Here’s What 65 Engagement Center Professionals Say About Donor Outreach for 2022

You’ve been hearing from us over the past few years about transforming your donor outreach to an omnichannel strategy using student ambassadors who engage donors via phone, text, email, and personalized video. Our campus partners do this through the RNL Digital Engagement Center, powered by the RNL Engage donor engagement platform. One great feature of RNL Engage is that it comes with a community: RNL experts and your peers who are ready to share strategy and key tips to maximize everyone’s success.

Last month, we held our first RNL Engage workshop of 2022. More than 65 partners on the platform gathered virtually to talk about the best ways to engage donors and maximize ROI. Before the event, we surveyed our partners to ask about key strategies and challenges regarding donor outreach for 2022. Here’s what the community said.

87 percent of donor engagement programs in higher education are adopting texting, and other channels are growing

Texting runs our lives these days, and it was great to hear from RNL partners that they are growing their reach and boosting ROI by using the integrated texting tools in RNL Engage. Nearly 9 out of 10 say they are using texting now or will soon. More than half have expanded texting outreach beyond just solicitation and pledge fulfillment to broader outreach engagement.

Staffing is a key concern, and pay is going up for student engagement ambassadors

A competitive labor market and ongoing pandemic uncertainty has made it very tough for institutions to recruit student ambassadors, with more than half of engagement centers say that staffing is a concern this year. But nearly half also say that they’ve moved to pay more in their engagement centers than other campus jobs.

Increasing pay is a key strategy, and since you’re asking students to reach out in an engaging way to donors who will some day be your major gift pipeline, I firmly believe you should pay them (a lot) more than the average campus job. But you’ll also need to utilize key recruitment tactics like making it easy to apply, engaging your current ambassadors to refer friends, and emphasizing the impact and fun of the job.

Ambassador retention is also key, and centers are offering benefits such as bonuses, gift cards from local businesses, and scheduling flexibility/days off to help keep their ambassadors. Investing in both recruitment and retention of student ambassadors is just as important as tech and training. We’re also happy to talk with you about what the best institutions are doing with their student ambassadors, just reach out and we’ll set up a time to talk.

Donor outreach for 2022 is about more than calling, and student engagement ambassadors are part of an omnichannel approach

We asked what other things beyond calling that engagement ambassadors do, and here’s what we heard:

• Responding individually to texts from donors.
• Recording videos.
• Writing personal thank you notes and sending them out.
• Assisting with the student philanthropy initiative and giving day.

We’ve seen huge growth with great, integrated technology like personalized video powered by Thankview. Student ambassadors can record videos in advance of dialing the phone, or even make custom messages to send after a great conversation or to donors who didn’t pick up. Integrating these tools with dialing can boost your results for giving by up to 300 percent. We use our phones for so much more than calls, and RNL partners have leaned into the potential that smartphones offer for engagement.

Level up your donor engagement, and join a vibrant community of innovators

Does your engagement platform come with a community and experts ready to help you craft the best strategy? If the answer is no, it might be time for a switch. Contact us today to join a vibrant group of engagement leaders who are transforming the way we reach out to donors, and maximize the joy of giving. We’ve got the tech, the experts, and peers ready to help you, today.

Transform donor engagement with RNL Engage

Connect with donors the way they want to interact with you: through texting, email, video, and calling, to create continuous, ongoing engagement. RNL Engage makes it easier than ever to manage outreach at scale and create instant opportunities for donors to give.

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