Does anyone utilize their Calling Center for their Planned Giving Program? If so, how was that implemented?
Seattle Opera has done this once to great success. We assigned about 1,000 planned giving prospects to our most gifted caller in the phone room. The call was focused on asking if the patron was aware of planned giving opportunities and then asking them to take one or all of three next steps: singing up for our planned giving newsletter, attending an upcoming estate planning seminar, or meeting one-on-one with our Planned Giving Officer. In less than a week we had about 50 visits for our Planned Giving Officer to schedule, so we called off the campaign until they were ready for more. We compensated the caller as specific amount for each successful action, but that was probably overly complicated. Next time around we will likely just pick a higher hourly rate since there's no commission available.