2017 Pollie Award Nomination
2017 Pollie Award Nomination The “Phone-a-Friend” Campaign – Member Outreach, Education, and PAC Fundraising At the start of 2016, our Association’s President instituted the “Phone-a-Friend” Campaign. The purpose of this program was to have volunteer members call all non-investing1 members, leveraging the peerto-peer relationship. By capitalizing on this personal connection in phone banking, members could then educate their non-investing colleagues on the importance of our Political Action Committee (PAC) and ask them to make an investment. As a large trade association with members in every state and territory, we faced the challenge of how to facilitate an effective, organized and measurable nationwide memberto-member ask that not only educates our population but also improves participation and fundraising for our PAC.
The Challenge: Design a National Peer-to-Peer Calling Program Targeting All Non-Investing Members In the past, phone banking efforts consisted of printed spreadsheets with names and telephone numbers and pledge cards to track any promises of an investment. We knew to achieve our 2016 President’s vision of holding several hundred phone banks in one year, we needed something more robust and organized for our staff and volunteers as well as the members ready to make an investment. We believe that a personal call from a friend or colleague is the best way to lay the foundation for a member’s involvement with our PAC. While the primary goal of this program was education, increased participation and additional money raised were secondary considerations. These achievements were realized and a more detailed breakdown of this program’s successes can be found in the Phone Bank Metrics section. Our analysis of the data quantifies the overall improving engagement in our PAC as a result of the “Phone-a-Friend” campaign. This information is detailed in the Overall Fundraising and Outreach Results section. The first step we took in designing the Phone-a-Friend campaign was to make sure we had the software tools in place to build, organize, execute and track each phone bank. While fundraising is most effective at the local level, our phone banking efforts needed to be tracked at the national level. In concert with our software partner, we built a new phone banking tool within our PAC management software and its existing fundraising platform. This database tracks investment history for all our members in the 54 states and territories and the more than 1,200 local associations within those states/territories. The new phone bank tool is a scalable system that matches volunteer callers to members based on a logical relationship, facilitates the volunteer’s phone calls, displays real-time information about a target and 1
A non-investing member can be broken down into two categories: 1. Non-Investor: A non-investor is a member who has never invested in our PAC. 2. Lapsed-Investor: A lapsed investor is a member who has not invested in the PAC in the current or previous fundraising year.
his/her investing behavior, accepts credit card investments, has the ability to send one of three different pre-written emails, and tracks calling activities within our master database. A complete breakdown of the phone bank tool is available by request. The phone bank platform allows staff – at the national, state and local levels – and volunteer fundraisers to conduct phone banks integrated with our PAC management software and run reports on the results of these efforts. Each phone bank was unique to the hosting association’s membership, local issues, and volunteer base. This tool (with different interfaces for staff and volunteers) facilitates the organization, customization, and tracking of phone campaigns in real-time. It is flexible enough to be used by all, from our smallest to largest associations. As the phone bank platform is connected to our fundraising and compliance software, users building and customizing the phone bank have an easier time creating their target lists because the system accesses real-time information. One of the best features about the phone bank tool is its ability to match the volunteer to a target that he or she knows, or has a logical relationship with, based on criteria that the users (national, state or local staff) determine. For example, local association staff can set prioritized matching criteria to have volunteers see targets in their office, home city and/or work city. For our larger phone banks where we had volunteers from all over a state making calls, the users set prioritized matching for an office then local association, again so there was the greatest chance that the volunteer and target knew one another. We found that it was harder for a target to say “no” to a friend or colleague. Once we had a system in place to support this campaign, we needed to build momentum. Our next step was to develop a cohesive national outreach and training program, encouraging our state and local associations to host phone bank events in 2016. With the help of our volunteer leadership, we promoted the program in newsletters, at conferences, and in many cases, our leadership attended phone banks themselves. For nearly every phone bank held last year, our president or the national phone bank leader called the phone bank event to thank the volunteers and to share the program’s successes to date. In addition, many hosting associations turned the events into competitions recognizing volunteers for highest number of calls made or most amount of money raised. As a result, the spirit of friendly competition rose between the volunteers. For example, at many phone banks, we heard volunteers tell their targets that they were trying to make the most calls and they just needed “one more” person to make that financial commitment. Not only did we see a friendly rivalry emerge between the volunteers, but the phone banks that fostered this enthusiasm were more successful. Included in our phone bank trainings were event management suggestions that would help covert investors. We promoted the ideas of volunteer recognition and friendly competition and the effects they had on converting targets to investors. In addition, we recommended celebratory noises (e.g. ringing bells, cheering, etc.) when investments were received. Not only did this elevate the mood of the volunteers, but more importantly we found that the targets on the phone could hear this and were then influenced to make their contribution.
