Tag Archives: IVR

Alumni fundraising: challenges and best practices

Alumni fundraising: challenges and best practices

Industry News & Insight, , ,

In a constantly evolving sector, the expectations on the outcomes of alumni fundraising strategies have changed. Universities are facing new challenges and need new tools to help convert alumni into active donors. 

Alumni fundraising: a new necessity for universities

With universities struggling to stay on top of their game due to increasing expenses and pressures to constantly offer the best equipment and education to their students, fundraising is of growing importance to these institutions. Universities are completely in charge of their fundraising, no other external agencies interfere, leaving them in complete autonomy to organise their fundraising and choose the best practices specific to their needs.

Over the past few years, the total amount of donors and money raised increased significantly – universities now receive more donations per year than any charitable sector. The majority of donors typically are alumni, but parents, current students, faculty members, associations, staff and other people of interest sometimes donate too.

Alongside financial donations, universities benefit from donor’s advice and gain from their networks and connections. Overall, fundraising adds value, increases academic excellence and accelerates initiatives and projects. 

University fundraising in the digital era

Previously, most best practices for alumni engagement revolved around direct mail campaigns, phone calls and student conferences. Nowadays, the possibilities are endless.  Over the years, universities have been able to increasingly engage with their alumni more consistently and the internet and its different tools have become an interactive way to increase alumni engagement.

To maintain healthy and consistent relationships with alumni, universities need to use technology to their benefit. Among other things, they can organise regular update calls, webinars, and regularly post news and engaging content on their social media platforms. Universities ultimately need to do more with less to make sure their alumni relations are maintained.

What alumni fundraising can bring to universities

  • With current government cuts, money brought in through fundraising can help universities manage their current budget shortfalls, as well as allow them to maintain innovation, excellence and competitiveness.
  • Alumni participation creates a broad and diverse base of support and this extended network works as an external point of view that will be able to advise the university on the changes and innovations that need to be done.
  • Consistent giving by alumni, including smaller donations, in the years following their graduation, increases the likelihood that they will become major donors later in life.
  • High levels of alumni participation can inspire other major donors (such as companies, associations or foundations) to start participating or increase their own support. When a university is and looks successful, other people want to be part of its success and will be more willing to invest.
  • Fundraising focuses the university on a clear articulation of its strategy and gives it a precise overview of its projects and objectives for the years to come.
  • Success is excellent for morale. When a fundraising campaign works and brings a lot of donations, staff and students feel that their institution is worthwhile, which tends to boost productivity and engagement towards the university. 

What are some best practices for fundraising?

  • Finding international ambassadors. Use LinkedIn to find alumni in leadership positions around the world. This can enhance international philanthropy and benefit your university more broadly by inspiring young students to study abroad. I can also help with outreach and gaining international influence.
  • Collect information about your alumni to better engage with them. In order to do this, monitor hashtags and keywords students or alumni are using when speaking about your university. Track the type of content alumni interact the most with, and use alumni surveys to uncover demographics data.
  • Use social media for research. Many applicants are now using social media as an important tool for their job searches. Use LinkedIn to promote networking and learning, it is a very efficient way to show former students you still care about their progress. 
  • Mind your communication. Focus on your donor, be clear and establish a logical fundraising strategy. Potential benefactors, even former students, are not going to invest their money in an organisation that doesn’t have a clear vision of what they want to achieve. When presenting your plan, focus on the excellence and the strengths of your institution. Alumni want to see their university preserve its excellence, with a clear idea of the projects they want to uptake to stay on top of their game.
  • Offer multiple ways to donate. By making the whole process easier and stress-free, your alumni will appreciate your flexibility and will be more willing to freely participate. With multiple options, alumni can donate immediately or over time with recurring gifts or regular payroll deductions etc. Offering many different ways to donate lets everyone decide what is the right fit for them and shows great adaptability.
  • Do not lose contact after the first donation. Every donor, regardless of the size of their gift, should be well taken care of. Keeping in touch leaves a good impression on the donor, making them likely to give again and give more. In order to leave a positive and lasting impression on your donors: efficiently process their donations, thank them or publicly recognise them, invite them to events, send them progress updates etc.
  • Show the impact donations have on the university. To be sure they have made the right investment, donors want to know where their money goes. Donors want their donation to have a direct and beneficial impact on university research, on the academic performance and well-being of students. There is a choice of formats available to highlight this progress and the successes accomplished thanks to these donations, including conferences, videos, infographics or blogs. 

