How are your relationships with alumni?
You should take a good look at your current alumni relations activity and strategy, so that you know where you stand. You can certainly run your first telephone campaign while you’re still establishing your programme, but you’ll just need to be clear-headed about how you’re going to back the campaign up afterwards with alumni communications and events.
Does everyone in your institution understand that telephone fundraising is a long-term process?
A programme of telephone fundraising will really work for you if you plan it cumulatively over the long term.
Telephone fundraising is not the tool to use to inflate income in just one year, since the bulk of the profit arrives from monthly gifts as they continue into their second year and onwards. The average length of a Direct Debit gift to charity is 7 years. They are a wonderful source of income but you have to be patient! As your programme matures, your annual Return On Investment will increase.
If you have unrealistic profit targets set for your first year, the temptation is always to chase cash and credit card gifts. They make your short-term figures look good, but will damage your long-term income.
How are you going to accept regular gifts?
By far the best way, if you have time to set it up, will be Direct Debit. Direct Debits are easier to administer in the long run, particularly when it comes to donors increasing their regular gifts to you.
Getting set up for Direct Debit requires you to apply through your bank, and in our experience the process takes at least 8 weeks, although some banks appear to be better than others.
If you don’t have the time to set Direct Debit up in house, there may still be a short-term solution available, like using the Charities Aid Foundation’s (CAF) donor management services.
How are you going to get the data out?
If you’re using The Raiser’s Edge, Progress, Visual Alms, DonorStrategy, or any other database built for fundraising this shouldn’t be a problem, but some other databases can have awkward export procedures.
Data is always the worst potential bottleneck in a campaign, particularly if you suddenly discover you’re not able to get the data out the way you want it. If you’ve never run an export before, make sure you can get hold of someone who will show you how to do it (or will do it for you)!
What data do you want to put back in after the campaign?
As well as raising you money, a telephone campaign will give you lots of information too, from your students’ conversations with alumni. And they’ll expect you to remember it if you contact them again in future!
So make sure you’ve thought through what information you must have (contact details, employment information etc) and what information you’d like to have (are they thinking about leaving us a gift in their will?). Then you can make sure it is dealt with in a structured way through the campaign.
