Charities have a limited amount of resources as ideally, the maximum resource allocation should be geared towards carrying out their core activities, whether this is building schools in Africa or looking after the homeless in the UK. This is where charity fulfilment services step in. There are hundreds of companies that offer charity fulfilment services and it is not always obvious what they do. Here are some descriptions to help you make your charity outsourcing decisions.
Donation Handling and fundraising
The term ‘thanking and banking’ is a widely used term in the Charity industry. It is the name given to donation processing and customer goodwill at the same time. Fulfilment companies can manage and track the donations that a charity received through a variety of outputs including over the phone, fax, online, credit card or via mail. Donations can be processed 24hours a day and responses are sent back to supporters eliminating time spent communicating.
Call centre services
Charities can take 1-1000’s of calls a day depending on the size and the nature of the charity. The charity call centre can be used for anything from handling campaign responses to dealing with donations and offering branch and shop support. Call centres are a vital part of charity fulfilment and calls can be answered in the name of the charity. The best call centres are open 7 days a week are fully PCI compliant meaning that data is always safe and secure. They handle calls so that you have free time to focus energies elsewhere.
Mailing and Direct Mail
The success of a charity often hinges on maintaining the good-will of the supporters by keeping touch on a regular basis. Charity Direct mail campaigns are a very popular way of doing this. A great fulfilment company would have mailing facilities that can handle you direct mail and postage needs to supporters. If you are running a new marketing campaign to raise interest and donations, fulfilment services for charities can take the stress out of the whole process by handling the mailing and managing the response too!
Bear these three important aspects in mind when thinking about outsourcing to a fulfilment or charity marketing agency. Choose a reliable agency that understands your needs to maximise the usage and minimise the charity management that is carried out in-house.