Nurture your donors with a call

A verbal conversation is still the most effective method of communication, especially when it comes to developing donor relationships. Margie Read Flavell explains how telefundraising can be used to nurture your donors.

Nonprofits are increasingly realising the value of a telephone conversation with both their potential and loyal supporters, as well as the ways in which their organisation can benefit from this communication.

While the telephone has long been used in fundraising, it’s those organisations with a long-term telefundraising strategy that are reaping the rewards. There is a specific methodology to nurturing donors utilising the telephone. The following are some ideas on how to develop a new donor into a long-term supporter, while Figure A outlines a strategy for a structured acquisition and nurture program.

Where is my next donor coming from?

When it comes to acquiring new donors, the personal interaction that comes from a telephone call has proven it can achieve impressive results. One nonprofit I’ve worked with tracked a direct mail campaign against their phone component and achieved a conversion rate of 8% by phone, compared to 2.2% through the mail.

Such results are achieved by designing a well written script which can be flexible in its delivery. This allows the caller to answer any question the prospective donor might ask, ensuring you’re delivering a consistent and convincing message. Even if a prospective donor decides not to support your cause at that time, a well composed script will leave a positive impression about your organisation and its work.

Don’t think telephoning isn’t for your organisation because it only has a small database, either. Lists can be rented from a number of sources, and you can increase the potential results through good segmentation techniques.

Profiling your existing donors to find the common characteristics shared by supporters of your cause is a good idea in this instance. It can give you a guide of which people on the rented list you can expect to get the best conversion from and therefore should approach first.

Love your donor – not just for cash

Once you’ve had success in acquiring a donation by telephone, your telephone program can then look to nurture that donor to further support your cause. After one or two successful donations, another call can be made to take the relationship to a new level by converting the donor to your regular giving program.

For existing regular givers, the personal nature of a phone call can help ascertain the individual needs of these valued donors. That call might be to upgrade their regular gift amount or it could be a nurture call, perhaps to check if the donor is okay during a natural disaster and offering to delay their next gift.

During a recent campaign of this type a client had a 100% success rate of donors not delaying their gift, plus it strengthened the bond between the organisation and its donors. This type of call has long-lasting benefits by increasing the donor lifecycle. By listening to your donors’ needs, you can also lower the attrition rate your database experiences.

Source: OURTEL Solutions

Get a donation and update your database

Another benefit of the telephone is its use in cleansing your database. If a donor has changed address, mobile number or email address it can be checked and updated during the course of any type of call to that donor – whether it’s a thank you call, a random cash ask or an annual upgrade phone call to regular givers.

Ensuring you have the most up-to-date data on your donors will improve the reach and maximise the potential return on all of your communications with that donor – whether it’s by phone, email or direct mail. For this reason, many organisations opt to regularly run a data cleansing call program, specifically for this purpose.

A telephone program can help at every level of the donor lifecycle. You can even create a telephone campaign to setup appointments with potential bequestors you’ve identified through mining your database. Again, nurture, inform, involve and upgrade.