If you are thinking of raising funds in India, please don’t waste any more time just thinking about it. Go and do it now. If you wait much longer, you might find yourself pushed aside by a herd of local and international not-for-profits who are exploring – and beginning to pour into – this incredible market.
In a country of one billion people, India’s 200 million middle class citizens may be the world’s fastest- growing new pool of potential donors. Faster even than China. But don’t be fooled. India isn’t a “virgin” market any more, that will respond to any kind of simple appeal. While that might have been the case a few years ago, today any gains you make will have to be carefully planned and vigorously implemented.
Indian fundraisers, whether domestic or imported, are developing their own unique methods and adapting traditional Western methods to benefit local non-profits that used to rely mostly on funding from industrialized countries.
Direct dialogue
Take for example the traditional Western technique of face-to-face fundraising, pioneered in the west by Greenpeace, and sometimes known as “direct dialogue”. Indian fundraisers do it too. But they add their own unique twist.
As everyone knows, India has excellent telemarketing companies that conduct inbound and outbound calls to generate sales or to service customer calls at extremely low cost. Some of these firms that started out selling credit card memberships and insurance have now branched out and started fundraising for western and Indian NGOs eager to reach middle and upper class consumers.
What could be more natural, then, than using the many available telephone and address lists to reach potential donors? Taking care not to give the impression of overly-aggressive fundraising, they engage people in easy-going telephone banter about the charity they are representing. A pitch for funds is never made, because the purpose of this first stage is solely to generate leads. Recipients of calls are asked if they would agree to meet someone from the charity to describe the work of the organization.
If the answer is positive, his or her name and number are sent to a small group of trained face-to-face fundraisers, in the same or even in another city. These solicitors then call the prospective donors and set up appointments to meet at work, at home or possibly at a tea shop. At the meeting, the fundraiser goes into action, using charm and reason to persuade the prospect to agree to a first gift.
Skilled solicitors are able to persuade about 50-75 per cent of the individuals they meet to make at least a one-off gift, and possibly even join a monthly giving scheme or child-sponsorship programme.
Pre-qualified direct mail
Another adaptation of a standard western direct mail technique is using telephone pre-qualification of names and addresses, before sending out an appeal letter. Using this procedure helps to eliminate people who are unlikely to become donors, thus saving wasted paper, printing and postage. While the high cost of doing this might make it prohibitive in the west, the low cost of skilled labour in India makes it very cost-effective.
Kunal Verma, who heads fundraising at Madurai’s Meenakshi Mission Hospital in South India, explains:
“When conducting direct mail appeals for our hospital, we aim to optimize our investment right from the start. To be honest, we started pre-qualifying acquisition mailing lists more because of challenges we faced, than a new creative approach. The lists we were buying were not giving us great results, partly because we could only afford to purchase low quality lists. We simply needed to keep our fundraising costs to a bare minimum.
“We had three issues with the lists we were using. First, many of the addresses we rented were inaccurate because people had moved or passed away; second, many of the phone numbers attached to the names were incorrect (due mostly to poor data entry by list vendors); and third, people’s phone numbers had not been recently updated. (In India, people frequently change phone companies). On analyzing our campaign results, we found that 28% of our DM packs were being returned owing to wrong addresses and 13% of the phone numbers we called were wrong.
“So, on average, 40% of our rented names were unusable. This was a huge drawback, in terms of wasted paper, printing, postages, cleaning the database and human frustration.
“We therefore adopted two important ground rules. First, we decided never to rent any lists which have no phone numbers. Second, before mailing out any packages, our tele-calling team calls all the addressees, to ensure that they really want to receive our appeals. We also ask them whether they prefer to support our cancer patients or our free meals for poor patients. We then send the appropriate appeal to each pre-qualified donor. This process not only eliminates wrong addresses or changed phone numbers, but also tells us what they are most likely to support.
“The tele-callers do not to make an ask, but promise to call back after seven days (when people have received their DM pack) to answer any questions. If someone sounds very enthusiastic and motivated to give, the DM pack is sent out immediately by messenger (with a handwritten addressed envelope) so that the donor can make an immediate contribution. Otherwise it is sent by regular mail.
“Pre-qualifying the lists not only saves us a lot of money, but also boosts the morale of our tele-calling and direct mail teams,” says Verma.
Since these prospects have been informed in advance about Meenakshi Hospital’s appeal, they are well prepared for the ask and respond at a rate of 24 percent. With repeated calls to the same names, Meenakshi Hospital’s fundraisers are able to persuade up to 52% of mail recipients to make at least one donation. This is, of course, a big improvement over the previously existing situation, where they were failing to connect with 40% of the rented names.
As a result of pre-qualifying lists, Meenakshi Hospital now has a clean and updated house list. The tele-calling and DM teams are happy. People in the community do not receive unsolicited mail. And the Hospital fundraising team has learned how to turn a low-quality list into a database that generates over one out of two donors.
Richard Pordes retired from UNICEF in 2006 and now heads his own international fundraising consultancy, with clients in North America, Europe and Asia. He can be reached at richardmpd@aol.com. Kunal Verma served formerly with ActionAid India and Christian Children’s Fund and is now the Director of Resource Mobilisation at Meenakshi Mission Hospital, in Madurai, India. His email address is directorrm@gmail.com.