At the conclusion of a recent road trip to visit a client and discuss her completed phone-a-thon, we ‘dug up’ something interesting.
We had a broad discussion on the usual stats:
- Percent of pledges to completed records (pledge rate)
- Percent of soft pledges (‘maybe’ promises)
- Percent of refusals to completed records and most frequently heard reasons for refusals
- Percent of bad numbers in the file and a discussion of daily list-hygiene practices
When we finished we discovered there was an unusually high number of $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000 pledges that were received from her file of lapsed and deeply lapsed donors.
If telephone calls were able to unearth larger-than-usual gift amounts, imagine what a face-to-face cultivation and solicitation visit would reap!
What happened here? Well, it’s all about using the right ‘shovel:’
- Some donors are direct mail sensitive
- Some donors are phone call sensitive
- Some donors are somewhere in between.
There are ‘gold donors’ in your files, too. Go after them. Call them. Visit them. Cultivate them.
Have an interesting ‘digging for gold’ story? A helpful tip? Email me. I’ll be glad to share them.
Happy fundraising,
Juddee Milito