All fundraising is a numbers game, whether it’s tele-fundraising, email, direct mail, face-to-face; it’s all a matter of numbers.
When we look at tele-fundraising, it could be that one in fifty called may give; face-to-face maybe higher, and direct approaches through other means may differ again.
What is important is an understanding of how many, and what type, of approaches is working for you.
To know what your pipeline is, you need to have some knowledge of:
- How much you’re needing to raise – a finite figure is better than “what ever we can get”
- What your current “hit rate” is … approaches v donations = hit rate
- How many approaches to reach hit rate
If you have no idea of what this is, how can you successfully plan a fundraising campaign?
In the business world if you ask most salespeople about the quality of contacts others make for them; you’d likely probably that they are only suspects, probables.
It’s no different when it comes to fundraising:
- Suspect – anyone on your database
- Prospect – people know to support
- Lead – someone ready to consider giving
- Opportunity – someone wanting give – here and now
It’s important to understand each “category” and to also understand and monitor what it is taking you to reach a favourable outcome, a commitment.
Success shouldn’t be measured solely on the level of funding received, measure it on all outcomes; how many approaches against level of support received.
Watch and observe that the more refined your approaches let lower the number of approaches needed.
This doesn’t mean you need to reduce the number of contacts you have, it’s all about the right approach to the right people at the right time.
How well can you define your contact list – if you don’t have the ability to segment to capture the right people at the right time; you could be missing out.
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