doing them with confidence. And you will discover better ways to do other things. By taking you through the call process systematically, Steve reveals what has been proven to work best.

Steve and I are among the individuals who pioneered telephone fundraising. Over the decades, we have earned our gray hairs and have witnessed many changes in the development world. But one constant remains unaltered: Donor-centered fundraising produces the best results. To learn how you can harness this powerful approach to telephone fundraising, read on. My friend, former business partner, and fellow pioneer will be your guide.

Michael J. Rosen, CFRE President ML Innovations, Inc. [email protected]

Introduction

Truth be told, I am writing this book more out of a sense of responsibility than my desire to write. As one’s first opus, one may dream of penning best selling thriller, like The Da Vinci Code, or a revered book on philosophy The Meaning of Existence: Finally Explained (my next book).

A book on telemarketing? Perish the thought! So, I am under no illusions that this tome will be taken to the beach, each page turned with breathless anticipation as to what might happen next ... “Did you read how the caller turned around that ‘I can’t give because I have kids in college’ objection? I can’t wait until the next chapter! I just can’t put this book down!”

I was in on the nonprofit telephone fundraising revolution pretty near its beginning. Over the span of close to 18 years I spent a good portion of my life trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t in terms of making telephone solicitations. I have audited thousands of telephone solicitations. I have written and tweaked hundreds and hundreds of what you might call “scripts.” In terms of raising money, I think we were pretty successful. We built a multimillion dollar direct mail/telephone fundraising service bureau that raised tens of millions of dollars over a period of more than 20 years. Tens of thousands of new and renewed donors were found for some of the nation’s top nonprofit organizations. But more than that, we trained several thousand new fundraisers in the basics of raising money. Scores of these went on into fundraising, development, and marketing careers. That’s probably what I’m most proud of.

Having been off the telephone fundraising radar screen for close to a decade, I thought, perhaps, the development profession had taken solicitation techniques to new heights of sophistication, and the quality of fundraising calls, thanks to experience and expertise, was better than ever. Unfortunately, being on the receiving end of many calls asking for funds, my impression is that the quality of calls is somewhat worse than it was 10 years ago. Moreover, pressed into reluctant service as a volunteer fundraiser for a couple of charities, I have found that the “old” techniques still work, that it is possible to make quality calls, engage prospects over the phone, state your case in a compelling way, and ask for and negotiate a pledge of support. And, yes, get hung up on as well. But in spite of the sheer volume of “junk calls” that irritate potential donors at dinnertime, I believe the medium still works and is valuable tool within the context of your overall donor development strategies.

So, here you are: a brain dump as it were. Apologizing in advance to my esteemed colleagues who may be authors themselves, I have never picked up a book on fundraising that I was eager to read or that I found particularly pleasurable or memorable. Since the subject of this book especially is not exactly what I’d call fascinating, or inspiring, or stimulating, I’ll try to offer a humorous view to the proceedings, to take the sting out of the mundane, the arcane, the, well, less-than-appealing subject matter. No, this is not a book for the senior development professional, he or she with gray hair, $500 suit, and an air of gravitas. This is a book for those in the trenches. Make no mistake. Telephone fundraising is the “trenches of development.” Regarding this metaphor, I’ve never been able to shake the vision of poor World War I soldiers, cowering in the trenches, under bombardment, waiting for the inevitable signal to charge across no-man’s-land, and then the sergeant in charge blows his whistle, ordering the men over the top to face withering machine gun fire ... it’s six o’clock, time to pick up those phones and start calling!

In the “development” field (a nice euphemism, I have always thought) no job is harder, more challenging, and more thankless than picking up the telephone (or the headset) and making case after case for funding one’s cause, and experiencing rejection after rejection en route to a goal.

I will never forget a client from a large educational institution who felt the responsibility to visit our facility on the first night of calling. As he said, many people like to eat sausage, but just don’t want to know how it’s made. He didn’t want to be there, but felt he must out of a sense of duty to his organization.

