In previous editions of Fundraising Europe, I have written about upcoming changes in EU Privacy legislation that could negatively impact nonprofit organisations and fundraisers. One of these is the ePrivacy Regulation, which will replace the existing ePrivacy Directive and is currently under negotiation.

The ePrivacy Directive is a piece of EU legislation closely connected to the GDPR but zoning in even more on what data may be harvested. And the new ePrivacy Regulation focuses specifically on outreach by telephone. The proposed Article 16, which covers unsolicited and direct marketing communications, states that any ‘natural or legal person’ using electronic communications services for the purposes of placing direct marketing calls shall either present a calling line identification (caller ID) on which they can be contacted or present a specific code or prefix identifying the fact that the call is a marketing call. The proposal furthermore outlines that the same applies to calls made by nonprofit organisations to support their purposes.

However, an added danger lies in the recent negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council, with a new proposal to replace the option of a calling line or a prefix with a mandatory prefix. Whilst NGOs and charities are in favour of the identification of their calling lines, a mandatory prefix would generate the false impression that their calls are for commercial or marketing activities instead of fundraising for activities in the general interest.

The work of nonprofit organisations, such as charities and NGOs, is essential for the EU. Their assistance during the COVID-19 crisis proved a crucial key to helping overcome economic and social problems. They support vulnerable people; they help protect the environment and safeguard human rights. Many of them are now at the forefront, raising funds and helping the people of Ukraine.

Particularly at a time when other forms of fundraising continue to be under pressure, blindly grouping NGOs and charities in with direct marketing organisations, whilst sticking them with a mandatory prefix could severely impact their important work. In a letter to the decision-makers, EFA has therefore called on the EU institutions involved in the negotiations to take this adverse impact into account and to stick to the text that was proposed by the European Commission, and agreed by the European Parliament.

EFA will continue to closely monitor the developments regarding this file.

Patrick Gibbels, Gibbels Public Affairs

About Patrick Gibbels

Patrick is EFA’s public affairs columnist in Brussels.

He is the director of Gibbels Public Affairs.

Follow Patrick @GPA_Brussels.

Read more from Patrick in our View from Brussels column here.

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In response, EFA has written to the representatives of the European Parliament, Council and Commission involved in the negotiations (the trilogue) on behalf of members. It argues that such a move would impact fundraising by giving the impression that nonprofits’ calls are for commercial or marketing activities.

Charlotte Rydh, EFA President, comments:

“Making a prefix compulsory, even for non-commercial calls from nonprofits, will have a direct impact on the fundraising activities of NGOs and charities in the EU. We are surprised then to see the trilogue negotiations propose that a mandatory prefix replace the option of choosing between a calling line identification and a prefix. Neither the Council nor the European Parliament has received a mandate for such a measure, and this was not in the original proposal from the Commission.

“On behalf of nonprofit organisations around Europe raising funds for their important and vital work, the European Fundraising Association urges calls from nonprofit organisations to be distinguished from commercial marketing calls.”

EFA asks the trilogue parties to stick to the text proposed by the European Commission and agreed by the European Parliament, and let the current option of choosing between a prefix and a calling line identification remain.

This, it argues, enables nonprofits to distinguish themselves from marketing calls. Using the same mandatory prefix, on the other hand, could lead to their calls being blocked and reduce the number of people nonprofits are able to reach.

The letter went out this week (18 May), and EFA is also encouraging members to take appropriate action in their countries, including lobbying with their EU representatives.

For more on this issue, read Patrick Gibbels’ latest piece, New ePrivacy Regulation proposal could leave nonprofit and commercial calls indistinguishable.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels

Every nonprofit organisation has a mission and a purpose, and fulfilling that purpose is its number one priority. To do so, they need to build and maintain capacity and resources. Fundraising is therefore a crucial part of the sector’s work, and donors form the lifeblood of the organisation.

COVID-19 and the many restrictions that came with it have significantly restricted the ways in which we can reach out to donors. Live events are near impossible to organise under the current circumstances in many parts of Europe, and visitor attractions and public fundraising are still limited. At least we still have the phone, right? Well, maybe not.

The EU has been cracking down hard on privacy violations in an effort to protect its citizens from data abuse. Whilst the primary targets of the EU’s crackdown are internet giants such as Facebook and Google, who have been known to harvest and sell citizens’ data, many other smaller players are becoming collateral damage. We all know the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by now and most of us understand how it protects consumer rights, but also how restrictive it can be in terms of data collection and outreach.

