48. The moment to phone…
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: Peak public
interest
49. One or two days prior to the calling, an
email was sent out …
50. The call
Pre-call training
An Amnesty business &
human rights campaigner did a
training session by phone with
the callers.
The script
A hierarchy of asks
1. Monthly donation –
any amount (with
minimum of
$5.00/month accepted
2. Single donation
3. Send a pledge
package
4. Go online to learn
more (or make gift)
Getting an advocate to become a donor may seem as difficult as metamorphosis. But at the end of the day donors and advocates are one and the same,
So getting an advocate to become a donor shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s really just about understanding the interim steps - what happens in between.
“There is a huge opportunity to expand cross-pollination between advocacy and fundraising.” -- Online Marketing Benchmark Index Study, Convio, 2009
But if taking advantage of the opportunity involves knocking down huge silos – then taking advantage can be a real issue. How many of you work in organisations that look something like this?
If you are building the case for more integration – better list sharing a more holistic program then remember that the lessons work both ways. Donors are good prospects to sign advocacy actions. They are already very much invested in the organisation and want to support you in additional ways.
Going to talk about 5 main ways for conversion. And outline how to use them together for most effect. And then go on to undertsand how the costs and results compare.
It used to be so easy.Read:In 1998, Amnesty International Canada launched a hugely successful 1-hour television program that was attracting hundreds of new monthly donors every month.This program helped triple our monthly donor file to 30,000 donors, and over the course of 10 years, monthly donors went from a small percentage to our primary source of income.It was a game changer. We had Martin Sheen – “the president of the United States of America” on the West Wing, pre-911, telling YOU to be a monthly donor for Amnesty International. It doesn’t get better than that.Direct mail took a back seat, and the focus of our fundraising program was acquiring monthly donors.
The television program was our core communication vehicle. It made all of our fundraising programs look good – all I had to do to make online fundraising work was integrate our online communications with our tv message and we were attracting 100 new monthly donors every month online.Integration meant1. Setting up inbound telephone centres to handle calls generated by the TV program2. Revamping our old black & white publications to match the visual impact of our television program3. Introducing email to advertise our tv program and to building a secure online form to allow for fulfillment
Read: But then along came the multi-channel universe … and digital tv … and web … and social media. There were just not enough television viewers on the stations we could afford. People were going elsewhere.As we watched TV dry up as a source of monthly donors, we diversified and invested in street canvassing as a new source of monthly donors.
But even with diversifying our source of monthly donors, we couldn’t overcome the problem of attrition. There was nothing we could do with our communications to maintain the emotional power of television. We strengthened our Member Services, we produced beautiful print and online publications. With donors who didn’t understand our work or couldn’t afford to fund it, contacting these donors led to them deciding to cancel. So when we were confronted with technical problems related to changes in credit cards, we had to be careful about being pre-emptive in contacting donors. Worse, when a human rights crisis came, we were reluctant to contact our monthly donors – now the majority of our membership!What are we doing?
We had no choice but to adapt. We decided it was time to pick up the phone. Fortunately, at the urging of Mike, we began collecting phone numbers, as a routine, about a year and a half ago, in all of our epetitions. And our online activism program was strong. So we dug into our data and into our campaigning and got back to basics. Here’ s the case study.
We contacted on e-acquisition list. It’s focused – one theme – 2 options both pointing in the same direction – to take action.This message was sent a year ago October, 2009 to 26,000. The email had a 20% open rate, and a 10% click-through rate – fairly typical these days for us.What did they click on? 2016 take action266 quiz (which led to the action)http://www.amnesty.ca/updates/speakout/oct09/speakout_oct09.html[image: Speak Out] Summary Info # Sent 26,596Emails Opened 5262Clickthroughs 2461Open rate 20%Clickthrough rate 10%
The online campaign started with a an epetition directed at key Parliamentarians who were on the Committee that reviewed the bill.Note some important aspects to the petition:#1 phone number – we asked. Does this suppress signatures? That’s the debate. We make it a non-mandatory field – and find that about 30% fill it out anyway#2 counter - why? “social proof”. participants see that 1000s are doing this#3 comments – these are streamed – they build momentum and act as examples – they give participants the confidence to write their own words3 weeks later, on November 1st, there were 2792 signatureshttp://www.amnesty.ca/urgentappeal/2009/CorpAcct/
Now it was time to get to work on the phone. At this stage, we had captured over 5,000 names on this petition. From this, we had 1654 with emails. And after comparing these with donors who had made a gift in the last few months, we were left with 1339 calls to make.
This message was sent to the full list. It didn’t mention the phone call. It was sent immediately after the gulf spill and highlighted the shocking fact that every year the same amount of oil as had been spilled in the Gulf is spilled EVERY YEAR in the Niger delta.It gave an opportunity to give immediately. This led to half a dozen monthly gifts.http://www.amnesty.ca/urgentappeal/2010/c300/email/index.html
As a result of the training session, our hired callers were motivated to make this campaign work. We asked first for a monthly gift – emphasizing that it’s easy, if no, a single gift, if no can we send you something in the mail, andan invite to learn more by visiting our websiteDonation form:https://www.amnesty.ca/secure/joinamnesty.ca/
My case study will illustrate the steps for integrating electronic activism and telephone fundraising. I’m at Amnesty International, afterall – activism is what we do. And with no government funds, we have to be unapologetic fundraisers.I’ll show you the steps that worked for us. And drawing on a few other scenarios we’ll assess the key ingredients for success.
So getting an advocate to become a donor shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s really just about understanding the interim steps - what happens in between.