10 Quick Tips for a Gold Standard Welcome Call Program

Not long after I started Face to Face fundraising I visited “the office”. I give it s quotation marks to make it clear that although it may conjure up visions of a highly professional inner city space, it was in fact a friendly but slightly dingy space above an old  theatre. I was told that the people here conducted the “welcome calling”- calling the people who I had signed up and making sure that I hadn’t forced them into it. I’m not sure if this was intended as a shock tactic, but it worked as one. Welcome calling probably started as a reactive measure; a relatively cheap but effective way to weed out the worst of the pledges before they go to the client. But the best welcome calling programs use it to do drive improvements in their face to face programs. I’ve seen slight improvements on the welcome call produce significant culture changes and retention improvements very quickly. In the post below I’ve collected the 10 most important elements from the different programs I’ve seen over the years.

1. Get the right people calling

Here’s a universal truth for you. Hire the right people for the job. (I promise the insights will become more er…insightful after this one).  Rather than high turn over of F2F staff,  the best welcome call rooms not only have had leaders/managers who have lasted for years but the callers as well. Hiring is obviously a great skill to have, but look at your call centre team as an afterthought. HINT! Ex face to facers can be a good starting point.

2. Prepare them in the right way

Make them love the fundraisers and the charity. The callers need to understand how F2F works in full. They have to know the difference between a fundraiser convincing and a fundraiser pushing someone to sign up. They need to know that the fundraisers are good people doing great work while also recognising that the charities have longevity requirements to make this form of fundraising work.  Give them the same level of charity training you would give to the fundraisers (and make sure that the charity training them know what they do) and get them trained by the fundraisers to know what’s happening.

3. Time it right

Don’t be too soon or too late after sign up. The worst welcome call program I ever seen was based around the fundraisers calling into a phone room at point of sign up. Imagine standing there with a fundraiser while on the phone to his “head office”. Would you be able to give them an honest answer about your commitment? Receiving the call 2-10 days later gives the donor a chance to think about it. If they’re given the time for their initial enthusiasm to die down and they still want to donate, you have a much better chance of having a long term giver. Conversely if you leave it too long, their connection to the emotions you felt at sign up are less like to be as fresh. They might not even remember signing up.

4. Maximise Penetration

It’s important to try and speak to as many people as possible. The effectiveness of your welcome call is directly proportionate to the number of sign ups you speak to. If you consistently speak to 20% of your signed up donors, your fundraisers will know that they can get away with doing the wrong thing 50% of the time and never be found out. You need to create a panopticon to make this work.

5. Frame it as a real welcome

Some people may think that the only thing the donor gets out of the welcome call is a chance to change their mind,. but it can be so much more. This is a real opportunity to make them feel amazing about a donation. Tell them they are awesome. Tell them how big a difference they are making. Celebrate the donation and the donor.

6. Verify as much as possible

There is an admin side to the call. For people with oddly spelled names this is their opportunity to make sure they are not referred to as Mr Dgunan for their donation lifetime. Also make sure you have the email address spelled correctly, they’re correct postal address and date of birth. Even though these things aren’t the most emotional topic, they will help you connected with your donors in the future.

7. Ask… don’t tell

Please, in this situations let’s agree that “… and the fundraiser told you that you should be giving for the next two years” will tell you much less than “did the fundraiser talk to you about how long you should give for”?

8. Be prepared to loose sign ups

Post-sales dissonance is a thing. Accept that many people will change their mind for no real reason other than that they changed their mind. The cancellations you receive will ultimately improve the quality of the gifts you export.

9. Follow up the scientific and the anecdotal

If done properly, the welcome call will get rid of the worst 10% of donors from any given file. This is obviously a step in the right direction as it will improve the donor retention statistics. But there is so much data you are collecting from a program like this it shocks me how few organisations just leave it there. There are two ways in which you’ll learn from welcome calling. Firstly the scientific. If a fundraiser has a lot of cancels at welcome call, you should probably have a talk to them. This is a data driven (ie GREAT!) way of learning. But there’s more, the anecdotal, you will be amazed how much information the question “how was the fundraiser” gets you. On it’s own it may not prove a fundraiser is a wrong ‘un, but it will give you more training tips than you can imagine and leader the fundraiser to improve.

10. The Greater the Transparency, The better the result

If you were to describe any successful F2F fundraiser I would be shocked if “competitive” didn’t come up in the first couple of words you used. Embrace this. If they can see what people are saying about them and their colleagues, they will want to be the best. Highlight the good, highlight the bad and show it to everyone. Almost immediately s they’ll be competing to outdo each other for the best representative (if they don’t, fire them). It will also remind them that their interactions with the public are checked out, thus improving their compliance.