Organization Tries New Approach to Building Ties With Donors

For nearly five years, the Heritage Foundation struggled with the question of how to build stronger ties with people who give between $1,000 and $10,000. Now, the organization thinks it has found the answer: outsourcing.

Since September, the Washington think tank has hired a telemarketing firm to provide three people to serve as representatives for its President’s Club.

Each representative is charged with building relationships with about 500 donors through personal phone calls and e-mail messages. Heritage plans to bring the representatives to its twice-yearly meetings for President’s Club members in Washington.

In the nine months since the effort started, the organization has learned about several bequests that supporters have created to benefit Heritage, and several other donors have increased their annual contributions to $10,000 or more.

“Anytime you pay attention in a personal way to a donor you make them feel wanted, you make them feel needed, you make them feel part of your organization,” says Carsten E. Walter, director of membership programs and development operations.

The stakes are high because roughly 60 percent of the donors who make gifts of $10,000 or more to the organization start out as direct-mail or telephone donors and work their way up, says Mr. Walter. Heritage, he says, considered the new approach for several years before actually putting it in place.

“The thought pattern was, ‘We have enough internal staff. We’ll give everyone 50 names to call,’” he says. “But the reality of any nonprofit is you never have enough staff, and no one has free time.”

Mr. Walter says that fund-raising colleagues at other organizations also want to do more to cultivate donors who give moderate-size donations — but that the tack Heritage has adopted makes them nervous.

“They’re afraid to outsource it, because you’re taking what are potentially your next board members, your next $10,000 or $100,000 donor and putting them out for someone else to build a relationship with,” he says. “My argument is, ‘Well, right now you have no relationship with these people.’”