Inappropriate solicitation

[carbro]

How about the organizations (arts and otherwise) that use your past record of contribution to calculate precisely for you what your next big contribution should be?  Those are my absolute favorites!  

I wonder if a reply in kind ("Last year's contribution acknowledged your company's great accomplishments, but this year you've produced one clunker after another, so my contribution -- my reward to you -- reflects that drop in standards") would do any good. :shrug:

As for the telemarketers, I tell them truthfully that I don't talk to telemarketers, goodbye, click.

[Helene]

From a Marketing standpoint, just about any business or organization that relies upon direct marketing will mail as long as the mailing breaks even. Once a "package" -- brochure, letter, offer, etc. -- is successful, it will be expanded outside its target audience, until that segment does not break even. So donors spread to high-end subscribers to low-end subscribers to frequent single ticket buyers, etc. Also, when doing physical mailings, by adding names, the incremental cost can go down if the higher quantity qualifies for the postal sorting rates, which are discounted in the US, and lower printing costs per thousand.

There are two main reasons why there are "suggested" donations: first, many people don't remember how much they donated from year to year, and rather than let people make it up, they want to pressure people to at least match their past donations, and second, people tend to choose from the "middle" of the menu. If there are four-five suggestions, and these are customized, chances are the amount/range donated last year is second from the bottom -- the bottom number is a lot less than the last donation, and who wants to be seen as being "cheap" -- and they hope that the recipient will choose one of the two directly above. An alternative is a pre-printed form, in which one of the options, usually at the bottom, is a checkbox ("I would like to contribute/renew at the same level as last year ([computer fills in last year's amount]).

Telemarketing solicitations are another story -- either they are made by staff, students, or volunteers, or they are run by professionals, who get a commission or flat fee for the successful call. For a while, non-for-profits were hiring high-level development and grant-writing folks by offering them a cut of any new money they raised. I'm not sure if this is as prevalent as it once was.

If they offer premiums and they are smart, they will allow the donor to check that s/he would not like to receive anything of value. In almost every arts organization there are membership levels that give access to discounts and/or priority on single ticket sales and the tchokas shop, invitations to working rehearsals, fancy parties and access to donor lounges (for big spenders) -- i.e. warm and fuzzy "affinity" benefits. These are generally considered "costless," which is rarely the case, if only in the static they cause the organization.

I must say that I would be annoyed at a fund-raising campaign for a "royal" anything.

I know a Princeton graduate who told me that the school insisted on three contact names and addresses at graduation, so that they could hunt him down for donations for the rest of his life. My alma mater is a bit more low key.

My standard response to phone solicitations is that I don't respond to them, only to mail. In response to this, I was once asked by the caller in a very pissy tone if she was wasting her stamp by sending me mail, and I told her she'd have to decide. I am ruthless about pulling donations where I get rude responses in general. I told a solicitor from [small musical group in Seattle] that I had donated to the org through my company's annual giving campaign -- we are allowed to designate to which 501©3 orgs the funds go -- and the man asked accusingly "Are you sure?" They've been off my list since. (I never received a response from the organization after I wrote a note to point out the attitude of their fundraisers, because if I had received an acknowledgement that this wasn't the face the org wanted to show, they wouldn't have lost me as a donor.) I wrote a note to [arts organization in NYC metro area] objecting to them using my work number for fundraising when I had given it to them in case there was a problem with my ticket order, and I got a high fallutin' note back about how many of their donors "prefer the convenince of being called at work." My (private) response is not fit for this board, but I never donated to them again. The [local college] student who called for a donation for the World Arts programs was on shaky ground when she asked "So you don't want to donate now?" when I told her that I donate with my subscription renewal, but she didn't challenge me again when I repeated myself.

The funniest subscription solicitation was a call I got last night from [locale theater org]. A very friendly guy was giving me his spiel, and I stopped him mid-sentence, telling him, "Stop! Wait! I'm the wrong person to be talking to! I hate theater! My friends offer me theater tickets all the time, and I always turn them down! I don't want to waste your time!" We had a good giggle over that.

[dancemomCA]

Sigh - fundraising and dance. Solicitations come from everyone - from the National Arts Centre, even after purchasing a season's subscription, to my son's dance school where I myself had to organize a dance/silent auction to help defray his tuition costs. Ah, the irony.....

[Paul Parish]

Darling Carbro, it's not necessary to tell the truth to a telemarketer -- Kant established this long ago, in the kritik of Pure reason, I think it was -- you don't have to tell the truth to people whose curiosity is idle or invidious. (If the school bully asks if your mother wears false teeth, you don't have to say yes even if she does........)

[art076]

As a point of discussion - how do people suggest arts organizations go about raising money? Donations and giving make up a large - and integral - portion of any major arts organization's budget, so the importance of keeping up the cash flow is of vital importance. Major gifts are becoming fewer and farther in between, and costs are rising, so they might see this "hard sell" approach more beneficial if it brings in money than a more passive approach that would not quite so proactively bring in cash. Let's face it, if they don't go after donations, those donations might not actually come in. What would effective alternatives to a telemarketing-type approach be?

