How to win phone tag - political fundraising through the telephone - 24 Winning Ideas

Setting Up a Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Program

More than teaching me anything new, 1992 reinforced my pre-existing ideas of, and focus on, the process of raising money.

This process involves three things: volunteers, the right strategy for your volunteers, and the most efficient use of your volunteers. I have yet to find a better strategy for the efficient use of volunteers than the peer-to-peer program.

Efficient Use of Volunteers: The Peer-to-Peer Program

In traditional telephone fundraising, the volunteer will call prospective contributors from his office. Here's what usually happens: He looks up the number, dials it, explains to the secretary who he is and why he is calling, and either waits on hold until the prospect comes to the phone or repeats giving his name -- complete with spelling -- so that the secretary can leave a message.

Peer-to-peer fundraising involves business, industry, or association leaders calling others in their field from a central location. Each volunteer is provided two or three assistants -- dialers -- who will dial a list provided by the campaign and/or a volunteer.

The dialer performs the time-wasting activities of the traditional method described earlier, leaving the volunteer to do only pitches and closes. This means your volunteer is able to make at least twice as many calls in a given hour and will usually speak with more than twice as many prospects. And, as you know, actual fundraising begins only when you get a prospect on the phone.

How does this translate into numbers? Assume your volunteer will make 15 dials and two contacts an hour. Two paid dialers calling on his behalf will make an average of 20 dials an hour with 3.5 to five contacts per hour. That translates into six to 10 contacts an hour -- well over the two per hour that the volunteer can make working alone.

Your volunteer will be more productive not only because of the dialer but also because you have removed him from the distractions of his office (phone calls, questions, memos to sign, etc.).

The Peer-to-Peer Phone Bank

Assuming you will be implementing a peer-to-peer phone bank with 10 volunteers, your first step would be to find a phone location that has at least 20 phones -- two phones for each volunteer.

While many phone banks have "carrels" for their telemarketers, the best layout for the peer-to-peer program is an open room with few dividers.

Having an open room is important for three reasons. First, the telemarketers can easily hand phones over to your volunteers. Second, your volunteers can sit comfortably across from the two telemarketers assigned to dial on their behalf. Third, it leaves room for your volunteers to pinch hit for another volunteer who may be on the phone when "his" telemarketer gets another prospect on the line.

At various times our phones have gotten so busy that unoccupied volunteers became "roamers" -- walking around the room taking calls whenever any telemarketer got a prospect on the phone.

Additionally, there have been times when staff and even paid telemarketers have taken to the phones to "close the sale." It's a simple move to say, "Hi, this is __. Joe is on the other line, but let me tell you why he was calling."

Recruiting and Retaining Peer-to-Peer Phone Bank Volunteers

Recruiting volunteers can be difficult. But like asking for money, it depends who is doing the asking. Assuming, then, that you have the right person asking, there are a few methods that can make recruiting easier.

To begin with, set the date of the peer-to-peer phone-banking session at least four weeks in advance so your volunteers can have adequate notice and time to modify their schedules.

While we always like to schedule volunteers for the full day, we often find that morning or afternoon shifts can be useful. Additionally, and depending on the size of the fundraising campaign, we have scheduled multiple peer-to-peer phone banks on successive days.

Scheduling phone banks on successive days is valuable in that it allows you to maximize the staff time to gear up a phone bank, provides maximum scheduling opportunities for volunteers, and takes advantage of the increased energy the peer-to-peer fundraising experience will provide to your volunteers.

I have found it usually takes most volunteers the morning to find their groove, leaving the afternoon as their high-performance hours. A second day allows an organization to really utilize the skills gained by their members the day before and for "experienced" volunteers to train new volunteers.

Once you get your volunteers to your phone bank, do as much as you can to prevent them from leaving the location. Bring in coffee and donuts in the morning, sandwiches or other food for lunch, and snacks in the afternoon. If you let your volunteers go out for lunch, a snack, or even to buy cigarettes, they'll usually come back late or, in a few cases, not at all.

Training Peer-to-Peer Volunteers

Volunteers need to be trained to actually ask for money. While a script or an outline is useful, more important is getting the volunteer comfortable with the notion of setting the agenda -- letting the prospect know what type of contribution or action is expected. This means you must spend at least 30 minutes to be embarked upon, how it works, what does/does not work in asking people for money, and letting your volunteers read material on the candidates, ask questions, and even role play.

Mail campaign materials to the volunteers at least one week prior to the phone bank. This serves as a reminder and confirmation of the phone bank time and location, and it allows those who want the opportunity to do some early learning.

Using Direct Mail

Send a solicitation letter no more than one week before the phone bank informing your prospective contributors of the urgency of the campaign issues and emphasizing the importance of their individual involvement in the campaign.

It is optional to inform them that someone will be calling in the next week, as this call could inhibit those who might immediately send a check in response to your letter.

Receiving Contributions

When your volunteer gets a commitment he should ask the contributor to mail a check, have the check available that day for messenger pickup (if you can provide that service), or put the contribution on a credit card. For larger checks, we prefer the messenger route since it conveys a greater sense of urgency.

Fundraising is a numbers game: asking as many people as possible for a specific dollar amount by a specific date in a specific period of time. I know of no better program suited to reach numbers than the program described here.

Robert Kaplan is president of Robert Kaplan Company, a fundraising firm in Los Angeles, CA, that has raised more than $100 million for political campaigns, PACs, and trade associations.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group