September 18, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
The Phonathon Manager’s Planning Handbook: Dialing in the Details for Success
by Anthony Arrington and Jason Fisher
“The effective phonathon manager runs their program like a business,” write Anthony Arrington and Jason Fisher, consultants who specialize in telephone fund raising.
Their book focuses on the strategy and planning phase of a phonathon campaign at a college or university.
The authors caution fund raisers not to depend on last year’s script and training materials, but to critically evaluate and plan needed improvements year by year.
The book opens with a chapter on staffing the phonathon, pointing out the best times of year to recruit student callers and offering tips on recognizing a “good caller.” This chapter and others are supplemented with an appendix of materials such as sample scripts students can read from and recruitment flyers.
Another chapter, “Effective Segmentation Strategies,” describes how to categorize potential donors for the purpose of tailoring messages to specific groups.
For example, newly graduated alumni may say they cannot donate because student loans are tying up their extra money. If the phonathon worker knows this objection is coming, the authors write, he or she can meet it with specific negotiation techniques. At the end of each chapter, the authors provide three recommendations they say can be applied to any phone program, regardless of size.
Publisher: Council for Advancement and Support of Education, 1307 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-4701; (202) 328-2273; fax (202) 624-1766; conferences@case.org; http://www.case.org; 246 pages; $41.95 for members; $55.95 for nonmembers; ISBN 0-89964-418-x.
