Quality Assurance Calling: Verification and Welcome Calls
Verification and welcome calls are among the most important quality assurance activities in fundraising. When done well, they significantly impact donor viability and can be the difference between profit and loss.
What is quality assurance calling¶
Quality assurance calling serves two distinct but related purposes:
Verification calling confirms the accuracy of new donor sign-ups, particularly in face-to-face fundraising campaigns. It ensures the transaction was legitimate and the donor intended to sign.
Welcome calling introduces new regular donors to your organisation. It confirms the quality of the transaction, answers questions, and begins building a relationship.
Both activities share the same goal: connecting with new donors promptly to secure their support and set the foundation for retention.
The challenge¶
Traditional approaches to both verification and welcome calling require a full call center of trained staff to cover all hours a donor might be available. Those economics only work at scale, forcing many organisations to compromise through low contact rates, outsourcing, or scatter-gun technology.
In recent years, the challenge has become more acute. Carriers, handset manufacturers, and regulators are locked in a war with spam callers. Call screening tools and pattern-detection algorithms now warn people when a caller is not to be trusted. Even legitimate calls like yours are getting caught in the crossfire.
Techniques like randomising outbound numbers to trick people into picking up are becoming less effective. The result is low contact rates, low donor trust, and higher costs.
The solution: treat calls like business appointments¶
Consider how business appointments work. If you schedule a call with someone, and you call at the agreed time using a number they recognise, they will almost always answer. If they miss it, you leave a message asking them to call back. More often than not, they do.
Quality assurance calling should work the same way. Set a day and time for the call during sign-up. Call using a number the donor trusts. Treat every call like an appointment and expect the same result.
This approach requires a cultural shift. Fundraisers must be incentivised on appointments made, not just acquisitions. Success must be placed directly on the fundraisers themselves, and this change must come from the top.
How vCards build trust¶
A vCard creates a Contact in a donor's phone. When saved, the charity's logo, contact details, and phone number are stored in the donor's contacts.
For calling, this turns an unfamiliar number into a trusted interaction. When a donor receives your call, their phone recognises the number, trusts it, and displays your branding instead of just an unknown number.
If that same number is stored as a Contact, it receives the highest level of trust. Services like Hiya and Truecaller cannot flag it as spam. The result:
- Contact rates improve, leading to higher quality in the field
- Donors have greater trust and satisfaction, leading to higher retention
- Fewer calls are needed, saving time and call costs
A vCard can include the charity name, logo, email address, website, postal address, and the specific phone number used for calling.
How intelligent dialing helps¶
Prioritising new sign-ups in the dialer enables near real-time calling, reducing voicemail encounters and improving contact rates.
When appointments are set and sold properly, you should expect a nearly 100 percent first call contact rate. The system calls records at the exact right time using the number stored in the donor's phone.
If appointments are missed, the system can:
- Leave automated branded voicemails
- Send branded SMS messages explaining the purpose of the call
- Try again after a set interval with a different voicemail
Return call handling: When a donor calls back after a missed appointment, the system automatically rings an available caller. If no caller is available, the donor can leave a message.
For donors who are hard to reach, the system can intelligently serve records with configurable settings for time of day, call frequencies, and different voicemails per attempt.
The result¶
Getting this right transforms your economics. What was once 2,000 calls speaking to 250 donors becomes just 500 calls speaking to 500 donors.
Fewer calls, more connections, higher donor satisfaction, and more profitable programs.