Fundraising with Banner

at UCLAN

Presenters:

David Turner, Senior Business Analyst

Steve Williams, Support & Development Manager

Acknowledgements

Maggie MacleanDevelopment Officer (Annual Fund)

&Jane Horabin

Banner Support Officer

Agenda

• Context• Telethon Campaigns• Banner Technicalities• Gift Aid• Credit Card Donations• Local Developments• Results• Way Forward• Questions

Context - UCLAN

• Large, Post ’92 University (30k students)• Preston Campus has 21.2k students

– 14.6k Full time (69%)– 6.6k Part time (31%)– 18.2k Undergraduate (86%)– 3k Postgraduate (14%)

• 48 Partner Colleges worldwide with 9k students• Evolving academic portfolio incorporates Dentistry,

Pharmacy and Architecture• Student administration is mostly devolved to Faculties and

Schools; Central administration for Admissions, Fees, HESA, Fundraising, etc

Context - Banner

• Banner Advancement• Banner Student• Banner General• Banner Accounts Receivable• ODS• Agresso

Context - Fundraising

• What we’ve done before– Telethon 2004

• Outsourced – The Phone Room• Oxford based• Oxford based students – no/little knowledge of Preston

– Results• 4500 contacts offered, 622 contacts made• Data issues highlighted• No soft data gathered

Telethon Campaigns

• Campaigns (x3)– 3 weeks in duration– Monday to Thursday– 12 calling days– 6 - 9 pm– 18 Calling Stations, 2 Admin Support

ID Task Name

1 Autumn 08 Telethon

2 Spring 09 Telethon

3 Summer 09 Telethon

Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug

What we wanted to achieve

• Get started !!• Start talking• Establish a Relationship

– Find out about what they’ve been up to– Tell them what UCLAN/Faculty has been up to– Get them interested in UCLAN again!– Get their support– Gain their commitment! AKA ‘The Ask’

Trial Run

• 3 members of the Fundraising Team• Tried to contact 60 people• Results in own right – 3 donations, 20%• Insights & appreciation of what callers would

expect

Telethon - How

• Pre-Call Letter• The Call

– Strength: Current UCLAN students calling UCLAN alumni, Matched by Course/Faculty

• The Email– Thank you for your gift– Thank you for your pledge– Thank you for your time

Student Callers – Our Strength

• Mass Recruitment

• Selection Day

• Training Day

• Additional Training for Banner Admin Support

Call Centre Issues

• Caller reliability• Excessive chatting• Taking long breaks• Performance & Confidence• Location

What we achieved

• Data cleansing• Data gathering• Interest & Involvement• Commitment

… but more about this later

Banner Technicalities

• Setup on Banner heavily influenced by ESSEC as the only European user of Banner Fundraising at the time

• Giftaid suite of forms developed by SCT to enable Giftaid to be incorporated in UK donations

• In house development of Contact Identification, Contact Report and Gift Capture

• Campaign and Designation structure agreed for best fit with the Fundraising activities over the forthcoming years

• Desk aids developed for Student callers and Admin workers for ‘at a glance information’

Banner Technicalities

• Already had alumni logged and all details – APASBIO– This form contains summary information

regarding a constituent such as :• Telephone Nos• Email Addresses• Employment information• Relationship information• Solicitation information (following contact made)• etc, etc …

Banner Technicalities

The following activities were then undertaken to build up the necessary data on Banner:

• AFACAMP – Built Campaign information• ADADESG – Built appropriate Designation for the

Campaign• AFADESG – Linked Campaign with Designation• Logging gifts, pledges and call outcomes –

AKAGIFT, AKAPLDG, ASAMRES

Banner Technicalities

• Solicitor Organisation set up and linking to Campaign – ASASORG & AFACORG

• Assigning/Re-assigning of contacts to Solicitors– ASAASCT– ASASIGN

• Access issues & data protection• Reporting summary info from ODS

Gift Aid

• Variations on the normal forms to support Giftaid collection

• AKBGIFT instead of AGBGIFT• Using tax records• We report to inland revenue name, address and

amount

Credit Card Donations

• Sought direct debits but also wanted to collect one off gifts

• Already use WorldPay for collecting fees• Set up another account for fundraising• Student caller enters details on a web page• File of payments is provided by WorldPay each

day• Created a form to load it in as gifts onto Banner• Not recording/storing credit card details locally• WorldPay sends out an acknowledgment email

Local Developments – Identifying Contacts

• Standard Banner uses Population Selection• We use

– ODS to extract a list of contacts– Used for MailMerge and a pre-call letter– New form to load into Banner as Contacts

Local Developments –Contact Report

• Everything we currently know about the contact all on one piece of paper

• They are the cues for the conversation• Collect additional or correct information• Variation on the report also supports faculties

and services that have a need to contact alumni

Local Developments –Contact Report

• Exclusions• Telephone Numbers• Email Addresses• Home Address• Degrees• Mailing Contacts• Telethon Contacts• Event Attendance• Employer Details• Gift and Pledge History• Hobbies, Interests, etc• Comments

Local DevelopmentsGift Load Form

• Takes payments from the WorldPay file• Load them as gifts as if entered via AKAGIFT• Also used to load gifts from fundraising events

Results

• 24 students called 3562 potential donors• 16% made donations or pledges• Unable to get through, main reasons included:

– 630 no reply after 3 attempts– 290 parents’ telephone no, new contact details

provided however some did not wish to disclose details– 615 received a dead dial tone– 454 were no longer at this address

Results

• ‘Soft’ results:– 13 course enquires– 28 requests for the alumni magazine– 4 interested in public lecture series– 28 offering as mentors– 17 offering placement opportunities– 9 interested in reunions– 2 offering to talk to students– 7 offering corporate donations– 7 Positive feedback: tell … I made it !

Results

• And …– 817 new addresses– 257 deactivated addresses– 35 deactivated email addresses– 562 new email addresses– 2043 deactivated telephone numbers– 520 new employer details– 89 exclusion requests !!!

Way Forward

• Reduced from 3562 raw contacts• To 771 useful contacts who will

– Give us money– Help our current students– Actively participate in the future of UCLAN

Way Forward

• Telethons planned for March 2009 and June 2009• Have to address the data cleansing issues• FuturePay – Use of WorldPay to receive monthly

standing order type payments.• Developing Student callers & further recruitment• Will consider other systems to streamline and

enhance the calling process– Eg Smart Call

• Promotion of Fundraising activities in general

… and that, in a nutshell, is how Fundraising in Banner works.