Don’t Hang Up Yet

William & Mary

Almost two years ago, William & Mary publicly launched a $1 billion campaign — a hefty undertaking for a small liberal-arts college. As if that weren’t hard enough, campaign officials also aimed to increase the alumni-participation rate from 23 percent to 40 percent.

The target was ambitious, if not foolhardy, given that colleges nationwide are struggling just to maintain giving rates by alums. Yet today, William & Mary is closing in on 31 percent participation, with no signs of slowing down. The college’s secret: students phoning alumni, chatting them up, and asking for a donation.

You read that correctly: Stanford and others may be giving up on the phone-athon as a poor-performing anachronism in the digital age, but William & Mary believes it’s a powerful tool to acquire new donors — particularly young graduates, oddly enough.

“It’s not a dying channel; it’s an evolving channel,” says Dan Frezza, head of annual giving. “I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t say it’ll be viable 20 years from now. But for the next two decades, it absolutely is.”

Here’s why William & Mary believes the phone-athon is invaluable for acquiring donors — and how it makes the best use of the 75 students making calls.

It works: About 16 percent of William & Mary’s donors gave through a phone-athon last year. The total raised amounted to just 3 percent of all giving, but the college doesn’t expect to net big dollars this way. Phone-athons help develop a pipeline of donors for the future, says Matthew Lambert, vice president for advancement. “If we’re going to be successful in the long run, we know we need to have broad-based alumni participation.”

It works with young donors: Odd as it may sound, the college has found that phone solicitations are the most effective way to reach young graduates. Mailings don’t work — many graduates are transient — and young alumni often have multiple email addresses: one the university gave them, one tied to work, and another for personal use.

“We’ll think we have their email address, but they’re really using a different account,” Mr. Frezza says. “The cellphone is the most likely way to get ahold of them.” He says that Duke, Texas Christian, and other universities that focus on young-donor acquisition have come to the same conclusion.

It can be as effective as direct mail: Well before its campaign began, the college’s development staff ran tests comparing donor responses to phone-athons vs. direct mail. They found little difference and began to direct more resources to calling.

We’re not Stanford: Mr. Lambert says most colleges shouldn’t worry that Stanford, a pre-eminent fundraiser, is abandoning telemarketing. “They’re living in a different world. It may not work for them, but it will work for 99.999 percent of the rest of us.”

Keys to Success

Here’s advice from William & Mary officials about how to make the most of your phone-athon.

Research, research, research: Two or three times a year, the college hires an outside vendor to dig up alumni cellphone numbers. “If less than 60 percent of contacts are available by phone, you desperately need to do some phone research,” Mr. Frezza says. Through “cell append” research, companies often use other basic donor data to find a likely cellphone number.

Test, test, test: The college gets 7,000 to 10,000 cell-append numbers a year, then uses its novice student callers to dial them repeatedly until they get a confirmation that the number is valid.

Tinker with the caller’s script: For many years, student callers worked from a script in which they tried to establish rapport with alumni and get basic contact information before asking for a gift. But donors are getting frustrated with the chitchat, Mr. Frezza says, so the college is tinkering with asking for money earlier in the call.

Call donors at work: Many professionals in fields such as law or finance work long hours, so William & Mary and other colleges are experimenting with calls to these donors at work.

Fold the phone-athon into your strategy: It shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated outreach tool, Mr. Frezza says. During a campaign or a focused period of outreach, the phone call should be one of several ways of connecting with donors, perhaps following a mailing or an email. “Schools that are really seeing gains in phone-athons are using them that way,” he says.

Correction: A previous version of this article said William & Mary’s campaign began three years ago instead of nearly two years ago. The discussion of the college’s direct mail versus phone-athon test was also restated; its mail program is not less expensive than its phone-athon program.