Telefundraising-to continue?

We have been running a telefunding campaign, via leads printed from Tessitura, for a number of seasons now. Last year proved to be a particularly difficult one (which should come as no surprise) for telefunding.

Our annual giving campaign is comprised of a fall appeal letter followed by numerous weeks of telefunding in the winter/spring. We are toying with the idea of getting rid of telefunding and going to a strictly letter/email campaign (letting folks know of course that we will not be calling them) but before we go down that road I'm trying to find some information on what other folks have done.

Anything insight provided would be greatly appreciated.




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Not sure how that happened - I had an awesome reply I'll try to repeat.

I've worked on a campaign where we tried to eliminate it but what we ended up doing is using things like channel to determine how a user responded in the past few years.  That gave us a big matrix with weights by mail and weights by phone - if a donor always responded by phone, we sent those leads to TF immediately, if they always responded by mail we kept them in a mail pool until it was later in the campaign.

We found doing this helped us maximize our mailing and calling resources, control the flow of the campaign, and elimiate some crossover where mailing and calling was simultaneous.

My first response was way better.

Amanda,

Our experience this past year was the exact oppositive, with our telefunding doing far better than direct mail, so I wouldn't discount telefunding on the whole.

I would agree that an analysis of the channels through which people previously donated would be wise.  Some donors are always going to be more likely to contribute through direct mail, some through personal phone calls, so slicing and dicing your data this way might be a good way to go.  A balance of both methods might still be necessary.

 

Hi -

Our Telefund has historically done better than direct mail, and did quite well (surprisingly) this past season, I think for a couple of reasons.

First and foremost, we had a challenge in place this time around.  In our case, we had a local private foundation offer to match all new and increased gifts to the Huntington (for tracking purposes, we included SYBUNTS as "new").  We've done this in the past with smaller matching challenges (one season, a board member offered to kick in an additional $50K if we hit a certain goal, for example).  We've found that folks respond to a challenge.

We also presented multiple payments spread across a set period as an option, which helped us with increased gifts.

We are also looking into starting our telefund campaign earlier this season, to take advantage of calendar-year-end and holiday giving.  We've traditionally done January - April.

Just a few ideas that have worked for us. 

-Lisa

I am the Development Director for The Wilma Theater. We're located in Philadelphia.

Amanda Ditsky | Development Director | The Wilma Theater
265 South Broad Street | Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-893-9456 x109 | 215-546-7824 (box office) | 215-893-0895 (fax)
amd@wilmatheater.org | www.wilmatheater.org
2009/10 | COMING HOME | BECKY SHAW | LANGUAGE ROOMS | LEAVING
Look for a new Wilma website launching this Autumn!

>>> bounce-melissaburtless1337@tessituranetwork.com 9/1/2009 4:17 PM >>>
Lisa and Amanda, What region in the U.S. are you located? Melissa ---------------------------------------------Melissa M. BurtlessDirector of DevelopmentSarasota OperaSarasota, Florida(941) 366-8450, Ext. 253


From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Lisa McColgan
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 3:57 PM
To: Melissa Burtless
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Telefundraising-to continue?

Hi -
Our Telefund has historically done better than direct mail, and did quite well (surprisingly) this past season, I think for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, we had a challenge in place this time around. In our case, we had a local private foundation offer to match all new and increased gifts to the Huntington (for tracking purposes, we included SYBUNTS as "new"). We've done this in the past with smaller matching challenges (one season, a board member offered to kick in an additional $50K if we hit a certain goal, for example). We've found that folks respond to a challenge.
We also presented multiple payments spread across a set period as an option, which helped us with increased gifts.
We are also looking into starting our telefund campaign earlier this season, to take advantage of calendar-year-end and holiday giving. We've traditionally done January - April.
Just a few ideas that have worked for us.
-LisaFrom: Amanda Ditsky
Sent: 8/28/2009 11:51:56 AM


We have been running a telefunding campaign, via leads printed from Tessitura, for a number of seasons now. Last year proved to be a particularly difficult one (which should come as no surprise) for telefunding.
Our annual giving campaign is comprised of a fall appeal letter followed by numerous weeks of telefunding in the winter/spring. We are toying with the idea of getting rid of telefunding and going to a strictly letter/email campaign (letting folks know of course that we will not be calling them) but before we go down that road I'm trying to find some information on what other folks have done.
Anything insight provided would be greatly appreciated.


This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!



This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!