For those of you who are in the “sausage business,” who have had some experience as a telephone fundraiser or solicitor, some of this information may already be familiar to you. In that case, perhaps I will be able to frame the information or techniques in a broader context, so that what you already know may make even more sense. For those of you who, God forbid, make your living in some area that involves telephone fundraising, you have my condolences. In reading this book you may have the conviction that you know how to do it better. Perhaps you do, and I invite you to write your own book on the subject to add to the body of great knowledge in development books. By writing this book, I do not envision myself as any kind of “prophet” writing a “bible” of telephone fundraising. I’ll leave that for you to do.

Scope of This Book

First, what this book is NOT about.

This is NOT a book about telemarketing, a term that in relation to fundraising and development, I loathe. This is NOT a book about running a call center; staffing a call center; hiring, training, and managing and motivating call center employees; evaluating their performance; or monitoring or analyzing the work output of calls. It is NOT a book about analysis and segmentation of data going into a fundraising call center and determining strategies in conducting a call center campaign. This is NOT a book about analyzing the statistical effectiveness of tele-fundraising campaigns, by individual solicitor or in aggregate. It is NOT a book about call center automation, power dialing, predictive dialing, or equipping or furnishing a call center. It’s NOT a book about the relation of direct mail to telephone calls, either as effective introductions to calls, or the fulfillment process, although some comments will be offered on the subject. This is NOT a book about legal compliance to the various and nefarious state codes, statutes, and regulations. This is NOT a book about any aspect of management either as relates to the business of the development or the business of running a call center.

This is a book about FUNDRAISING TELEPHONE CALLS and how to effectively write scripts or “call outlines” (what we called “soft scripts”) that aid telephone fundraisers to make effective calls to past and potential donors. This is a book on how the sausage is made, where the rubber meets the road, or whatever other metaphor you wish to use: a practical guide to writing effective telephone call scripts and outlines.

The call itself, that’s what this is about. It’s the call that raises the money. If you are making good phone calls, you will raise money. If you aren’t, you won’t.

There are two elements to a making a good phone call, only one of which is under the control of the person responsible for conducting a telephone fundraising campaign: the person making the call, the “tele-fundraiser,” and the telephone “script” or the call outline. The former element can be controlled (with difficulty) through the recruitment, screening, hiring, training, monitoring, motivation, and management process. The other element, the message/call outline, and conducting an effective negotiation over the telephone medium is under your control. Only one word about the former: Hire the best tele-fundraisers you can and pay them more than you think you can afford.

The Characters

As most every good book has interesting characters, with the aid of a creative and talented illustrator, I’ve attempted to create a couple of characters that run through this book: Mr. Smith, our ubiquitous donor prospect, and Alice Jones, our plucky, intrepid telephone fundraiser.

MR. SMITH, Our Prospective Donor

Mr. Smith will be our prospective donor who we will be calling throughout this book. You may know Mr. Smith. Then again, you may not know him at all.

Mr. Smith is a large donor who gave last year, or Mr. Smith may have never given anything at all. Ever. Or Mr. Smith may have given a small amount of money, once or twice in years past, but has stopped giving altogether.

Mr. Smith may have felt strongly about your organization and your mission and may have strongly backed you in many ways, but then you did something to irk him or make him really angry—and you don’t even know it. Or Mr. Smith may have only a casual acquaintance with you and may be largely indifferent to your needs.

Mr. Smith may have sold his tech business two months before your call for several million dollars, and may be considering a long sabbatical in the South of France. Or Mr. Smith may have lost his job the very day you are calling him for a contribution.

Mr. Smith may be closely affiliated with your organization. He may be a subscriber; a member; a volunteer; someone who signs up for your newsletters, goes to your website, and closely follows your organization’s activities. Then again, he may never have even heard of your organization, although he may have some sympathy for you when understands what your mission is about.

Mr. Smith is “every man” and he is no one. Mr. Smith is your prospect.

ALICE JONES, Our Fundraiser

Alice is going to make calls for your organization. Alice may be a young, eager student who is working part time for your organization and who barely understands what the word philanthropy means, much less be able to spell it.

Or Alice may be a mature “hired gun”—a paid solicitor working for a company your nonprofit organization has retained to make calls on your behalf. She may be well trained and highly experienced, or this may be her first week on the job.

