“Is it the end of the line for fundraising by phone?” was what many nonprofit organizations were pondering last year when more than 48 million Americans signed up for the National Do-Not-Call Registry. While the law clearly stipulates that charitable and political calls are exempt, many members of the public still are unaware of the distinction.
A Harris Interactive poll of 1,011 people in August 2003 found that 37 percent thought that the federal do-not-call list also applied to charity calls.
“It certainly has been confusing for people,” says Kimberly Haywood, director of telemarketing for the March of Dimes, a national child welfare organization, who often sits in on fundraising calls. “I could hear it in [the consumer’s] voice: ‘But I thought I was on the national do-not-call list.’”
Haywood also serves as director of Mother’s March, MOD’s first and longest-running fundraising program, which began in 1950 as a local door-to-door campaign to fight polio. One of the critical elements of the program, Haywood says, is telemarketing. MOD conducts two extensive programs annually — on the order of 15 million calls — to solicit help from volunteers to work in their local communities.
“Surprisingly, [our telemarketing program] has fared better than we thought it would,” she says, “but prospects have become a harder ‘yes,’ what with the public misconception and state do-not-call lists looming.”
To deal with the growing number of people questioning the validity of its telemarketing calls, MOD designed a script that addresses the charitable- and political-call exemption. Call-center personnel simply try to clear up the prospective donor’s confusion about the do-not-call rule, Haywood says, and requests by consumers who ask to be added to the organization’s internal do-not-call file are honored.
“Response rates for prior volunteers and donors have not dipped as much as pure prospects, but that could be expected,” she says.
- Companies:
- Epsilon
- March Of Dimes





