Opinion

More on TPS 1

Fundraising | Adrian Beney | 16 Jun 2009

I don't want to hijack Michael's post on TPS, but this deserves another post of its own to emphasise the point. I absolutely agree with Michael that this recession is an opportunity to rethink a lot of what we do. If that includes improving the regulatory environment and that's a really good thing.

I think the key is to differentiate ourselves from pushy salesmen and women whose only interest is to make a sale and not to build a long-term relationship.

 When charities call they should identify themselves immediately, seek permission to have a telephone call and only then begin a conversation with the potential donor. How would it be if someone  rang and said "Hello, my name is John and I'm calling from the very good cause charity. Would it be convenient to take five minutes of your time to talk about the amazing work were doing and see whether you might be interested in supporting us?"  I suggest that that is a polite, non-pushy and completely appropriate way of opening a telephone call. If you wish to be offended by it then it seems to me that's your problem not the charity's.

Suspecting this was the case, and relying on the fact that University Alumni do have some connection with their former University, I experimented some years ago with calling former students who were registered with TPS. In some cases they had volunteered their telephone numbers to us, but in many cases they had been obtained from directory enquiries or a bureau. I was interested to test the extent to which registration with TPS would change the donor acquisition rate.

The chart below shows the number of people we had ever called, divided into the left column who were not on TPS and the right who were. In fact a very slightly higher proportion of those who were TPS registered had become donors. Of course this could have a lot to do with the age of people who are TPS registered as opposed to those who are not, but nevertheless they were clearly a group we could not ignore.

Next I looked at the type of gifts that TPS registered people tended to make. They were very slightly more likely to make a cash gift, and very slightly less likely to make a direct debit than those not registered on TPS.

Thirdly (see below), I looked at the way people behave on the telephone, and here we did find a depression in pledge rate of around 20% compared with those not on TPS. There was a corresponding increase in the proportion of people saying they would not under any circumstances give.  Interestingly the same group of  "Hard Nos" responded about 20% better than average when subsequently direct mailed. I would love to know if this is because we have identified those who were not telephone responsive or whether it was because the telephone call had served to engage them and inform them about the cause even though it did not at that point result in a gift. In reality it's probably a mixture of the two.

Overall, despite the depression in response rate, a telephone call to TPS registered people was still more effective than simply mailing the whole TPS registered population.

I am well aware that the population I tested here (more than five years ago) is different from many charity databases. The individuals concerned had spent three years of their lives at my university - there was an innate connection. Nevertheless the people had registered with TPS, so I believe this was a valid test of whether people feel that TPS registration should stop all calls, or whether actually it is an imperfect but reasonably effective way of stopping the truly horrible, as well as those which in fact people would not mind receiving.  I think this is evidence that for many people they would not mind receiving a well executed, respectful telephone call from a charity.

So this is a long winded way of saying I agree with Michael Naidu. It's time for a rethink on TPS and the introduction of a separate scheme the charities.

PS Don't forget that if someone is a donor to your charity then this overrides any registration with TPS.

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