Five years ago today Tom posted on Telefundraising Works, calling it the “neglected stepchild of fundraising.” That post generated significant and helpful comments on approach and technique. Today, 60 months later, we’d appreciate an update from our readers on what’s what and what’s working with this “neglected stepchild”.

Here’re some readers’ comments from 5 years ago:

First, from Adrian Salmon, writing about the experience of Save the Children UK:

They printed full-page colour advertisements in newspapers asking readers to text in the word ‘ceasefire’ to show their support for Gaza, and mailed their existing supporters with an ask to text. They got 183,000 people replying to the text petition – that’s a ton of mobile phone numbers they didn’t have before.

 Then they tested calling back 4,000 of the responders to convert them to regular givers. They found that an unrestricted regular gift ask far outperformed a cash ask. That’s a great and brave use of testing – conventional wisdom would have said the cash ask would have been by far the safer bet with these ‘untried’ prospects.

 So by doing this they raised enough money to call all of the 183,000 mobile numbers and made 104,000 contacts.

 They ended up with 8,500 more regular donors – 10% response straight to monthly giving – and 12-month direct debit income of £704,000 where they’d expected £280,000.

Message: the telephone works!

And these comments from fundraiser Alison Keys suggest why:

Yes, telefundraising works very well because tele-fundraisers have the most intimate form of contact with donors…

 Telefundraising or telephone solicitation is when a charity calls its past and or its present donors for a specific reason. Usually the goal is two-fold:

One to touch base with their supporters in a more personal way giving them real time updates and a chance to ask questions concerning their charity.

 Two is usually to ask for the donor to change the way they support from one or two donations a year to a monthly and I can assure you this does involve two way conversations. Just explaining the benefits both to the donor and the charity takes training and personality, things that cannot be put into a direct mail piece.

 But if we accept the first “no” our results would tank and clients would not be happy. But this (we call them rebuttals) is another thing that has to be done correctly and respectfully.

The word NO … In the years that I have been calling donors for a charity I can count on two hands how many times a donor has just said NO. There is always a reason or excuse. A caller will empathize, understand even agree with the donor and find the best way to solve the donors reluctance… example “No money now” — “That’s one of the reasons we have monthly giving, a small amount a month will be affordable”. Then explain the benefits to both the charity and the donor. The caller has seconds to determine what is the best response to the reason for not giving now.

For direct mail if it doesn’t work there are weeks and months to fine tune a different approach to try to have the donor respond.

Message: A telephone call is the most intimate contact most organizations will have with their donors … a real-time dialogue. Therefore, callers must be very well trained to listen and respond effectively. And the best application is an up-sell — with conversion to monthly giving the most effective approach.

With all the buzz surrounding online fundraising — and capturing those valuable email addresses — I wonder how many groups have given up on asking for telephone numbers?

The Save the Children UK example is especially valuable in this regard. They managed to tap into the cell phone universe through a call-to-action … they didn’t need to ask for the phone number.

With more and more donors using mobile devices, this two-step approach is the way of the future.

Roger