The e-Privacy directive is a piece of EU legislation that is closely connected to the GDPR but zones in even more on what data may be harvested. And the new ePrivacy Regulation, which will replace the current Directive, focuses specifically on outreach by telephone.

For years, the ePrivacy Regulation has been in a deadlock at European level, as the European Council refused to progress the file. During the second half of last year, the file started moving again and the institutions are now getting closer to an agreement. The Council made two amendments to the Commission’s proposal which could make telephone fundraising very difficult.

Article 16 states that organisations that engage in telephone marketing may receive a certain label and a special telephone prefix to be recognised as such. To make matters more difficult, the proposed article 14 states that telecom providers will be able to offer users to automatically block all incoming calls from such numbers. This would bypass donors’ consent to be contacted. If a customer who had consented to be contacted activates the prefix block, all fundraising calls – including those to current supporters, would be blocked by default. Needless to say, this could severely affect organisations’ ability to raise funds.

Personal data has become a commodity and abuse of these data by large online players is a real threat. It is logical that the EU legislators wish to protect citizens from this type of abuse. But applying a catch-all approach, which sadly seems to be the EU’s modus operandi in many cases, can be particularly dangerous in this case.

EFA calls on the European institutions to consider the magnitude of the impact this proposal might have on fundraisers and to adopt a risk-based approach, leaving this line of communications intact for those organisations that legitimately rely on it.

About Patrick Gibbels

Patrick is EFA’s public affairs columnist in Brussels. He is the director of Gibbels Public Affairs. Follow Patrick @GPA_Brussels.

Read more from Patrick in our View from Brussels column here.

Main photo by Murray Campbell on Unsplash

Today’s increasingly digital world is opening up new opportunities and channels for fundraising all the time. And yet, over the past year and more, some traditional channels have seen a resurgence too, with the telephone becoming one of the most valued ways for charities to connect with supporters. While people were living alone and – in many cases – in fear, the telephone enabled charities to reach out, delivering a personalised and often highly engaging supporter experience.

Last year, when EFA surveyed European fundraisers in partnership with Salesforce, almost half (48%) of respondents – and over two thirds of those in Germany – said they used the phone during the height of the pandemic to fundraise and build supporter engagement. With social distancing restrictions in place, no public fundraising, events or retail, the telephone was often charities’ only means of talking with donors and others, a vital way of deepening relationships and engendering support. Indeed, in our recent feature on Donor Love, DEBRA Ireland, RNLI, the Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially-Sighted and Mercy in Action Onlus all used the telephone to reach out and inspire their audiences.

From simple calls to touch base, strengthening long-term supporter relationships through to upgrade campaigns or emergency appeals, nonprofits are using the phone in range of ways.

A personalised and authentic approach

As a dialogue channel, the telephone offers a wide range of opportunities to build trust, raise funds, develop long-term committed supporters, to maximise donor satisfaction and lifetime value.

Jeroen Hogenhout, Hogenhout Fundraising Support

Jeroen Hogenhout, founder of Hogenhout Fundraising Support in The Netherlands, emphasises that the power of the telephone is not only its ability to reach thousands of donors, but to personalise every conversation. He says:

“There are no tricks to a good calling campaign, it’s all about having a clear strategy; a vision for how you look at your donors, what role you see them having with your charity and how best to use the telephone to engage them.

 “If you use the phone well, you can really strengthen your relationship with donors, as well as raising funds. Several charities called their donors during lockdown just to ask if they were fine, and it was so much appreciated.”

Hogenhout adds: “Covid-19 has been disastrous for so many people, but there were some positive effects too. One of these positives was that people opened up to charities. They realised that what really matters is health and staying close to their loved ones, as well as doing good for themselves and others. We noticed that across our telephone fundraising conversations – donors seemed more open. In the beginning, this was often because it was so nice to talk to someone during lockdown. But even after people got used to social distancing measures, that feeling remained and telephone fundraising was highly successful.”

The authenticity of a one-to-one call is what’s so valuable, helping charities deepen supporter loyalty, according to Helen Mackenzie, CEO of UK-based telephone fundraising agency Purity Fundraising. She says:

“One of the key learnings from last year is just how important authentic conversations really are. Nobody wanted to get it wrong during the pandemic, with people questioning whether it was the right time to call and taking great care to be mindful of people’s circumstances. But we found that supporters wanted to know what was happening, what was needed from them, and they responded with unprecedented levels of generosity.

“The best performing campaigns were those that put the supporter first. We ran one calling campaign for a charity with the purpose of checking in with supporters and seeing how they were coping. If those we called expressed any financial difficulties, they were given the option to take a payment holiday or to stop donating. Remarkably, 98% kept on giving and, although no financial ask was made, some even chose to increase their gift.”