Or Alice Jones may be a volunteer who is coming to work for you 6 to 8 PM, Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next two weeks in your volunteer phonathon. She knows your organization well and may even know some of the prospects she is calling, but she’s far from being a fundraising professional or experienced salesperson.

Moreover, Alice may have the natural “gift” of having people like her instantly over the telephone, with a smooth, engaging, suave telephone demeanor. When she calls, people just seem to want to give her money. She is one of your “stars.”

Or Alice may not be the most articulate person in the world, who can occasionally mangle words and syntax and really has to work at persuading folks to listen to her, much less give her money—someone whom you question whether she has the fundraising “chops” to succeed.

Alice is everything you want and don’t want representing your organization. She is your telephone fundraiser.

Acknowledgments

There are a number of people to thank for the knowledge to make this book possible. First, I’d like to thank the person who gave me my first development job. In 1980, Lee Wenke was Vice President for Development at Temple University. He hired me for my first job in development, even though I didn’t know what the term development meant. Those students of our esteemed college campuses who have walked past the administrative offices with signs like “Development” or “Institutional Advancement” hung over them have probably scratched your heads trying to figure what went on behind those office doors. I guess Lee figured that if I could sell myself for a job that I didn’t know anything about, I could sell Temple University alumni on the idea of giving to their school’s first-ever capital campaign. He was at least partially correct, though he did eventually fire me.

Second, I’d like to thank Ron Erdos, who back in the 1980s owned a consulting firm called Philanthropy Management Incorporated. Spending a mere 20 minutes with Ron, analyzing Temple University phone calls in February 1981 gave me a foundation for how to think about phone calls, their structure, and the function of a good solicitation. Third, I’d like to thank my business partner of more than 15 years, Michael Rosen, who cofounded The Development Center. Together we shared an intellectual curiosity on what was involved in making good telephone calls. For us, it was not drudgery. Analyzing, experimenting, trying new things, and finding solutions that worked was a formidable intellectual challenge. Indeed, one had better come up with solutions fast if you were going to survive by raising money. Fourth, I would like to thank the two or three thousand employees who passed through the doors of my company, some full-time professionals in marketing, client relations, and data management, who contributed to our 20-year success. Fifth, I’d like to thank our many fine colleagues and ethical competitors in the telephone fundraising profession, a field that, in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield, “got no respect.” Sixth, I’d like to thank Ted Hart, founder and CEO of the ePhilanthropy Foundation, for pulling me out of retirement and involving me at the birth of an entirely new medium of fundraising communication: the Internet. Seventh, hearty thanks to the great telephone fundraising companies who have contributed material appearing in the appendix of this book: Thanks to Gregg Carlson, chairman and CEO of IDC, who contributed a great example of “talking points” for fundraisers; a tip of the hat to Joe White, president of Left Bank Consulting, for scripts and commentary he prepared (joe@left-bankconsulting. com), and to Mal Warwick for material that has been reprinted with permission from Mal Warwick’s Newsletter: Successful Direct Mail, Telephone, & Online Fundraising (http://ga1.org/malwarwick/join.html; Copyright ©2008 by Mal Warwick); thanks also to Steve Brubaker, senior vice president for Corporate Affairs at InfoCision, who contributed an insightful guide to writing successful scripts, along with information about the Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing; and thanks to Anthony Alonso, president of Advantage Consulting, for an excellent and innovative example of an effective telephone fundraising script. The companies represented are among the most established and respected in the telephone fundraising sphere. Eighth, I would be remiss if I did not add profound thanks to Susan McDermott of John Wiley & Sons for having faith in this project, and to Judy Horvath, my editor, for her encouragement and painstaking corrections of a very green, novice author. Last, and most important, I wish to thank my wife and daughter: my wife for her love, unflagging loyalty, and friendship, and my daughter for her smiles that radiate like sunshine, and at age 15 for teaching me new dimensions to the process of negotiation.

About the Author

Steve Schatz hails originally from Terre Haute, Indiana, and the small Midwestern farm community of Hoopeston, Illinois. He dual majored in business marketing and music theory and composition at Indiana State University and as an undergraduate had no idea what the word development meant. One day, in the midst of severe right versus left brain attack, he missed an exit while traveling east down Interstate 70, and ended up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he completed a master’s in music at Temple University, concentrating in history, musicology, and some theory.

