We’ve written about the importance of effective online fundraising strategies in the past. Online fundraising is especially important during times like these when we may not be able to meet with donors in person. But that’s not the only way to get your donor’s support or attention. If you’re looking for one more way to connect with donors, you should consider phone fundraising.
In this blog post, we’ve written about how you can go about fundraising over the phone and included a phone fundraising script and checklist for you so you’re prepared going into the conversation.
First, what is phone fundraising? Phone fundraising or telephone fundraising is the act of raising money over the phone. This can include making a phone call to a potential donor, which is what we address in this post, or by asking for a donation via text-to-give software.
First, decide who you are going to call and why.
Are you hoping to connect with volunteers and see if they’ll take their engagement further and make a donation? Are you calling lapsed donors to try to get them to give again? Are you calling one-off donors to see if they’ll become recurring donors? Are you calling major donors to ask for a gift for a specific project that you’ve got planned?
The bottom line: You should know who you’re calling and what you’re going to ask for before you pick up the phone!
Once you know who you’re calling and why, you need to decide who is going to be making these calls and have them prepare as much as possible. This includes having them practice different scenarios so they’re comfortable speaking with the potential donor. If you’re asking for a bigger gift, you may want to have the nonprofit CEO or founder or a board member call and make the ask.
You may run into various reasons that people are hesitant to give. Check out the Candid Blog to see various types of hesitations and how you can respond to those.
Finally, you’ll also want to decide if you’re going to leave a voicemail if the person doesn’t answer. The reality is that a lot of people keep their phones on Do Not Disturb or send numbers they don’t recognize directly to voicemail. If you are going to leave a voicemail, make sure you have prepared that message so you keep it short and sweet.
We’ve all been on the receiving end of telemarketing calls where you can tell the person is reading from a script. You can’t afford to make the potential donor think that you don’t care about them as a person, which means you need this call to feel like a genuine conversation.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan going into the call. In fact, we highly recommend that. At the bottom of this post, we’ve included a PDF of a checklist of all the information you should have on hand before you pick up the phone.
This isn’t a chance for you to say what you have to say and then hang up. Pay attention to your donor’s tone, what they find interesting, or what resonates with them, and ask them questions to further engage with them. Think of how you prefer to be spoken to and keep that in mind when making these calls.
In short, we recommend doing the following:
We’ll share more in a future post about another great option to raise money over the phone with text-to-give options.
In the meantime, just remember that if you’re going to use the phone to raise funds, you should also use it to thank your donors with a donation acknowledgment letter. Keep a list of donors who seemed pleasantly surprised to hear from you and make sure you follow up with them in the future and let them know about the impact their gift has made.
Download our free fundraising call checklist and pick up the phone feeling confident in your ask.