Asking for more – Upgrade calling

Perhaps unsurprisingly with so many people at home during lockdown, many organisations recorded particularly high response rates. Over the year, Purity delivered a high volume calling campaign for Greenpeace UK, which raised 144% of the targeted annual upgrade income.

Tom Micklewright, supporter development manager at Greenpeace, comments:

“For many of our supporters, the pandemic reinforced the urgent need to protect our planet and live in balance with nature and the possibilities that big changes can be made by companies and governments when they are deemed necessary. This coupled with a lockdown where more people were available to talk, resulted in higher contact rates and strong average gifts from supporters who were happy to give more to support Greenpeace’s work during the crisis. We ended the year exceeding our original upgrade phone targets.”

Similarly, a lottery upgrade campaign for the Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) carried out across the Summer far exceeded expectation, achieving 160% of its projected income. The charity’s executive director of income generation, Lynne Harris, says:

“We normally rely on face-to-face fundraising to recruit new members into our lottery scheme which generates 51% of our annual income.”

“Our telephone upgrade campaign gave us a fantastic opportunity to bridge some of that income gap whilst also engaging with our supporters at a time when there was a lot of anxiety and uncertainty.”

Donor acquisition and legacy campaigns

While specialists highlight the value of engaging existing supporters over the telephone, 2020 was also a strong year for donor recruitment calls and legacy fundraising.

Raquel Gutierrez, general director of The Fundraising Company in Spain, says:

“With fundraisers off the street, we had to compensate by delivering more acquisition campaigns and we ended up recruiting 30% more regular donors over the telephone than in 2019. We trained up face-to-face fundraisers from our partner group International Fundraising to deliver calling campaigns to build capacity and so that those fundraisers could be retained. We delivered similar training for a large national charity in Barcelona. And yet, it wasn’t just recruitment campaigns that performed so well on the telephone.”

Raquel Gutierrez, The Fundraising Company

“It can seem contradictory that after more than a year of the pandemic, serious changes in our lifestyles, people feeling the economic impact of losing their jobs or seeing their business on the verge of bankruptcy, legacy campaigns burst onto the market. But, today, so many charities in Spain are seeing the real value of legacy fundraising. There’s a general feeling that the public is increasingly looking to put their life in order.”

She explains that, as was the case in other nations, many charities in Spain stopped their legacy campaigns during the hard lockdown period (April-June) as they felt it may have been insensitive at a time where the nation was seeing around 1,000 deaths a day.

Gutierrez adds:

“But this changed by the Summer. Two of our clients launched legacy campaigns then and the public response was really positive. Over 60% of the supporters we called were willing to talk about it and wanted to hear more information, and we had no complaints. We also discovered donors who had already drawn their will and included the charity, but the charity did not know about it. This made the campaign all the more worthwhile.”

Commenting on the legacy environment in Spain, she adds: “Spain is still a conservative country and we have some work to do to normalise conversation around legacy giving. Legacy income brings in less than many other European nations currently, but there is huge growth potential.”

Where now for telephone fundraising?

Looking to the future, the telephone clearly has a key role to play in strengthening supporter relationships, building on the strong foundations established by many during the pandemic. Experts in the field highlight the need for more personalised supporter journeys, alignment with other communication channels and better integration with digital.

Gutierrez says:

“Last year, there was so much need for supporter acquisition that we had very little room for innovation. Now, I’m looking forward to developing new ways to engage supporters, maybe offering step-by-step engagement plans, which offer more flexibility and can be tailored around peoples’ needs and interests. Given the expected post-pandemic economic crisis, we need to allow future donors to become a part of the cause, showing understanding of their fears or their worsening situation.

“In this sense, the phone can be a valuable sensor of a donor´s distress and other feelings. On the phone, we can easily identify people whose situation has dramatically changed and offer them alternatives that prevent them from totally disconnecting from the organisation.”

Helen Mackenzie, Purity

Mackenzie agrees, adding:

“As the post-Covid world starts opening up again, we need to deliver a truly integrated supporter journey. Whatever the campaign message or goal, the power of the phone is our ability to communicate openly and honestly, to gather insight from supporters and to align future communications around their needs. Digital integration is enabling charities and agency partners to source strong leads; finding people with an active interest in the cause and those who want to help, but, in an increasingly crowded space, charities need to have a strong and clear call to action.