Accepting that he had talent only for teaching, and not having the fortitude to continue on for a PhD, he applied for gainful employment in Temple University’s first-ever capital campaign, where he was thrust into the position of managing an in-house telephone outreach effort.

After achieving more success than was thought humanly possible, and believing that if he could raise money from Temple alumni, he could raise money from anyone, he and a partner, Michael Rosen, struck out on their own in 1982, founding a firm that eventually became The Development Center, a direct mail telephone outreach fundraising firm based in Philadelphia. For over 20 years TDC served educational institutions, arts organizations, museums, health care, and cultural institutions nationwide.

Their company was acquired by the Communications Services Group in 1997, and in 1998 Steve left to take a long sabbatical.

In 2000, Ted Hart, founder of the ePhilanthropy Foundation, dusted Steve off from retirement, asking to help him get a new nonprofit organization off the ground: the ePhilanthropy Foundation, with the mission of providing ethical standards and best practices for nonprofits navigating the new medium of the Internet. Steve served as COO until that organization was acquired by Network for Good in 2007.

Steve lives in Philadelphia with his wife, daughter, and cat, and stays out of significant trouble through ownership and management of some historic residential properties. He serves on several boards and volunteers more than he should. But currently his real passion is spinning, the stationary bike cardiovascular exercise. Steve is a very popular spinning instructor in Philadelphia and is known for his very eclectic music, ranging from thirteenth-century polyphony to contemporary heavy metal. But his real favorite music to spin to: the great orchestral masterworks from Haydn to Bernstein, and we hear he can do a real mean spin to Beethoven’s Seventh.

You can reach Steve at [email protected].

CHAPTER 1

The Nature of the Telephone Medium in Fundraising

Long before you pick up the phone to solicit funds, careful thought must be given to what you want to accomplish, how much you can invest, and how the telephone fits into your overall fundraising strategy.

Contacting Your Database of Constituents

Most nonprofit organizations, at the core of their annual giving and capital efforts, have a database of prospects: donors both current and lapsed who have some kind of track record of giving to their institution, and other constituents who have shown some degree of interest or affiliation, however tenuous.

As fundraisers, wouldn’t it be nice to simply sit in your office and have donor checks arrive unsolicited in the mail, your major donors coming out of their way to personally drop off their checks on your desk, or other donors calling you to ask how much they can give to your organization? Well, we can at least dream of such a fundraising utopia.

The fact of the matter is that successful fundraisers take the initiative and solicit their donors and constituents through a variety of means. Regrettably, the Latin root of the word solicit is sollicitare, meaning “to disturb”—a rather disturbing thought in itself!

According to Merriam-Webster, as a transitive verb in modern English, solicit can mean to approach, to entreat, to request, or to plead—all-important dimensions of the fundraiser’s job. As a verb, solicit also carries some stronger connotations: to urge strongly and to try to obtain by urgent requests or pleas. It is this dimension that is most commonly thought of in connection with charitable solicitation (leaving aside the darker connotations of the verb: “to entice or lure especially into evil”). Hmmm, as ethical fundraisers, we’ll lay that dimension aside.

So, if we have to take the initiative and approach, even “disturb,” our prospects, what are the most effective means to do so? Let’s look at the major direct marketing “arrows in the quiver” of fundraisers: face-to-face solicitation, direct mail, e-mail, and, last, the telephone. And for each one, let’s evaluate the unique qualities of each medium of communication according to a number of parameters:

• Degree of Personalization

How does the medium lend itself to “personalization,” the ability to create a message tailored to a specific prospect? The axiom is that the more personal the solicitation, the more likely you are to achieve results.

• Type of Channel

Does the channel afford one-way or two-way communication with the prospect? (I suppose in the Internet age, you also have to consider multidirectional group communication via chat rooms and social networking sites!)

• Degree of Interruption

What is the “interruptive” quality of the medium? Does it divert the prospect’s attention from something else, or does the prospect freely allot the time necessary to receive the communication?

• Message Timing

How quickly does the prospective donor receive the message from the time it has been sent? How significant is the delay? And from the time the prospect receives the message, how long does it take before you know a decision has been made, if ever?

