In light of recent unwanted media attention, The Institute of Fundraising recently made changes to its Code of Practice (http://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/code-of-fundraising-practice/code-changes/). One of the main changes is that all fundraising calls must now be checked against the TPS whether that call is to a current supporter or not. Unless that person has given explicit consent for marketing calls, from that organisation.
Given that that volume of landlines currently on the TPS is around 70% this will eliminate a large volume of potential donations. This, you would think would be devastating to the fundraising market. Well on the face of it, it is, calling volumes will go down in the short term but fundraisers can do a number of things to mitigate this in the short, medium and long term.
1. First things first they must communicate with all donors and understand their 'marketing' preferences, if any. The new regulations allow for administrative calls to be made without the need to TPS the telephone numbers. Although charities may want to write to all their donors with a positioning statement around the use of data and why marketing preferences are important. The use of calling, in this scenario, would be better off being used as a 'mop up' and carried out very carefully.
2. Mobile numbers are nowhere near registered in the same volumes on TPS as the volume of Landlines. Approximately 1.5% of mobiles are on TPS and they are more receptive to being answered as well. This figure can only go up though so any fundraising organisation should understand what penetration of mobile numbers it has on its supporter base and potentially change contact channel. This would be a good way to contact those people that have not been reached in step 1, after alternative channels have been tried first.
3. Fundraisers who do not validate landlines or mobiles (processed through TPS or not) are always going to be calling invalid numbers where this invalid range can be anywhere between 5% and 50% depending on the age of the data. This results in a waste of resource, therefore they should validate the numbers they are able to call and scale back on the resource required, to call these supporters. This will lead to an increased return for the calling activity.
4. In conjunction with validating landlines and mobiles, fundraisers could look to improve the quantity of alternative telephone numbers they can obtain whether this be landlines, or as mentioned previously Mobiles.
5. The long-term strategy for any fundraiser to implement, but the most worthwhile, is to truly understand its supporters. Fundraisers should look to approach all its supporters with the:
a) The right message
b) At the right time
c) Using the right channel
So while it may seem like things are going to be challenging in the NFP sector, there are solutions available to ensure that the donations keep rolling in and at a better return than is being received.
