Charities Pick Up New Ways of Reaching Elusive Donors by Phone

When the Wyoming Seminary, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., held its annual phone-athon last year, volunteers called thousands of alumni, students’ parents, and friends of the institution. But while the telephone was still the star player in the event, participants had some new tools to reach prospective donors who didn’t pick up.

For the first time, students, faculty, and alumni who participated in the two-week drive were armed with laptops, enabling them to use social-media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to try to contact hard-to-reach prospects.

John Shafer, the school’s vice president for advancement, says that the new approach is much needed as donations decline from old-fashioned telephone fundraising.

“It’s gotten harder and harder for us to reach people,” says Mr. Shafer, who notes that the four-decades-old phone-athon once provided as much as 40 percent of the donations to the school’s annual fund. Today, he says, that figure is closer to 10 percent.

Billed as a “connectathon,” the event began with an e-mail to past and prospective supporters of the school, followed by a traditional phone call—and, finally, a social-media appeal.

“Trying to integrate e-mail and social media into phone calling seemed like the obvious solution—but it’s still very much a work in progress,” says Mr. Shafer, who says that fundraising totals were similar to those in recent years. “We’re acknowledging how hard it is.”

Nobody Home

As more Americans ditch their landline phones—more than one in four don’t have one, according to federal statistics—and it’s getting easier to screen calls, many charities are looking for ways to transform how they use the phone to solicit.

Meryl Sheriden, chief development officer at Horizons for Homeless Children, in Boston, says her organization continues to rely on telephone calls to raise money, especially for its year-end appeal. But fundraisers now try to be much more strategic about phone calls.

“We spend a lot more time thinking about how to make calls that are going to pay off,” she says.

Gone are the blanket phone appeals to the charity’s entire database of 4,000 donors. Instead, Ms. Sheriden and her colleagues try to identify donors who have consistently given at high levels at particular times of the year. Fundraisers send out e-mail reminders to donors as the end of the fiscal year approaches, then follow up with phone calls to a select few.

“The challenge is to gently remind them that we count on their support—without annoying them,” she says.

Older Donors

Some charities continue to rely overwhelmingly on telephone fundraising, feeling that they have no other choice.

Centerstage, a nonprofit theater in Baltimore, brings in close to $100,000 a year through its two annual phone appeals—one lasting 10 days, the other lasting 10 weeks. Demographics have a lot to do with the group’s continued reliance on telephone fundraising, says Cindi Monahan, Centerstage’s director of development.

“Many of our donors are older and feel comfortable giving that way, because that’s the way they’ve always donated,” says Ms. Monahan. “We know that our strategy has to evolve, but social media doesn’t work for us at this point.”

That’s not to say that the charity isn’t experimenting with new approaches to telephone fundraising. Centerstage is now considering handing off that part of its fundraising operation to an outside vendor that can provide something the group desperately needs: new donor prospects. The move would mark a significant shift for the nonprofit, which has always trained its own fundraisers: local volunteers who attended the group’s shows and signed up to make phone calls.

“We’re going to be giving up some control, but we’re at a point where we need outside help,” says Ms. Monahan. “Our telephone fundraising has been steady for the past five years, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Telephone Town Hall

While some charities are making fewer fundraising calls, others are taking the opposite approach. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently held its first-ever telephone town hall, calling tens of thousands of the group’s supporters.

Steve Kehrli, development director at the PETA Foundation, says that roughly 4,000 people participated in the event, which the group billed as an update and a conversation with PETA’s president, Ingrid Newkirk. Participants received an e-mail and a reminder call before the event and were given the chance to opt out.

Using their telephone keypads, participants could sign up to ask Ms. Newkirk a question, indicate what issues they care most about, even make a donation. While the event brought in just a few thousand dollars, Mr. Kehrli notes, “we got data that can be used for fundraising down the road. From a marketing standpoint, we were also able to get to know our donors better.”

PETA also followed up with town-hall participants the next day by e-mail after the event, thanking them for their participation, and the next day the staff called each person who wanted to ask a question.

“This became a powerful way for us to engage our members,” says Mr. Kehrli.

Now Mr. Kehrli and his colleagues will try to determine whether the call improves the group’s fundraising prospects in the longer term. “We’ll look at how they respond to the direct-mail piece that went out right after the call,” he says.

Communicate Passion

Building Tomorrow, a charity in Indianapolis that encourages young people to help create schools in sub-Saharan Africa, avoids the telephone entirely in its fundraising. Instead the group relies exclusively on social media, helping its young supporters to raise money online.

“Young people might not be able to write a check for $1,000, but they can find 10 of their friends and get them to give $10 each,” says Liz Braden, who goes by the title “financial optimist.”

She says that she can’t imagine trying to call these young donors on the phone: “Texting, maybe. Facebook, definitely. The phone, never.”

For most charities, however, simply hanging up on telephone fundraising isn’t an option. Instead they’re trying to supplement their existing approach with social media, often with mixed results.

Mr. Shafer, of the Wyoming Seminary, sums up the challenge of fundraising in the digital age this way: “It’s so easy to ignore an e-mail, and a lot of the social-media appeals never seem to reach anyone.”

Christopher DesRoches, the founder of Click2Cause, a Canadian company that helps charities raise money online, encourages nonprofits to think of social-media appeals as just another way to talk to their supporters.

The challenge, he says, is to communicate that same sense of passion that comes across on the telephone in a story or video that can be shared online.

“When potential donors answer the phone, they hear a human voice conveying passion about a cause,” says Mr. DesRoches. “Computers don’t immediately offer that, but with the right story they can.”

‘Glorious Messages’

For charities for which the phone remains a must-use fundraising tool, the difficulty of making contact with a real live person can be frustrating. Marilyn Elledge, who recently retired as the senior vice president for donor care at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, urges charities to think of answering machines and voicemail not as a curse but as an opportunity.

“Practice leaving glorious messages,” she says. “Think of how an effective retailer can paint a powerful picture in a 30-second radio spot. This is your opportunity to do just that.”

And while the purpose of the fundraising call may be just that, an effective message can relay all sorts of information, says Ms. Elledge, who trained fundraisers at St. Jude in the art of crafting great messages. “You can provide a quick update about your group, promote an event, thank a donor for their support,” she says. “This is a personalized commercial just for your supporters.”

Fundraisers at Horizons for Homeless Children are spending a little extra time these days honing their thank-you messages. People like to be thanked, says Ms. Sheriden: “Even if that ‘thank you’ is left on an answering machine, this is our chance to make a donor feel appreciated. And hopefully, they’ll give again.”

Raising Money by Phone: Tips From Experts

• Collect contact information. Add cellphone numbers, e-mail addresses, and Twitter handles to the charity’s database.
• Branch out. If prospective donors can’t be reached by phone, try contacting them via social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
• Prioritize. Start with donors who have given in the past and those who gave most recently.
• Host a telephone town hall. This can be a good way to connect with supporters and gather essential data for future fundraising.
• Tell your story. Discuss your group and its mission in ways that convey passion on the telephone, in e-mail messages, and in easily sharable videos.
• Leave persuasive messages. If no one answers, leave a 30-second pitch about the charity and its mission.