Some days I wish I could call an emergency meeting of all Agitator readers, if for no other reason than to get your immediate reaction to one or another of our insane ideas — or at least Tom’s insane ideas.

Until last week I figured that the time, cost and logistics of reaching 5,000 Agitatees would be prohibitive or impossible. Now I know better.

Turns out that for little more than $1,500 we could hold an Agitator Telephone Town Meeting. All we need are readers’ phone numbers, and within minutes we could reach every one by phone and patch them into the Agitator Emergency Meeting.

Let me explain.

Two weeks ago I ran into Marty Stone, a high-energy political and nonprofit strategist, whom I hadn’t seen for 15 years. Marty runs a high-tech, high-touch telephone operation in Washington, D.C. called Stones’ Phones. He brought me up to date with a report on his various recent activities on behalf of progressive politicians and causes.

Marty’s ‘Telephone Town Halls’ offering especially impressed me. So I asked for details and also asked him to put me in direct touch with a nonprofit fundraiser who’s used his Town Halls. He did. And so I also talked with Steve Kehrli, a bright, exceptionally innovative fundraiser, who’s Director of Development at The PETA Foundation.

Before I outline how all this works, let me tell you why I think most Agitator readers will want to know more about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of Telephone Town Meetings.

• Unlike many technologies suitable only for large organizations with big budgets, this approach can be used by groups with as few as 500 donors and as many as 5 million.

• Unlike conference calls, Telephone Town Meetings are triggered by outbound calls to the participants. Consequently they can be used for a variety of purposes — fundraising, surveying, polling, enlisting volunteers, stewardship reporting, organizing advocates, etc.

• And you can combine various functions. For example, you could hold an emergency meeting on some advocacy issue to inform your donors, and then also raise money and enlist activists at the same event.

• The technology is easy to use, yields tons of actionable data and, from what I’ve seen, is so effective and inexpensive you’ll wonder why you aren’t holding your first or next telephone town meeting tomorrow.

To double-check, or at least curb, my enthusiasm I reached out to Steve Kehrli of PETA for a reality check. If anything, Steve was more enthusiastic than I, as he reported that:

• PETA holds telephone town meetings not for fundraising per se, but to introduce donors to campaigns, to expose donors to PETA’s energetic and committed staff and to get donor questions and testimonials.

• Donors who make larger gifts love telephone town halls. These givers showed dramatic increases in subsequent giving from the mere fact they were invited, even if they didn’t attend.

• The meeting itself boosts response. Although the main purpose of PETA’s town halls isn’t fundraising, those who listened to some or all of the meeting gave 60% more than those who only heard about it. And those who stayed on the meeting call for over 15 minutes donated 3.5 times more than those who only heard about it.

• Steve believes, and is now running analysis to confirm his belief, that the mere invitation to these meetings is boosting overall retention rates — whether the invitee attends or not. [Ed. Note: This would be in keeping with what we’ve found in our studies involving the benefits of seeking donor feedback.]

In brief, this is how a Telephone Town Hall Meeting works:

• A lot like a radio call-in show, the town hall meeting allows participants to interact with the organization’s speakers from the comfort of the donors’ homes or offices.

• The process starts the day before the event with a 30-second automated pre-call to participants inviting them to the event. The day of the event another call welcomes them to the event and asks them to simply stay on the line to join.

• Steve told me that for those folks for whom PETA doesn’t have phone numbers, they send out a postcard giving a call-in number or urging the invitee to send in a phone number. Great way to build a more accurate donor base.

• According to the stats I’ve seen, this invitational call is 10 times more effective at increasing participation than a conference call, where callers must remember to dial into the event.

• The entire event is controlled through a web interface, allowing the moderator to bring in participants live and to present interactive survey questions. The meeting is up and running within the first few minutes from the time the outbound calls begin.

• The meeting is recorded so those supporters who cannot attend are presented with it the following day.

More technically inclined or detail-oriented Agitator readers can get a video overview and also see the training videos for moderators and nonprofit staff by going here. The system works in any country.

What do you think?

Roger

P.S. It occurs to me that maybe we should have a non-emergency meeting of Agitator subscribers to see first hand how all this works and to answer questions and discuss innovative applications.

Let me know if you’d like to participate and I’ll see if Marty and Steve will join us. You can reach me at Roger@theagitator.net.

This special Agitator Town Meeting will be free for Agitator Subscribers only. So here’s the shameless plug to Subscribe now, at whatever rate you wish, if you haven’t already. Subscribe.