• Dimensionality

Does the communication channel enable to you to communicate through one or more senses? Is it an aural or visual medium—or both? Other than a handshake, so far, I have yet to see “tactile” or “olfactory” dimensions in fundraising, unless it’s a result of a personal visit—a field trip, perhaps to a clinic.

• Time of Attention

How long, relative to other channels of communication, can the medium hold the prospect’s attention? The axiom here is the more time the prospect invests in hearing your message and evaluating your proposal, the more likely you are to have a positive result.

• Reliability

How reliable is the medium in reaching its target? How do you know if your message was received, much less considered?

• Ability to Reach Large Numbers of Constituents

Can the medium reach a large number of constituents in a short time, perhaps the course of an annual appeal?

• Cost

What is the bottom line cost of the medium relative to another?

• Flexibility

How flexible is the medium in allowing you to change message and strategy midcourse, to fine-tune, tweak, and alter strategy?

Weighing these factors can help you develop a strategy in choosing to communicate with your constituents. You may choose one, more than one, or a mix of media to achieve your fundraising goals.

Face-to-Face Soliciting

Arguably the most effective solicitation medium has been and will continue to be face-to-face. In most cases, we think of face-to-face solicitation as being accomplished by senior development officers or highly dedicated volunteers making an appointment with a prospect and visiting him or her at home, the office, or an agreed location. There is also the “cold call” face-to-face soliciting dimension that can involve door-to-door prospecting and on-the-street solicitation of passersby, but these techniques are not feasible for soliciting existing constituents in your database.

Considering the dimension of personal solicitation of prescreened prospects at their home or office, there are a number of dimensions to consider in the nature of the communication.

Degree of Personalization: High

Face-to-face soliciting is undoubtedly the most personal of all media available to fundraisers. Usually the prospect has agreed to the visit beforehand and has time set aside to meet with the fundraiser. In this way, face-to-face fundraising is the “least disturbing” of all the communication media available.

In most cases, the fundraiser will have had time to research a prospect’s donor record, say a “Mr. Benton Smith,” and determine his interests and degree of affiliation with the organization. Good fundraisers will then be able to tailor a proposal best suited to him. Moreover, the fundraiser is no mere “solicitor,” but is a human being with a name and a face. Also, the prospect is more than a name with a donor record as well. He or she is a live human being. The warmth and immediacy of human interaction can itself set the atmosphere for a positive exchange and a positive result.

Type of Channel: Two-Way

Unlike broadcast media, direct mail, or e-mail solicitation, the prospect and the fundraiser engage in a verbal exchange. Each speaks, each listens (hopefully), and questions are posed of one another and are answered. Perhaps there is a third party involved in the decision by the prospect, a partner or a spouse. In this case, you may find three-way or more directions of communication. Questions can be answered, and objections can be immediately dealt with.

Degree of Interruption: Noninterruptive and Focused

If the donor prospect has indeed set aside the time in his or her schedule to meet with you, you are not interrupting that person in the middle of another task or activity that can distract your appeal. Therefore, the communication can be more focused, potent, and effective. Of course, there may potentially be outside forces that can interrupt the two of you: the emergency call from home, the latest minor crisis in the office, the secretary who enters the office to inform her boss that the building is on fire!

Message Timing: Immediate

Once a prospect agrees to a meeting, the communication exchange that takes place is immediate, without delay. The fundraiser makes an appeal, he or she urges, entreats, requests, or pleads. And when the solicitor makes the “ask,” he or she will likely know the result: a yes, perhaps a deferred yes, or a no. Sure, some further follow-up might be necessary in order for a decision to be made that further extends the process. But the fundraiser, at the minimum, will be able to gauge where in the process the prospect can be placed and the likelihood of receiving a gift.

Dimensionality: Multidimensional (Aural and Visual)

A face-to-face meeting is not merely an aural/verbal medium, it is also a visual one as well. Good fundraisers, of course, will carefully listen to what a prospect has to say and how he says it, his tone, and manner of expression. But really good fundraisers can key on a variety of nonverbal cues as well: facial expressions and body language.

