Direct Connection Fundraising
Statewide Organization
What We Did: We held a Direct Connection event for a statewide organization in November 2009 to help them meet their fiscal year-end goals.
We dialed the organization’s small donors along with each local chapter’s membership.
The organization’s director recorded a live answer message inviting those who picked up to be automatically connected to the event, and an answering machine message for those we missed.
How We Did It: We dialed a total of 47,735 people and had an 86% connection rate with a 20% participation rate. (The average connection rate is between 75-80%, and participation rate is 21%)
A total of 8,345 participants joined the live event, with up to 1,998 participants on at one time. The average participant duration was 6.35 minutes.
The director delivered remarks about the state of the organization, and how critical donors’ continued financial support was for future success. The client also used our polling and survey feature to find out what is most important to participants, ask for feedback on events and request a financial contribution.
The following day, we did a fundraising call to all donors to raise money for the organization’s final 2009 appeal which included the participants that indicated they wanted to make a contribution.
Results: Results were 38% higher from those who participated in the Direct Connection event versus a control group who was not called for the event. Results were also 27% higher from those who received an answering machine message about the event versus a control group who was not called.
There was a 29% increase in Net Revenue for the fundraising project as a result of those who participated, or received the answering machine message, versus a control group who was not called.
The eight days of live fundraising calls netted over $22,000, and the cost per dollar raised was $.347.
Direct Connection served as a great donor maintenance program while also boosting the results of the organization’s overall fundraising efforts.