Phone Bank Metrics This past year volunteers across the country gave their time to contact members in their associations. 52 of our state and territory associations participated in this program we have raised our nationwide participation and fundraising totals each by more than 1%. We know this because of the data captured in the several hundred phone banks executed through our phone banking platform.
One of the challenges for any PAC department is to demonstrate qualitative metrics related to outreach. While fundraising is an “easy” measurement (you either raise money or not), the ability to show effort is limited. As the Phone-a-Friend campaign focused on educating non-investing members, the primary metrics we tracked were: number of phone banks completed, number of members reached, and a profile of phone bank investors. Additionally, we tracked increases to participation on the local and state levels as well as funds raised for the PAC. This year, we reached approximately 5% of our membership via this program – 52 states and territories participated and half of our local associations had their members contacted and educated. While some phone banks were more successful than others, the national average was a 12% conversation rate for phone bank investors. The chart below shows a breakdown of those who made an investment through a phone bank.
PHONE BANK INVESTORS 2016 YTD 6% 27%
67%
New Investor
Recommitted Investors
Annual Investor
We define our investors as follows:
New Investor: Someone who has never invested in the PAC (prior to the phone bank.) Recommitted investor: Someone was has not invested in the PAC for 2 or more years (prior to the phone bank) Renewed Investor: Someone who makes annual PAC contributions. While they were not the primary focus of this program, we found some volunteers chose to call members who they felt would make another investment.
As this program had a positive influence on member participation, we found that on average, our associations were able to raise their participation by the following amounts per phone bank event2:
2
Phone bank events are typically 2-3 hours long.
Association Size
Participation Average # Increase volunteers per phone bank 0 – 499 members 7% 8 500 – 1,999 3% 10 members 2,000 members 1% 14 or more
Average # of investors per volunteer 3 3
Conversion Rate
3
13%
15% 14%
Overall Fundraising and Outreach Results Each year, we go through a cycle – just as our colleagues do in other trade associations –members leave and new members join. Therefore, we are constantly re-evaluating how to educate our membership, engage them in the PAC, and get them to make an investment. Analysis of our fundraising and education campaigns captured by our PAC management software helps us determine what works well and what can be improved in our efforts. Every year there is the challenge to make a meaningful connection with our members – while we never expect any campaign to have a 100% success rate, we use these tools to educate our membership and improve our PAC culture. In 2016, our major fundraising focus was the Phone-a-Friend campaign. Of the members contacted in phone banks this year, we saw that 47% of them had never made a PAC investment. After further analysis of all new investors in 2016, we found that 40% of members had been contacted in a phone bank and made their first PAC investment in 2016. 16% of those new investors made their contribution directly through the phone bank, the remaining 84% of members made their first PAC investment at a later date. Therefore the Phone-a-Friend laid the foundation by creating PAC awareness and as a result our PAC culture is stronger today than ever before.