“We’re seeing charities work much more strategically with the phone now, moving away from treating a call as a commodity and making it a more integral part of their donor development programmes. If we’re to truly make this shift, it means assigning KPIs that don’t always focus on the gift, but the quality of the call and how we make people feel. After all, the ‘no’ calls often give you the most insight and value. Who knows how those people may go on to support you in the future?”

Hogenhout concludes, saying:

“Investing in supporter relationships now will generate more income in the future, as that’s how fundraising works. Ultimately, it’s all about building and maintaining good relations and careful communication.”

A final note on compliance

While the telephone offers significant potential for fundraising, there have been concerns over increasingly restrictive legislation around charities’ use of the channel, particularly since the introduction of GDPR three years ago.

Hogenhout highlights that the Dutch Telecommunications Act, which comes into play next month, imposes restrictions on the permissions required for calling, saying:

“The new rules here make it more difficult for charities to get in touch with their supporters. But it’s still legal to call current supporters, ex-donors or those who have opted in, and these ‘service calls’ – thanking donors for their support or asking for their feedback – are often a highly underestimated aspect of supporter engagement.”

And now it seems that the legislative landscape for calling across the EU could be shifting once more. Proposals for the forthcoming ePrivacy Regulation indicate that telephone fundraising could become even more restrictive. This makes it all the more important for the sector to continue to monitor future developments and work together to demonstrate the importance for charities of being able to use the telephone to inspire long-term committed relationships with supporters.

Main photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The former proposal for the Dutch Telecommunications Act restricted organisations from contacting individuals who have not opted in for marketing calls unless they have a financial relationship as customers or, in the case of charities, donors.

But in a landmark ruling, these amendments broaden the concept of what constitutes a customer relationship, widening the boundaries for those who charities can call to include volunteers and supporters who do not currently donate financially. The decision recognises that charities are of great social importance and that their income is often highly dependent on telephone fundraising.

When lobbying for these amendments, Goede Doelen Nederland and fellow trade bodies emphasised that charities’ supporter relationships are more wide-ranging than the private sector customer base.

Margreet Plug, director Goede Doelen Nederland said:

“We are very pleased that the Dutch government has recognised the importance of charities asking for support for the work they do. Also by phone. After all, when they call to ask for support, it is not to gain a profit, but to fund special services and projects and to support beneficiaries.”

These changes follow the publication of public research showing that the vast majority of Dutch citizens do not object to a telephone approach by charities (Zest 2020).

The new Telecommunications Act is expected to become law in either July this year or January 2022.

Editorial note: The headline has been updated since publication to include the word ‘forthcoming”, making it clearer that it relates to future amendments. This piece follows past news that highlight concerns about the new Act restricting charities’ ability to fundraise via phone.

The proposal from Goede Doelen Nederland and Nederland Filantropieland, supported by the country’s trade association for data, DDMA, has been extensively discussed with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and has now been brought to the attention of State Secretary Keijzer.

A member survey by Goede Doelen Nederland has shown that, on average, charities using telemarketing recruit almost 30% of donors through this channel at organisations, raising around €100 million on an annual basis. It argues that an opt-in for charity telemarketing would considerably limit their ability to reach out for public support, which would put the financing of many social projects at risk.

Goede Doelen Nederland has said that it will continue to emphasise the special position of charities in the coming months and to advocate for an exemption for the sector.

The bill is expected to be released for consultation around the summer.

The new ‘call levelling’ tool aims to improve consistency in call monitoring across the sector and to strengthen compliance with best practice. It is freely available to IoF members who are encouraged to use the new system to help train their monitoring staff and develop their approach.

Enabling organisations to review their monitoring practices, staff members can log in and listen in on calls based on genuine conversations, which have been pre-recorded, adapted to fit a fictitious charity and anonymised. Users are then asked to assess the call by answering a series of questions, learning how to apply consistent levels of objectivity to call listening.

Tamsin Mitchell, compliance manager at the Institute of Fundraising, said:

“This is a flexible tool which is aimed at supporting our members and providing confidence that monitoring of calls is taken seriously, requiring considerable knowledge and skill. Telephone fundraising really is a great way to reach out to supporters and our members are keen to maintain and improve on the already high standards achieved. The Institute of Fundraising is keen to support its members in this aim.”

Stephen Service, policy manager at the Fundraising Regulator, said: 

“Call monitoring is an important safeguard for charities and telephone agencies to ensure their staff comply with the Code of Fundraising Practice. We welcome the IoF’s new tool as a way for these organisations to apply appropriate monitoring levels within their fundraising.” 

The tool can be found on the IoF website.