Telephone Fundraising
A quick guide to fundraising by telephone
How many contacts do you need to have in order to run a calling campaign?
If you call yourselves, you can manage with as few as you like. But if you want a professional fundraising company to do the calls for you, then you would probably need around 1000 calls minimum. Today, around 66% of calls go unanswered, so that means around 3000 contacts. Any less than this, and people will keep getting called too regularly. About ten call attempts is standard.
Do I need permission to ring people?
You need to check if people are registered on the Telephone Preference Service. If they are, then you can't ring without specific permission. (And most landline numbers are registered on the TPS.) But it is good practice to have people's permission anyway.
How much does a calling campaign cost?
As a very rough rule of thumb, it might cost around £5 for a phone call asking people to sign up to direct debit, but you only pay for actual conversations. It might cost less for another kind of campaign. Don't forget to include set-up fees, although these aren't usually that expensive. It might all sound a lot, but you are paying for expertly trained staff, and the software that can keep dialling and rescheduling automatically.
Is telephone fundraising successful?
On average, telephone fundraising has about 10 times the response rate as mail, so it is indeed successful. Sometimes it gets a bad press, but actually donors who are called are often happier than donors who aren't; the telephone can be a very personal way of keeping in touch with donors.
How do I get telephone numbers to ring?
Be creative! Do you have a free gift you can send by post or online, in return for a phone call? Make sure that the offer is completely transparent and upfront about the fact you will be making a fundraising call. Can you call existing direct debit members to upgrade them? Usually around a third do upgrade, so this is well worth doing.