Looking Beyond Peer-to-peer fundraising programs at such a large scale can be difficult to accomplish, but with our phone banking tools, we now have the ability and flexibly to customize outreach for the smallest associations yet manage and track the program on a national level. After seeing such successes with the Phone-a-Friend campaign in 2016 we plan to expand our fundraising platform and identify ways to further integrate education and fundraising with phone and email campaigns as well as state and local fundraising events. We believe our approach for multi-faceted targeting could serve as a model for other PACs looking to develop scalable peer-to-peer fundraising programs.
The Challenge: Design a National Peer-to-Peer Calling Program Targeting All Non-Investing Members In the past, phone banking efforts consisted of printed spreadsheets with names and telephone numbers and pledge cards to track any promises of an investment. We knew to achieve our 2016 President’s vision of holding several hundred phone banks in one year, we needed something more robust and organized for our staff and volunteers as well as the members ready to make an investment. We believe that a personal call from a friend or colleague is the best way to lay the foundation for a member’s involvement with our PAC. While the primary goal of this program was education, increased participation and additional money raised were secondary considerations. These achievements were realized and a more detailed breakdown of this program’s successes can be found in the Phone Bank Metrics section. Our analysis of the data quantifies the overall improving engagement in our PAC as a result of the “Phone-a-Friend” campaign. This information is detailed in the Overall Fundraising and Outreach Results section. The first step we took in designing the Phone-a-Friend campaign was to make sure we had the software tools in place to build, organize, execute and track each phone bank. While fundraising is most effective at the local level, our phone banking efforts needed to be tracked at the national level. In concert with our software partner, we built a new phone banking tool within our PAC management software and its existing fundraising platform. This database tracks investment history for all our members in the 54 states and territories and the more than 1,200 local associations within those states/territories. The new phone bank tool is a scalable system that matches volunteer callers to members based on a logical relationship, facilitates the volunteer’s phone calls, displays real-time information about a target and 1
A non-investing member can be broken down into two categories: 1. Non-Investor: A non-investor is a member who has never invested in our PAC. 2. Lapsed-Investor: A lapsed investor is a member who has not invested in the PAC in the current or previous fundraising year.
his/her investing behavior, accepts credit card investments, has the ability to send one of three different pre-written emails, and tracks calling activities within our master database. A complete breakdown of the phone bank tool is available by request. The phone bank platform allows staff – at the national, state and local levels – and volunteer fundraisers to conduct phone banks integrated with our PAC management software and run reports on the results of these efforts. Each phone bank was unique to the hosting association’s membership, local issues, and volunteer base. This tool (with different interfaces for staff and volunteers) facilitates the organization, customization, and tracking of phone campaigns in real-time. It is flexible enough to be used by all, from our smallest to largest associations. As the phone bank platform is connected to our fundraising and compliance software, users building and customizing the phone bank have an easier time creating their target lists because the system accesses real-time information. One of the best features about the phone bank tool is its ability to match the volunteer to a target that he or she knows, or has a logical relationship with, based on criteria that the users (national, state or local staff) determine. For example, local association staff can set prioritized matching criteria to have volunteers see targets in their office, home city and/or work city. For our larger phone banks where we had volunteers from all over a state making calls, the users set prioritized matching for an office then local association, again so there was the greatest chance that the volunteer and target knew one another. We found that it was harder for a target to say “no” to a friend or colleague. Once we had a system in place to support this campaign, we needed to build momentum. Our next step was to develop a cohesive national outreach and training program, encouraging our state and local associations to host phone bank events in 2016. With the help of our volunteer leadership, we promoted the program in newsletters, at conferences, and in many cases, our leadership attended phone banks themselves. For nearly every phone bank held last year, our president or the national phone bank leader called the phone bank event to thank the volunteers and to share the program’s successes to date. In addition, many hosting associations turned the events into competitions recognizing volunteers for highest number of calls made or most amount of money raised. As a result, the spirit of friendly competition rose between the volunteers. For example, at many phone banks, we heard volunteers tell their targets that they were trying to make the most calls and they just needed “one more” person to make that financial commitment. Not only did we see a friendly rivalry emerge between the volunteers, but the phone banks that fostered this enthusiasm were more successful. Included in our phone bank trainings were event management suggestions that would help covert investors. We promoted the ideas of volunteer recognition and friendly competition and the effects they had on converting targets to investors. In addition, we recommended celebratory noises (e.g. ringing bells, cheering, etc.) when investments were received. Not only did this elevate the mood of the volunteers, but more importantly we found that the targets on the phone could hear this and were then influenced to make their contribution.