C3 can help you overcome fundraising challenges

Donors will be more willing to give money if the whole donation process is made easy,  stress-free and secure at all times. Our Secure Assist solution allows university staff to guide donors through the whole process, for a smooth and quick experience. Our platform can take payments via telephone, SMS and a white-labelled online portal. Our solution also provides universities with a PCI DSS compliant telephone payment platform that allows alumni to make donations completely safely, and even sign up securely for regular donations.

Our university customer base includes Cambridge and Oxford universities, so whatever the unique challenges you’re facing with alumni fundraising, we have a solution for you. We have extensive experience in and knowledge of the education sector, so do not hesitate to contact us. 

Mistakes to Avoid to Make your IVR System Excellent

Call Handling

An IVR system is a great component in helping you and your business to deliver excellent customer service, they are extremely helpful in filtering customers to the right call centre agent and delivering extra information to them. However, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is only useful when it works effectively, otherwise it can be a source of frustration for a lot of callers who get passed around the system and seemingly feel like they are getting nowhere. Here are a few things that you should avoid and steer clear of in your IVR system to make sure it is helping customers rather than hindering them.

Too Many or Too Little Menu Items

No caller wants to sit through a long list of 13 different menu options, not only is it frustrating, it’s confusing too. By the time anyone has reached the 13th option it is more than likely that they have forgotten at least the first 5, and they will definitely have to listen to menu all over again. However, it is very unlikely that most of the callers had stayed on the line to hear the option of listening to the menu again and if they did stay to the end they probably don’t have the patience to sit through it again. Customers just want to speak to someone to address their problem, so they will probably put the phone down instead and you would have lost their business.

Setting up between 3 and 5 different menu items is optimal, any less and it creates another problem for the customer. With not enough options the customer can become confused as to which option to choose to get them to the most relevant department. If you have too many options and you’re finding it hard to cut down, you could consider using voice recognition instead to eliminate the push button menu altogether and give the customer the power to tell your system what they’re looking for instead.

Using Jargon

There is a reason this word exists, to describe every word we don’t understand, much like the word ‘jargon’ itself. In most cases the customer is calling you because they don’t understand something, need help or have a question or query about something, so they probably don’t understand all of the technical industry jargon related to your business. You don’t want to blind your customer with these words and confuse them even further, so avoid jargon unless it is absolutely necessary, for example, if a technical term needs to be used in a menu item to point a customer in the direction of the department that deals with that item specifically.

A Lack of Consistency

Changing your wording from menu item to menu item is only going to cause confusion for the caller, don’t go from ‘Press 1 for sales’ to ‘To speak to someone about reservations press 2’, it throws the customer off because they can’t follow an easy, predictable pattern which means they have to concentrate on the menu options even more than before to make sure they select the right one and don’t make a mistake. As well as style of menu items, you need to ensure you keep the same voice and volume throughout, if the caller has to keep turning their volume up and down to suit the varying volume of your IVR system it is just creating more work for them which can really annoy them.

Not Including a Call Back Option

Calling call centres and customer service departments are branded with a stereotype that you will spend a lot of time on hold and being passed around without getting anywhere. No one appreciates being on hold, not even for a few minutes, it often stops you from being able to do anything else while you spend your time hanging on and waiting for a sign that you’re going to be able to speak to a real person soon. If there is no one available to speak to the caller you should always give them the option to hold until there is or to request a call back instead. Offering a call back option saves the customer from wasting their time and their money, it shows the customer that you care about them and understand that they have a life outside of the call that they are making, it’s just good customer service!

Avoid these mistakes to ensure your IVR system is user-friendly and won’t turn customers away! Find out more about our IVR systems.