Gain intensive training on every aspect of your phonathon, whether you’re an experienced professional or a newcomer to the field.
Join us for this intensive, hands-on training institute to build and refine the skills necessary for managing all the aspects of your phonathon. We will focus on how the phonathon fits into the big picture at your institution and how to develop your efforts for the greatest returns. Our faculty will work with you to rethink and rebuild your capabilities in segmenting, scripting, calling techniques, phonathon staff/student management, and data analysis and application.
Phonathon directors and assistant annual giving directors will leave with:
With more people using cell phones, fewer people having land lines, and email, texting, and social networking becoming more and more common forms of communication, the future of the phonathon is consistently being questioned. In this post-conference workshop, we’ll discuss the impact of changing communication patterns and the changing economy on the phonathon. We’ll also address concerns and questions that attendees have and offer long-term strategies to keep your phonathon strong.
This conference has been approved for continuing education credits toward the CFRE International application for initial certification and/or recertification.
After attending this conference, you will be able to apply effective management techniques to every aspect of your phonathon program.
The phonathon is an essential part of your annual fund, and you must understand its role, how it functions, and how it integrates with the other annual fund components. In this session, we will explore the big-picture view of the phonathon. We will walk through the phonathon process and identify what you need to have a strong phonathon.
Your student callers can make or break your phonathon’s success, and you need to hire not just the right students, but the right number of students as well. There’s strategy involved in staffing correctly, and this session will offer you a process and techniques for staffing your phonathon to ensure you are consistently full and maintain high call quality throughout the year.
You most likely have a script, and your callers have most likely memorized that script — but how might you be able to better communicate with potential donors in the course of a phone call? You may be familiar with a call’s basic format, but we’ll use communication theory to show you how you can improve your call dialogue. You’ll learn how to teach engagement and active listening, when to use different types of questions, and how to establish the rhythm of the call, as well as how to create a script that allows for your students to maintain control of the call.
You will be asked to bring a sample phonathon script to boot camp. Following the final session on Day 1, you will be assigned homework to analyze your script and make revisions to make sure it follows the principles you’ve learned. During this working session, you will discuss your findings with your colleagues and share your ideas for improvement with the larger group.
Great managers must be able to inspire their employees to work hard for their institution. In order to do that, you’ll need to develop motivational skills as well as coaching skills. This session will walk you through what procedures you should have in place to ensure your student workers understand their roles and give you pointers on how to discipline them when they don’t meet expectations. You’ll also receive ideas for how to make the workplace fun, without it devolving into unproductivity.
Do you know how much your phonathon costs? Even if you are outsourcing your program, there may be a way to manage that process to keep costs down, bringing revenue up. This session will guide you through primary expenditures, suggesting ways to cut costs, and demonstrating the value additions to your budget can bring.
Do you have your calling pools ready for next year? Are you estimating the number of completes and calendaring for repeat calls? Do you have a complete timeline for each segment, and do you know what you should expect for participation and pledges? This session will answer these questions and walk you through how you can plan most efficiently to achieve success. We’ll also save some time at the end for you to begin this process for the upcoming year at your institution.
Do you have a good sense of how your phonathon is performing and where your areas for improvement are? In this session, faculty will show you how to analyze your phonathon data from previous years to set you up for making better decisions about your phonathon in the upcoming year.
During this working session, you will do some basic analysis of your past data results. You will be asked to pull some basic data on your phonathon to bring to the conference; during this session, you will perform a basic analysis of your data to determine how you’re doing and what you might change in the future.
With a solid foundation of how the phonathon works and its role in the annual fund, how do you set reasonable goals to elevate your phonathon? In this session, we’ll identify the distinct components of goal-setting for the phonathon, and you’ll learn how to create strong and realistic goals for your own program, including overarching, quarterly, and shift goals.
In this working session, you will come together in small groups so you can assess your phonathon’s capacity and identify your personal phonathon goals for next year.
Being able to demonstrate the results of your phonathon is important to justifying resource requests and to proving how past resources have improved your phonathon. Reporting also justifies the role of the phonathon in the big picture of fundraising. In this session, you will learn best practices for offering different types of reports and will share your own best practices with the faculty and other attendees.