For example, if your prospect, “Mr. Smith,” visibly pushes back from his desk with your $25,000 request, his lips narrowing in a mild grimace, you might guess that you’ve asked for too much. (Please note that prospects can also pick up on visual and aural clues as well—for example, if you lack confidence and resolve in making your solicitation!)

Good fundraisers will also notice other visual clues: the kind of car the prospect drives, the size of the office you may be visiting, and the details of the room where you are meeting, from the diploma on the wall to the pictures on the desk, and so forth. These clues can help you complete the “picture” of the prospect.

And from the fundraiser’s standpoint, he or she can augment the verbal presentation with a variety of visual aids, from pictures and printed literature that help reinforce the purpose of the appeal, to a brief multimedia aid like a PowerPoint presentation.

Let me note one simple solitary dimension available in the personal medium as well, one unavailable in any other medium, a tactile one: the nature and firmness of the prospect’s handshake upon meeting and departing.

Time of Attention: Long

The face-to-face medium affords the solicitor more time to make the appeal than other channels because both the prospect and the fundraiser have set aside the time to communicate. It represents an investment by both to come to some kind of resolution.

Mr. Smith will have invested enough time to determine whether your cause is worth supporting. You will have invested the time and the energy to tailor a solicitation appealing specifically to Mr. Smith’s interests. Perhaps that investment is only 15 minutes. Perhaps it is an hour meeting at the prospect’s office. Perhaps it is a long afternoon lunch (with a martini or two). The axiom here is the more time Mr. Smith is willing and able invest in getting to know you, your organization, its programs, and its mission, the more successful you will be in receiving a gift.

Reliability: Very High

Unless Mr. Smith, unbeknownst to you, has become suddenly unconscious, in a personal visit you know your message has gotten through, without delay, and is not subject to the multiplicity of filters.

Ability to Reach Large Numbers of Constituents: Low

Perhaps a lone development officer can arrange four or five personal visits in a single day, if he or she is superhuman. But if your database numbers are in the thousands, it could take many years to reach a majority of your constituents, necessitating other means of communicating to them.

Cost: Very High

Moreover, because so few people can be reached in a short time, the “cost per contact” is very high. Couple this with the fact that many organizations’ constituents are widely dispersed geographically, huge travel costs may come into play, further decreasing the number of them that can be practically reached and increasing the costs. While some organizations have had success in donor prospecting by door-to-door or on-the-street solicitations, cost-effective personal visitation is usually reserved for the most highly rated giving prospects, the ones that have an interest or affiliation in your cause and who can write a big check.

Flexibility: Very High

An effective solicitor who either visits Mr. Smith alone or with a colleague should undoubtedly have a strategy going in on what to say and generally how to approach Mr. Smith to gain his interest and involvement in his or her cause or project. But it may be apparent during the course of the meeting that a new strategy is needed. Effective fundraisers can tack and change course as they sail—emphasizing new details of the fundraising efforts to Mr. Smith, based on his questions and demonstrated interests.

Direct Mail Soliciting

A medium of communication that has been in existence for many years is direct mail. Nearly all nonprofits engage in direct mail soliciting to some degree. Perhaps it’s for that reason that its effectiveness has somewhat diminished over the years. There’s a lot of direct mail.

Degree of Personalization: Low-Medium

The degree of personalization in direct mail ranges from completely impersonal to somewhat personal. Only handwritten notes with text that is tailored specifically to the prospect can be considered in the very personal range. And unless you have a staff of handwriters, or you yourself are extraordinarily fast and not prone to writer’s cramp, handwritten notes in the realm of fundraising are relegated more to thank-you notes. It’s generally impractical to reach a large number in your database in this fashion.

At the other extreme you have bulk mail, mass-reproduced letters with address labels on envelopes, and somewhere in between, first-class, stamped, word-processed personalized letters.

Here the degree of personalization can vary to simply including the prospect’s address with a cheery “Dear Mr. Smith” salutation, to dropping into the body of the letter various fields from the organization’s database, like Mr. Smith’s last gift or his year of graduation. However, a savvy public is not likely fooled into thinking word-processed letters, no matter how personalized, are typed and mailed individually, therefore decreasing their potential effectiveness.