Phone Bank Metrics This past year volunteers across the country gave their time to contact members in their associations. 52 of our state and territory associations participated in this program we have raised our nationwide participation and fundraising totals each by more than 1%. We know this because of the data captured in the several hundred phone banks executed through our phone banking platform.
One of the challenges for any PAC department is to demonstrate qualitative metrics related to outreach. While fundraising is an “easy” measurement (you either raise money or not), the ability to show effort is limited. As the Phone-a-Friend campaign focused on educating non-investing members, the primary metrics we tracked were: number of phone banks completed, number of members reached, and a profile of phone bank investors. Additionally, we tracked increases to participation on the local and state levels as well as funds raised for the PAC. This year, we reached approximately 5% of our membership via this program – 52 states and territories participated and half of our local associations had their members contacted and educated. While some phone banks were more successful than others, the national average was a 12% conversation rate for phone bank investors. The chart below shows a breakdown of those who made an investment through a phone bank.
PHONE BANK INVESTORS 2016 YTD 6% 27%
67%
New Investor
Recommitted Investors
Annual Investor
We define our investors as follows:
New Investor: Someone who has never invested in the PAC (prior to the phone bank.) Recommitted investor: Someone was has not invested in the PAC for 2 or more years (prior to the phone bank) Renewed Investor: Someone who makes annual PAC contributions. While they were not the primary focus of this program, we found some volunteers chose to call members who they felt would make another investment.
As this program had a positive influence on member participation, we found that on average, our associations were able to raise their participation by the following amounts per phone bank event2:
2
Phone bank events are typically 2-3 hours long.
Association Size
Participation Average # Increase volunteers per phone bank 0 – 499 members 7% 8 500 – 1,999 3% 10 members 2,000 members 1% 14 or more
Average # of investors per volunteer 3 3
Conversion Rate
3
13%
15% 14%
Overall Fundraising and Outreach Results Each year, we go through a cycle – just as our colleagues do in other trade associations –members leave and new members join. Therefore, we are constantly re-evaluating how to educate our membership, engage them in the PAC, and get them to make an investment. Analysis of our fundraising and education campaigns captured by our PAC management software helps us determine what works well and what can be improved in our efforts. Every year there is the challenge to make a meaningful connection with our members – while we never expect any campaign to have a 100% success rate, we use these tools to educate our membership and improve our PAC culture. In 2016, our major fundraising focus was the Phone-a-Friend campaign. Of the members contacted in phone banks this year, we saw that 47% of them had never made a PAC investment. After further analysis of all new investors in 2016, we found that 40% of members had been contacted in a phone bank and made their first PAC investment in 2016. 16% of those new investors made their contribution directly through the phone bank, the remaining 84% of members made their first PAC investment at a later date. Therefore the Phone-a-Friend laid the foundation by creating PAC awareness and as a result our PAC culture is stronger today than ever before.
Looking Beyond Peer-to-peer fundraising programs at such a large scale can be difficult to accomplish, but with our phone banking tools, we now have the ability and flexibly to customize outreach for the smallest associations yet manage and track the program on a national level. After seeing such successes with the Phone-a-Friend campaign in 2016 we plan to expand our fundraising platform and identify ways to further integrate education and fundraising with phone and email campaigns as well as state and local fundraising events. We believe our approach for multi-faceted targeting could serve as a model for other PACs looking to develop scalable peer-to-peer fundraising programs.