Molly is executive director of annual giving at The College of William & Mary, where she leads a comprehensive program involving direct marketing (phone, mail, and electronic), volunteer outreach, and personal solicitation. Since joining William & Mary in 2008, Molly has expanded the role of the annual giving office to provide strategy, analysis, and phone/mail solicitation services for units across campus in addition to raising unrestricted funds for the college. During Molly's tenure, the number of alumni donors has increased for the past three consecutive years, with phone solicitation playing a key role in the success achieved.
Prior to William & Mary, Molly worked for seven years at the University of Michigan as manager of the Michigan Engineering Fund and then as associate director of annual giving in the university's central development office. Molly got her start in development working for nonprofit organizations including Junior Achievement and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Jessica Cloud brings to this conference over 13 years of phonathon experience, beginning as a student caller with her alma mater, The University of Southern Mississippi, in 1999. Currently, she administers a comprehensive annual giving program for Southern Miss, which she returned to in January 2011. Under her direction, the phonathon fulfilled more dollars in the first six weeks of the fall semester 2011 than it did the entire previous fiscal year. Prior to joining the team at Southern Miss, Jessica worked for RuffaloCODY for five years. While with RuffaloCODY, she worked with dozens of universities as a project manager, overseeing the phonathon data processes for universities partnering with the MASTERS division. From 2005 to 2009, she was the center manager at the University of South Carolina through RuffaloCODY, running a call center with 36 calling stations, more than 110 student callers, and more than 120,000 completed calls per year. During her tenure with South Carolina, the dollars pledged via phonathon almost doubled, from $750,000 to over $1.43 million. Her experience also includes some political party and alumni association membership fundraising. She enjoys working with phonathons because they are an interesting mix of leadership/management, data experimentation, and front-line fundraising arts.
Kim Julian is the executive director of annual giving at Emory University in Atlanta. Kim oversees the central annual giving program and works closely with development officers across the university to develop strategies to support targeted fundraising initiatives in Emory’s schools and units. As part of their central annual giving program, Emory operates a 24-station call center staffed with 75 student callers. Kim has been in development and alumni relations at Emory University since August 2004; she served as associate director of development and alumni relations for Emory’s School of Nursing for two years before joining the Office of Annual Giving in 2006. She was named executive director of annual giving in July 2010.
Prior to her time at Emory, Kim worked for the High Museum of Art at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta and was responsible for membership acquisition, renewal, and upgrade campaigns. Kim is former chair of Emory’s Development and Alumni Relations Staff Recognition Committee and a former member of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.
The Peabody Memphis149 Union AveMemphis, TN 38103
To reserve your room, please call 1-800-PEABODY. Please indicate that you are with the Academic Impressions group to receive the group rate.
The rate is $185 for single or double occupancy, plus applicable tax.
A room block has been reserved for the nights of June 5 - 7, 2012
Make your reservations prior to May 16, 2012. There are a limited number of rooms available at the conference rate. Please make your reservations early.
The Peabody Memphis's convenient downtown location is just blocks from attractions like Beale Street, the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, Gibson Guitar Factory, Fed-Ex Forum, National Civil Rights Museum, Sun Studio, Orpheum Theatre, and the Memphis Cook Convention Center. The hotel itself is also one of Memphis' most popular attractions. The Peabody Ducks march to and from the Grand Lobby daily at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. in a time-honored tradition dating back to 1933. The hotel is also in close proximity to the Memphis International Airport (MEM). The airport is just 15 minutes from The Peabody and offers direct flights to/from most major cities. Memphis is serviced by AirTran, Air Canada, American Airlines, American Eagle, Continental Airlines, Delta, KLM, Pinnacle Airlines, United Airlines, and US Airways.
Make the most of this event and register for the conference and post-conference workshop.
Full access to all conference sessions and materials, access to the networking reception on Wednesday, breakfast and lunch on Thursday, and breakfast on Friday, as well as refreshments and snacks throughout the conference.
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