Five Ways to Improve Your Phonathon ROI

While phonathon continues to be one of the most effective fundraising channels, it can be more costly than some of the other annual giving channels because phonathon requires a high level of human interaction for each solicitation. Here are five things that can improve your phonathon’s total return on investment and help you better see the rewards from this great interaction with donors.

1. Bring Your Best Data: You should be providing the best possible information to your student callers or your phonathon provider, including the last gift date for prospects and much of their involvement and history. This drives a highly personal call and provides a service to loyal donors who might not remember the date or even amount of their last gift. You’ll also want to invest in data enrichment, finding the best possible address and cell phone information before you make calls. Cell append is cost effective and provides a great return. Grab last year’s phonathon results and head to our calculator to find out what more numbers could mean for you.

2. Don’t Forget Acquisition and Leadership: Make sure to diversify your effort to both renewal and acquisition. I took a look at phonathon programs that booked over $1 million in pledges during the last three fiscal years, and found that they call a wide range of prospects:

Ruffalo Noel Levitz $1 Million+ Pledge Phonathons

2012-2014 CONTACTS:

LYBUNTS: 22%

SYBUNTS: 24%

New Donor Prospects: 54%

That’s right, million dollar plus phonathons got there while still spending over half their current year solicitation contacts on new donors. The pledges in the new donor group were definitely more expensive to get, but acquisition remains a big part of successful phonathons.

How do they pay for it? Top phonathons also call leadership prospects, and these pledges add up to a substantial portion of phonathon revenue. From 2007 to 2014 on campus phonathons we have in our database collected over 72,000 pledges of $500 or more, representing over $35 million dollars. A good benchmark is to have more than 2% of your pledges at $500 or more. If you are blocking all leadership prospects, it’s time to re-evaluate.

3. Reduce Friction: You want the option to give immediately via credit and debit card available during the call, and quickly. You should accept all card types (AmEx, I’m looking at you). While some options may cost you more based on your processing provider, just a few donors who give immediately rather than ask for a pledge card and then forget to send it in with a check will make up the difference. Suggest the card types you would most like, but have all options available.

A lot of donors will also ask for a pledge card and then give online when it’s time to pay their bills. A study last year of online giving portals showed that giving takes almost 20 seconds longer on average than making an online purchase. We need to fix this as an industry and removing clicks for donors is the first step. Optimizing your online giving portal will improve your phonathon fulfillment and total ROI.

4. Maximize The Call: This is a broad category, covering everything from your ask levels to making sure to ask more than once in each call and negotiate upgrades when possible. You’ll also want to just make sure that the calls are well structured to maximize the time. When I took a look at calls over the past seven years (about $700 million in pledges), I found that calls with pledges to the zip codes with the highest income in the US were slightly shorter than average. Your best prospects don’t just expect a good call, they demand a more efficient call.

5. Loop It Back: If you’re making good calls, you’ll be finding out a lot of information about donors, from new addresses to new employers as well as spouse information. Be sure to feed that back into your CRM before you send your next appeal or start the next phonathon season. Make sure major gift qualification information (think titles like VP, CEO and “I put you in the will”) are shared with your team. Gift officers love pre-qualified leads and your phonathon is a great place to get them.

More insights like this will be flowing at the Ruffalo Noel Levitz Annual Fundraising Conference, an action-oriented and data-driven gathering of professionals looking to improve their fundraising programs. Check out our conference page for more information.