[Alexandra]

I've split off a post Simon G made about funding ballets thruugh the lottery, because I think it deserves a thread of its own.

Art076 raises a good point. I'd say "please send me information in the mail," but I would imagine that gets thrown away more often than telemarketers get hung up on. Email annoys us, direct mail annoys us, telemarketing annoys us. There are too many people asking for our time and attention -- think of those ghastly "beg-a-thons" on PBS that now go on for two weeks, during which they program self-help and pop music shows that aren't part of the ordinary fare.

[Kate B]

I got the pointe shoe appeal letter from RB. They must be sending it to everyone as I certainly don't buy expensive seats! I think it's OK to send a begging letter, but it is really naff to give a signed photo or shoes for certain amounts. My letter went straight in the bin. As did the raffle tickets they wanted me to sell on their behalf last Christmas, and whatever else. The ironic thing is I have never bought RB tickets directly - I am on their database for loving the Kirov!

Plus, if you want a signed photo you can just write a nice note to your favourite dancer with a SAE and they will send you one!

[koshka]

Goodness--I saw the title of this thread and had much worse visions!

I am sorry to say that none of this is surprising--the mailings, the calls, the premiums with price tags attached (heck, the Kennedy Center has an elaborate table showing what you get at each level of giving!). It is marketing, after all. It's why I adore caller ID.

The Next Big Thing is having the artistic director address the audience before every "show," if you'll pardon the expression. Once considered the sign of the amateur or very small company, the kind where everyone in the audience knows everyone on stage, it's now working its way up the ranks of small to mid-sized companies in the U.S. Surveys have shown that audiences like this.

Washington Ballet does this and my sister (Not a Dance Person) and I both typically find the brief intro before and the Q&A after enjoyable. Of course, Washington Ballet is also really lovely to its subscribers--there are 2 or 3 open house/open rehearsal-type events each year. It is great.

Boston Ballet has pre-performance lectures/demonstrations an hour or so before selected performances, and when I have been able to get to them (rarely), I have really enjoyed those too.

The Kennedy Center has done many more "Performance Plus" (lectures etc) events this year, and they have also been great.

My $0.02 about these events is that are terrific. There are many people out there who enjoy ballet performances and otherwise have no opportunity to observe "behind the scenes" classes or rehearsals or just to ask questions. It can add a lot to the experience when the opportunities are provided.

[Simon G]

Plus, if you want a signed photo you can just write a nice note to your favourite dancer with a SAE and they will send you one!

Actually Kate, I think they've been asked to stop doing this in light of the $250 a photo offer.

If you want to queue up at the stage door you can still get one there.

[Pamela Moberg]

Yeah, I would just love an old autographed shoe!!!

If it was Taglioni's, of course.

Now, I have a photo of her shoes, that will have to do... :grinning:

[Estelle]

Goodness--I saw the title of this thread and had much worse visions! 

I am sorry to say that none of this is surprising--the mailings, the calls, the premiums with price tags attached (heck, the Kennedy Center has an elaborate table showing what you get at each level of giving!).  It is marketing, after all.  It's why I adore caller ID.

Well, I think it depends quite a lot of the country one lives in. In France I've never heard about a dance company asking its subscribers for donations (and I think that if one of them tried it probably would cause much surprise, as here most people think that subsidizing dance companies is the state's (or city, or region) job), and probably it is far less common in Great-Britain than in the US...

[Leigh Witchel]

Until a company can stand on its own through other funding sources, expect them to do whatever they can to get you to write a check. And the larger the net they have to cast, the more chance of it not being carefully targeted.

Having to do this all the time, I guess I have sympathy for it. It's harder/easier with a smaller company. Harder because I don't have as large a potential pool of donors, easier because I cull the names individually to make sure people are only asked once yearly (a second request is made at the end of the year, again culled individually to remove the names of people who already donated) and that at least some contact that doesn't involve a pitch for money. I don't want people to flee from me because the only time they see me is with my hat in my hand. This all takes a lot of time, well spent, but time I'd rather spend choreographing.

[glebb]

Yeah, I would just love an old autographed shoe!!!

If it was Taglioni's, of course.

Now, I have a photo of her shoes, that will have to do... :grinning:

If you get to Boston and you call the Pusey Library at Harvard ahead of time, you can see a pair of Taglioni's character shoes.

[Pamela Moberg]

Thanks, Glebb, but will I ever get to Boston? Future looks dark at the moment...

That brings to mind, I did have a pair of autographed shoes (Gambas) from RB ballerina Beryl Grey, I got them sometime in the fifties. When I turned out my mother´s fairly large apartment, I seached but could not find them. Alas, she might have thought that it could have been a pair of my old shoes and had thrown them in the bin.

[Swanilda]

A pair of Taglioni's shoes also live at the Theatre Museum in London, catty corner to Covent Garden.