Before the Phonathon
1.
Get a good location.
A bank, private company, phone company, law office, or
another site with many phone lines will work best. Try to arrange
free use of phones with charges only for long-distance calls. Find a
comfortable, central location with easy parking. Remember, just
having a lot of telephones is not enough; your site must have enough
different phone lines going out so that many callers can work
concurrently. Make sure you can serve food and beverages.
2.
Choose the best evenings. Tuesday, Wednesday and
Thursday, 6:30-9:30 p.m., have traditionally proven most productive.
Beware of local and national holidays, all religious
holidays, high-interest sports activities, and very popular
television specials.
3.
Allow four to six weeks to recruit volunteers.
Recruit one-third more helpers than you need, because some will not
show up, and plan to have double the number of workers as phones.
This way people can take turns with a partner, making the calls and
writing the thank-you notes, or the shy people can take the clerical
jobs.
4.
Remind volunteers one week in advance, and on the
day before the phonothon.
5.
Plan for food and drink. This is a real key to a
good evening. The better the food, the more congenial your
volunteers will be. Decide whether you feel comfortable asking
volunteers to bring food. If not, have a staff member take
responsibility, but in no case overlook treats!
6.
Ask a photographer to come. It makes it an event
and can be useful later on for PR.
7.
Compile a good prospect list. Decide whom you will
focus on: new prospects, faithful donors, lapsed members, $10
donors, and so on. This may provide you with a theme and your
callers with a “good excuse” if the prospects ask why they are
being called. It also gives you a logical and manageable way to
prepare the lists.
8.
Provide your callers with neat, thorough
information. They need concrete information on the camp, the budget,
and the amount given by each donor last year. Occasionally, they
will need the donor’s full giving history (if you are asking for
larger gifts, or increases). They also need each prospect’s name,
address, phone number, and relationship to the organization.
9.
Develop a pledge card that can record the necessary
information and be sent the next day to the people who pledged. Make
sure you keep carbons or photocopies for your files. Don’t print
any confidential information about the caller or the conversation on
the copy that goes to your donor.
10.
Put together packets of printed materials,
including blank letterhead or other thank-you notes and summary
sheets so the calling teams can document each phone call and thank
each pledging donor as they work through their lists.
11.
Send a letter and return envelope to all
prospective donors a few weeks prior to the phonathon and offer them
the opportunity to give immediately to avoid being called. State the
time and date of the planned phonathon, and promise that you’ll
remove their name from the evening’s calling if they send a
contribution immediately. This works wonderfully!
12.
Arrange in advance for a “clean-up crew” that
will stay late and tidy up the site. Workers do not want to arrive
at work in the morning to find dirty cups, miscellaneous papers and
doodles, and food crumbs on their desks!
13.
Check in with your site a day or two in advance and
make certain they have remembered. Make sure you know how to get
into the building if it is usually locked, where your volunteers
should park, where you should set up food or plug in coffee pots,
and most importantly, how to use the phones! Find out if you should
keep written logs of all calls made, or all long-distance calls. Be
appreciative and cooperative.
14.
Purchase stamps in advance so you can mail all the
pledges and thank-you cards when you leave the phonathon. Your
prospects will be thanked, and receive their pledge reminder, while
the call is still fresh in their minds.
During
the Phonathon
15.
Each caller should have a packet with pens, note
pad, matching gift or other informative pamphlets, facts about the
organization, answers to anticipated questions and thank-you notes.
Be prepared with extras.
16.
Train your Volunteers! Don’t make any assumptions
about the knowledge, comfort level, or conversational ability of
your callers. Your brief introduction should include:
q
The mission of the organization
q
The total funds needed, and the goal for the phonathon
q
Explanation of packet of materials and prospect
information
q
Confidentiality
q
How to use the phones
q
Recommend script and length of calls
q
How to create written records and thank-you notes
q
Teamwork
q
A demonstration or brief role play
q
Encouragement
17.
Ask your volunteers for pledges! Anyone who has not
yet given to the fund should make a pledge or gift before starting
to make calls. Commitment shows in the voice!
18.
Assign rovers to gather information and continually
update a big visible progress report. The same people can refresh
supplies of information, thank-you notes and stamps. This is a good
job for staff or experienced volunteers, because the rovers will
also answer many extra questions and do a lot of hand-holding.
19.
Set goals. Set one overall phonathon goal, and a
goal for each phoning session. Also, set goals for calls in each
gift category, such as new donors, lapsed donors, and so on. Callers
should feel free to talk about the organization. Build their
enthusiasm and knowledge in the training session and you’ll garner
as much in good public relations as in donations.
20.
An energetic phonathon should last two and one-half
to three hours, unless you’ve provided for new troops of callers
to arrive and take over mid-way. It’s too much to ask anyone to
talk non-stop for more than three hours.
21.
Ask your volunteers to fill out questionnaires
before they leave, with suggestions to improve your next phonathon.
And if you have another scheduled for the very next night, try to
implement changes immediately.
After
The Phonathon
22.
On your way home, mail all completed thank-you
notes to contributors.
23.
Write down everything your learned. All your
mistakes, your great ideas, your successes, the things the
volunteers liked, the good and bad aspects of the site, how the
volunteers liked the refreshments, the general energy and spirit of
the event, and anything else that seems relevant.
24.
Compute your statistics. You and your volunteers
will be more gratified if you know:
q
Number and dollar amount of specified pledges
q
Number of unspecified pledges
q
Total number of prospects reached
q
Number of people not home
q
Number of people who could not or would not give
q
Average amount of pledge
25.
Send a summary of results, along with a personal
thank-you note, to each volunteer who worked on any phase of your phonathon.
Remember to thank them for any pledges they personally made the
night of the phonathon too.
26.
Before you do the phonathon next year, review your
notes and revamp your planning to include suggestions and lessons
learned.
Keep A Positive Attitude
27.
Remember that statistics have shown that 5% of your
prospects are truly unable to give, and as many as 50% won’t be
home. Experience also shows that pledges of unspecified amounts may
add up to as much as 50% of the total raised!
28.
Keep your options open for other forms of
fundraising in addition to the phonathon. Different people respond
to different approaches. The more methods you use, the more donors
you will attract.
Source:
Keep the Money Coming by
Christin Graham. Copyright
1992. Pineapple Press. Used by Permission. Adapted for a book by Brian Kluth,
"Out of the Woods: Funding Christian Camps and Conference
Centers".
For additional generosity
resources, visit: www.kluth.org
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