Type of Channel: One-Way, Written Communication

As fundraisers you have a need, a story, and a strategy to raise funds. This is communicated to a letter writer who in the course of a one-, two-, three-, or more page letter makes a compelling case to the prospects. But the story, the “pitch,” is going one way; there is no way for Mr. Smith to ask questions, raise objections, and have them immediately answered other than by taking the initiative to write back or call. It is a noninteractive medium.

Degree of Interruption: Noninterruptive

Generally speaking, the time involved in receiving, scanning, and reading mail is allocated at the discretion of the prospect. Mr. Smith may go out to receive the daily mail or have it dropped on his desk. Mr. Smith will scan the exteriors of the envelopes and decide which he is going to open. While it is true he may be irritated by the quantity of the mail and the unwanted bills and fundraising letters, it’s generally a mild irritation—unless it’s a summons or a formal legal complaint that could really get Mr. Smith’s ire up!

Message Timing: Delayed

The time at which your letter is sent to the time it is received can range from a few days (in the case of first-class mail) to a few weeks (in the case of bulk mail). And once the message is received and the letter is scanned or read, it may be days, weeks, or months more before Mr. Smith responds. The fundraiser has no idea how far along the channel an individual solicitation may lie.

Dimensionality: Single Dimension—Visual Written Communication

In a mailed solicitation, you are reaching Mr. Smith through only one channel—what he can see and read. Your appeal might be made more interesting and attractive through pictures, but it’s the written word that is most likely to touch Mr. Smith and move him. You cannot see Mr. Smith’s reaction to your letter or sense its effect. Indeed, you don’t even know if he received or read it.

Time of Attention: Short-Medium

The time Mr. Smith invests in paying attention to your message can vary from none to a medium length of time. Upon receiving your envelope Mr. Smith might simply glance at it and relegate it to the circular file for immediate recycling. Or he may open the letter, determine it’s just another solicitation letter, and toss it as well. Then again, something might catch his eye, pique his interest, and have him sit down and read it word for word. Perhaps he will be inspired enough by your call to action that he will actually reach for his checkbook or credit card.

Reliability: Low-Medium

The only way you have of knowing if your message was received and read is if you receive a return envelope with a check! Moreover, prospects constantly move, and much of your mail will be returned and not forwarded. And today, with the plethora of junk mail and multiplicity of solicitations of all kinds, your envelope will usually be just one of many. There is no assurance that, even if your envelope is delivered, it will be opened.

Ability to Reach Large Numbers of Constituents: High

As long as you have an address, you can send a direct mail piece. In a matter of days, either through your own in-house mail capability or sending the work to a direct mail house, you can reach out to tens, even hundreds of thousands of constituents or potential constituents with your message.

Cost: Relatively Low

On a per piece basis, the costs of reaching out to a large number of prospects is, relative to personal visits or the telephone, much lower, the main variable being the degree of personalization you want to invest in.

By personalization I mean investments you make to tailor the piece to the individual prospect. Personalizing a direct mail piece can include the appearance of a typed envelope rather than using an adhesive address label, the use of postage stamps rather than metering, and having the letter include an inside address and/or other variable fields that can help further personalize the letter to the prospect. Even if the letter you write is word-processed, you can choose to personally sign each letter that goes out, as opposed to duplicating a facsimile, and even include handwritten notes in the margin. After several hundred of these, however, you may need to put your arm in a sling for a while!

The general rule: the greater the degree of personalization, the greater the cost. And the corollary to that rule is, the better the giving potential of the prospect as measured by his or her past giving record or demonstrated affiliation or support for your cause, the more likely your investment in personalization is to pay for itself.

After all, your more valued prospects are more likely to feel less valued if they receive a form letter, more valued if they are treated more personally. On the other hand, spending huge sums to personalize a solicitation letter to a list of prospects that you have purchased from a mail house, prospects who may or may not have an interest in your cause, is unlikely to pay for itself.

There are creative costs to consider, too. You can choose to have the letter professionally written, which can be a substantial expense. Furthermore, your administrative time in managing the process and either in recruiting a constituent as signatory or drafting the letter yourself and getting it through the approval processes can be extensive. In a perfect world, the approval process would merely consist of one person: you. In the real world, it can involve superiors, separate departments, and committees. Oftentimes creating a solicitation letter ready to mail can be an underestimated challenge that can take days or months.

