Adding Telefundraising to Your Mail and E-mail Mix

The average response rate from phone-only donors is 42 percent, White explains, compared to a 30 percent to 35 percent response rate if Share calls current donors on a special-appeal campaign.

“These are people who had, at one point or another, responded to a direct mail appeal,” White says. “They were solicited repeatedly and, after two years, had not given a second gift. So what we ascertained as a result was that these individuals were motivated initially by a direct mail appeal but are probably not direct mail responsive. So we converted them to be phone responsive.”