It’s a Perfect Time to Call Home!
With less than 25 days until year end, what do you think is the very best use of your fundraising time? Easy!!! Get on the phone and call home, your donor’s home that is!
Perhaps you need to put some numbers to this ‘calling home’ so consider these numbers: 1 out of every four of your donors would give you more if you gave them a call. Get out paper and pencil and let’s really look at this. If you make time to call 500 of your donors and all of those 500 gave you just $25 more, that adds $12,000 to your year end goal! Makes you want to get on the phone right now, doesn’t it? And we’re not talking your major donors and we’re not talking a major ask. just a warm hello, a thank you with a short sweet story that shows the, what their support has accomplished and holiday best wishes! And, if you are lucky enough to have thousands of donors, you can get some help from your board or volunteers.
Now let’s take a look at your lapsed list that still has not responded to your 2015 lapsed mailing. the experts say that if you give those lapsed donors a call, 19% would say yes to a donation request. 50% won’t answer, 27% will say no and 19% will say yes. Thiis is according to Simon Scrive of TotalFundraising at changefundraising.com
So yo have an annual fundraising event? Let’s call them and ask for a year end donation. Simon says that 25% will say no and 8% will say yes (67% you can’t reach). This is beginning to sound really productive, don’t you think? And really fun, too. You get better and better with each call, get to know your donors better, get really interesting feedback and feel really productive. You can also talk about the dates of your event in 2016 and what fun you’re going to have! Bragging about this great event can have huge impact on building attendance and support.
Now here is the best statistic of all! If you call your NEW Donors, you will boost their retention by 30%!! Is that wild or what? And we all know how hard it is to get new donors to stick around! Check out this Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/smaclaughlin/50-fascinating-nonprofit-statistics. You will be calling those New Donors as soon as you finish reading this fundraising blog.
Let’s talk about the call. You need to have an outline that asks questions that lead to “Yes.”
Introduce yourself and your position at organization. Ask if they have time to talk now. If they say they do, thank them sincerely and profusely for their support. Say, “It is wonderful that you are doing this” and let them talk. Ask them what it was that prompted their first gift. LISTEN! Tell them a short moving story that shows the beauty of their gift. Tell them you are making year end calls to see if you can get $25 more from each donor to make more stories like this happen. Ask “Can you Help?” and LISTEN!
Year End calls could also ask for an upgrade to monthly giving and I will tackle that in another blog. This is enough right now to get you to the phone to call home! Good Luck!
