The Future of College Phone-athons: How One State University Is Adapting

Meg Weber, executive director of annual giving at Colorado State University, made a counterintuitive change to the college’s phone-athon fundraising strategy in 2016. Like many telemarketing efforts, CSU’s phone-athon program was struggling to make an impact as people became less and less likely to answer a call from an unknown number. To boost telephone donations, Weber decided to call fewer people.

A New Reality

“If somebody asks you out on a date for 10 years straight and you keep saying no or ignoring them, at some point it becomes stalking, right?” Weber says. “We just decided that probably it was time for us to go ahead and give it up.”

Students working the phones stopped calling any alumni who had not answered a phone-athon call in 10 years. That culled 70,000 numbers from the list. The college also cut the number of call stations from 20 to 13, hired fewer students, and reduced the phone-athon budget by more than $100,000.

The move, while drastic, helped the college get real about how its donors were giving. Weber says that CSU even cut phone numbers of alums who gave frequently but never by phone.

The risk paid off that first year: The number of alumni gifts climbed from 4,352 to 4,544. The improvement wasn’t staggering, but Weber was able to use the money she saved by shrinking the program to hire a staff member to work on digital marketing, a fast-growing area of the university’s fundraising. CSU raised more online in 2018 than it ever had before. .

The second year of calling fewer people overlapped with a major spike in robocalls in Colorado, Weber said. As a result, the number of alumni donations dropped precipitously to 2,595 gifts in fiscal year 2018. By the third year of the downsized program, donations stayed more or less flat, totaling a disappointing 2,412 alumni gifts. Trying to attract more gifts from fewer callers is a challenge, but, Weber notes “our average pledge is up so the people that we talk to are giving.”

Interestingly, the largest share of alumni givers is the youngest, those who graduated from 2010 to 2019. Weber suspects that this age group is most likely to recognize the main campus phone number when they get a call. Even so, those donors account for only 25 percent of all alumni who give by phone so CSU plans to keep adjusting its phone-athon program.

Another Revamp Lies Ahead

Three years after the phone-athon shake-up, another redesign is underway. Weber doubts the college will ever scrap the program entirely because 15 percent of its donors only give over the phone.

Even so, as the way people use their phones evolves, Weber says fundraising must adapt. She expects the revised program, likely to launch in January, to call even fewer people and focus more on personalizing outreach. Alums will be divided into affinity groups of around 700 people based on the programs, such as athletics or scholarships, to which they’ve given in the past. Phone-athon staff will send texts and emails to their assigned affinity group to update them about relevant school news, such as a big game or an alumni event near their home. Weber says she plans to invite alumni to fill out an online survey about their interests, so the staff can share information alumni will find interesting.

Weber hopes this sustained communication will keep donors more connected to the college, increase their likelihood to give in the future, and inspire larger gifts. Looking ahead, Weber says, “It’s still about phones, but it doesn’t have to be a phone call.”

Emily Haynes has covered fundraising on social media, Giving USA’s annual report on giving trends, and how the ALS Association found success with the ice-bucket challenge.