Background

The Phone Room started working with the University of Salford in February 2008, and have since completed a further two Annual fund campaigns with the University.

The campaigns were run on campus with their own student callers, overseen by the Phone Room’s on site manager, Geoff Savage.

All the selected students undertook a two-day training session prior to calling covering the fundamentals of fundraising, how to ask for money, and the specific information relating to the particular campaign.

The script was put together as collaboration between the University and TPR using our twelve years experience.

Results

In the last phase of the campaign 14% of the alumni pledged a gift and 8.2% were secured paperlessly over the phone.

The campaign produced a pledged ROI of 1.4:1 in year 1, and a predicted ROI of 1.24:1. To have achieved these results in the middle of a credit crunch when many forms of donor recruitment are struggling was a fantastic success. These results have been mirrored for a range of organisations.

Feedback from the university

“We completely transformed the way we ran our telephone fundraising campaigns with the advice and guidance of The Phone Room. They provided top quality training for our student fundraisers and on site support that was invaluable for the continuous monitoring and evaluation of our campaigns. Pledge rates rose from 9% (before we started using TPR) to 28% in just 18 months.

We found TPR easy to work with and flexible to our needs. Their knowledge of telephone fundraising across the whole charity sector was also advantageous in us understanding giving trends and donor responses”

Vicky Hayhurst Alumni Relations & Annual Fund Manager, The University of Salford