Flexibility: Low

To keep costs low, generally a large mailing is a one-size-fits-all approach. To segment your database and send different letters to each based on their interests or other variable criteria can increase costs substantially.

Furthermore, generally speaking, when you have an approved letter and it is dropped into the mailbox, there’s no turning back.

Even with extensive editing and approval processes, mistakes slip through: that typo that no one caught, a factual mistake, either major or minor, like the year 1935, the year you say your organization was founded, when it was really 1925; or most embarrassing, misspelling a major board member’s name, say Jennifer Adams as opposed to Genifer Edems, and then sending her letter in Mr. Edenstein’s envelope—ouch!

Also, let’s say your strategy in the letter was a bomb. Far fewer checks are appearing in your return mail than you had anticipated. YOU thought your constituents would be interested in building a new student center, and instead you find there were probably three or four other campus projects or causes that would have excited them more. Oops.

After a letter drops, with direct mail, there is no Roseanne Rosannadanna to say to your prospects: It just goes to show you, it’s always somethin’ . . . if it’s not one thin’, it’s always another—or simply: “Never mind!”

E-Mail

The advent of the Internet and wireless communications devices has created a number of channels to communicate with each other. We live in an age of web sites, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, e-mails, texting, Twittering, and online social networking services from MySpace and Facebook to LinkedIn. By the time this book goes to print, there may be yet another online innovation de jour.

But of all of these electronic channels, the one that has emerged as a very effective and inexpensive solicitation medium through which you can target a message to large number of constituents that is your database is soliciting through e-mail.

Savvy organizations have expended considerable effort in augmenting their constituent databases with e-mail addresses, such that e-mails are becoming as common a feature as addresses or telephone numbers in donor and constituent records.

An early impediment to communicating by e-mail has largely disappeared. Early e-mail addresses were often the donor’s business e-mail addresses, which could change as frequently as a donor changed jobs. But today, nearly everyone has at least a semipermanent e-mail address through one of the plethora of free or paid services that are available throughout the world. And even if someone chooses to change e-mail services, a web-savvy public is skilled enough to arrange forwarding from the old e-mail address to the new one. In this way e-mail addresses can be longer lived than a donor’s physical address.

Degree of Personalization: Low-Mid

On the whole, e-mail messaging is a less formal, more casual medium than direct mail. Today’s modern applications built for e-mail solicitation campaigns have the abilities to personalize an e-mail solicitation in many of the same ways that word processing is able to accomplish. Again, a savvy public knows what can be accomplished electronically these days, and no one believes the e-mail she is receiving is really directly from the organization’s president, or the president, for that matter!

Type of Channel: One-Way Channel

Just as with a written fundraising appeal, you still need a compelling story to raise funds. How one does this in the medium of e-mail has spawned an entirely new creative niche in fundraising, allowing the prospect electronic interactivity to information your organization may wish to make available through hyperlinks. However, in the final analysis, for all the bells and whistles you may wish to embed in an e-mail message, it is still one-way communication, even though the prospect may respond or ask a question with cyber-ease, an hour, a day, or a week later.

Degree of Interruption: Noninterruptive

Those of us who cut our e-mail teeth with America Online remember the cheerful “You’ve got mail!” as mail appeared in our inbox—so long as we were dialed up! In those days, e-mail was relatively new, and each e-mail received was a minor event, if not cause for excitement—at least we were not disturbed by their appearance!

These days many folks are online constantly and the stream of electronic messages into their inboxes is continuous. People generally look at their e-mail as they are ready to do so, either on a schedule, or as schedule permits, so when they go to their inbox, they are consciously setting aside time to review messages—even if they are on-the-go and checking through a handheld wireless device. So, your e-mail solicitation is unlikely to be interrupting something the prospect was doing.

Message Timing: Somewhat Delayed

While preparing a physical mailing can take weeks and days, and days more once the mailing is taken to the post office, a large e-mail solicitation can be sent with cyber-ease with a click from your office. From that moment, your mail will be electronically delivered in seconds anywhere in the world.