Inspired Experience

The donor experience.  What is it?  And more importantly, how can it help your organization achieve your fundraising goals?  If you’d like to see the power of the donor experience (or in this case, the “customer experience”) in action, walk into your neighbourhood Starbucks.  When Howard Schultz decided to build his business model around the customer experience, it transformed the rather mundane purchase of a $0.50 cup of coffee into an empire, with stores in 37 countries and more than 35 million customer visits each week.  Talk about loyalty, patrons return on average 18 times a month.  More than coffee, Starbucks quickly realized its core business was the customer experience.

Built on Experience

Taking a lesson from Starbucks, and with years of call centre experience under our belt, we understand just how important creating caring donor experiences are when fundraising by phone.  Our contact centre was built, from the ground up, to deliver just that.  From the fundraisers we hire to our investment in training, development and employee ownership – our call centre philosophy is built around a powerful passion for fundraising and delivering exceptional donor experiences.

Learn more about Our Philosophy on the donor experience.

In fundraising, the donor experience challenges us to rethink the most basic relationships in fundraising: the ones between you and your donors.  Our team of fundraisers are recruited, trained and incented to help you deliver an outstanding experience on each call – to help donors feel appreciated, listened to and valued.  They help donors understand and relate to why we’re calling, what we’re asking of them and how they can help.  They engage donors, making them feel like a part of the process and helping to ignite their passion for giving.

More than renewing donations, collecting phone pledges or payment information, the experiences we create as fundraisers are all about the human experience – and we like to think we do it better than anyone else.

Inspired Callers

Our commitment to the donor experience begins with our team of passionate fundraisers. Our fundraisers are mature, experienced call centre professionals.  Their sole passion is delivering an inspired donor experience, and they are personally connected to your cause and your success. 

Advisor philosophy

We train our fundraisers to become personal fundraising advisors on the phone.  It's one thing to ask for a donation on a credit card, but quite another to explain the value in why we're asking.  Our fundraisers help your donors understand the “why” in fundraising – why we call, why give monthly, why renew now, why upgrade their support, why support their local hospital.  Understanding builds trust and loyalty, inspiring your donors to help even more.  Our advisor approach to fundraising is central to delivering an exceptional donor experience, helping your donors personally connect with the true value of their support.

Investing in Talent

We painstakingly recruit talented fundraisers who have a genuine heart and passion for helping people.  We then provide comprehensive, structured training to provide the tools for excellent service.  We train our fundraisers to personally engage with donors.  To create genuine conversations and answer questions in a way that builds trust and helps donors understand why we're calling.

Our fundraisers are trained in a breadth of key fundraising issues:

Fundraising in Canada Hospital fundraising Privacy Monthly giving CRTC regulations Donor Bill of Rights Ethical fundraising Financial accountability CRA guidelines Listening skills

Customer service Ways to donate Tax receipts Direct mail DRTV Door-to-door Direct dialog Volunteering Planned giving Special events

We invest in your success

For Inspire, becoming your partner of choice is directly tied to being an employer of choice.  By providing a workplace that is supportive, professional and filled with opportunity, we attract and retain exceptional people who can deliver an extraordinary client experience.

We encourage our staff to become personally invested in your work – they don't just think of themselves as owners of the company, they in fact, are.  Through our unique employee ownership program, each and every member of our team has an equal and vested interest in our success, and the success of our clients.  This “we're all in it together” environment helps breed our culture of excellence and helps provide common purpose and commitment to our work and each other.

Inspired Quality

At Inspire, the quality of the calls we make is our top priority.  We assign a dedicated experience manager to your campaign, who oversees all quality assurance (QA) practices to deliver a consistent, outstanding donor experience on each call.

QA excellence starts with campaign design – ensuring our scripts, messaging and training provide the right tools for our fundraisers on call.  In the contact centre, our experience manager and team leader monitor calls, evaluate pledge response and verify pledges, to ensure the highest standards are being met.  Our fundraisers are scored daily across multiple dimensions of quality to identify opportunities to improve their performance and provide ongoing coaching and motivation.

Contact Centre Experience

Experience has proven the benefits of building a contact centre around the donor experience – not simply around dollars raised.  That's why the campaign and calling incentives we offer are based on the quality of our calls – helping to reinforce our donor-experience culture.  Providing rewards and recognition for outstanding quality on call is the best way we know to deliver truly outstanding results, helping raise the most amount of money on your campaigns.

Ensuring Privacy

We know just how important the privacy of your donor and patient information is.  Our dedicated privacy team ensures that each call we make is in full compliance with all Hospital and Canadian privacy guidelines and legislation.  Each member of our team has received comprehensive privacy training, including updated briefings on PIPDEA and PHIPA guidelines.

Quality Driven Experience

We use proven quality assurance practices to ensure excellence in all areas of our services.  Here are just some of the many ways we work hard to deliver an exceptional donor experience:

We provide daily & weekly call reports We monitor calls daily We monitor our fundraiser's quality (QA) scoring We provide quality-focussed call incentives We record calls and verify pledges You approve all scripts & messaging We provide a dedicated privacy team We provide a dedicated experience manager We provide thorough client training

We provide comprehensive call quality training We use peer-coaching We update staff regularly on current privacy guidelines We use data error-trapping, verification & auditing We provide a call-complaint escalation process We adhere to the Donor Bill of Rights We adhere to the AFP ethical fundraising code We are CRTC compliant

We invite you to read more about:

• Our commitment to Ethical Fundraising
• The Donor Bill of Rights
• The AFP Code of Ethics
• The CRTC Telemarketing Rules

Quality is Everyone's Job

Each employee at Inspire is committed to quality on call and plays an important role in helping to deliver an outstanding experience on the phone.  We invite you to read more about our team members, and their role in ensuring exceptional quality on your calls.

Inspired Results

We are committed to delivering an inspiring donor experience on each and every call because we know, without question, this is the most powerful way to connect with donors and help raise the most support for your cause.  We are passionate about providing donors the information they need to make smart, informed decisions about how and when they want to give.  And we are committed to doing it in a way that genuinely connects with donors on a personal, emotional level.

Our inspired fundraisers are passionate about fundraising, experts in their field and motivated by delivering an inspired experience and inspired results.

Results of an Inspired Donor Experience:

Donors are more likely to:

• engage in genuine conversations with our fundraisers
• give the time to thoughtfully consider our appeal
• understand the importance of how and why to donate
• ask questions or raise concerns, providing an opportunity to build trust
• connect personally and emotionally to the appeal
• respond positively to our appeal

Results of inspired calls:

• Creates a more positive impression of your organization
• Helps to improve pledge response and revenue
• Improves the likelihood donors will give again in the future, regardless of their response to our call

Our Results Guarantee

We're so sure about our ability to deliver results we invite you to split our campaign file and send half to a competitor or your current provider.  If our campaign does not achieve a higher ROI, we'll match their price for our services. 

That's how confident we are in our ability to deliver inspired results.  And when you win, we win.

Inspired Partner

We are privileged to have the opportunity to work with a prestigious group of clients and we're passionate about what we do.  Putting you and your donors first helps to define us as an agency and define our success in business.  Being accountable, transparent and ethical in our work and with each other is a cornerstone in our company's culture.  Beyond providing an inspired donor experience and great service, our goal is to deliver a true partnership experience and to be thought of as a trusted part of our client's development team.

At Inspire our first obligation is to provide value and recommend strategies that work best for you, even if that means making fewer calls.  We don't want your business for a year - we want it for a lifetime.