Tales from a fundraiser

When working for a dementia charity, I oversaw training our agencies, including telephone fundraisers. This was way before the pandemic, and even before GDPR, so we could meet in person and could ‘cold’ call using data that had been sourced with the right permissions. 

Photo from EngageEmployee.com

Before the callers arrived, I plugged in my presentation and set up the room. It was boardroom style. I took every chair in the room and turned it round – so the back of the chair was to the table. The callers came in and all looked confused, should they turn the chair round? Should they sit in it as it was?

 

They milled around for a bit, and I said ‘Good morning. How do you feel?’ And they all replied “Confused” (by the chair positions) and asked me what they should do. ‘Sit down please’. Some sat with the chairs facing outwards, some sat and moved the chairs towards the desk, or towards me. This confusion was exactly what I wanted to achieve. ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Now you get just the tiniest insight into how someone with dementia feels every day.’ I then went into my formal training presentation, starting with ‘how many of you know someone or have a family member with dementia?’ – sadly nearly all the hands went up. 

The chair rearrangement was a small ‘trick’, but it prefixed a highly successful calling campaign (one of the callers themselves became a donor). If you can get your fundraisers – whether they are agency or staff – to think from your beneficiaries’ perspective for even a short while, then you stand a much better chance of them being more invested in a positive outcome from their efforts. Which, in the end, is better for everyone - from the recipient of the call to the charity beneficiary. 

Useful links 

• Alzheimer’s Society 
• Alzheimer’s Research UK 
• Dementia UK 
• Telephone Fundraising Code of Practice (current)

Liked this? Try...

• From heartening to heartbreak
• Boots