The Danish Sclerosis Society

Today, The Sclerosis Society has more than 55.000 members and contributors, whom all support the combat of sclerosis. With more than 60 years of experience, the association funds a large part of Denmark's sclerosis research. We've talked with Christina Formann, Head of Telefundraising at The Sclerosis Society, to hear how the association uses Adversus for fundraising.

"It's typical for an NGO to have a telemarketing department, but we have a telefundraising department, which accounts for 14 passionate employees. We stand for quality and are an agile association. If we suddenly decide to head in another direction, we do so. That is why it's a huge resource to have an internal telefundraising department because it gives us flexibility and the possibility to be hands-on with the training of our employees," Christina Formann begins.

Overview and agility

When Christina Formann took over the telefundraising department, both she and the fundraisers were in desperate need of an overview. There was no link between processes, while the previous supplier of their dialer solution had difficulties meeting the association's need for quality and agility. Something that Adversus could provide.

"The common problem was to streamline everything regarding our leads. The leads were named different things in different systems, making it impossible for us to see how they had contributed. When we looked at our KPI's based on the lead pools, we were lost. Some of the leads were just put into a "various lead pool." Because of that, our fundraisers were having issues performing their work," Christina Formann says.

The cooperation between The Sclerosis Society and Adversus is built based on good communication, agility, and quality, which also characterizes the association.

"Adversus has the ability to improve where it really matters and a certain will to make everything work. At one point, we had made Adversus too unmanageable for ourselves with too many campaigns and lead pools because three different people had been administrating Adversus. Then you sent an employee for a whole day that made sure everything got fixed. It has been a lot better since then. We are now focused on maintaining the platform and receive excellent help in this process."

As Head of Telefundraising, Christina Formann focuses on assuring the quality of the fundraisers' work to reflect a high quality - a quality that their supplier always should meet.

"We would never have a dialer supplier with a system that broke down every month. It wouldn't coincide with the style we have. That is why it's crucial that our dialer supplier can keep up with our ambition about being a proper and professional department. Here, Adversus' ambitions about quality and development live up to great cooperation with us. If we require anything, we receive an answer right away, and they develop it. This is where Adversus' competitors fall behind. Adversus has a certain power, and I never doubt that they really want to optimize the product."

Automated communication

The Telefundraising department uses Adversus to optimize their communication during and after calls. Something that assures that people feel safe about contributing to The Sclerosis Society. 

"We use Adversus to send different emails. E.g., we can send what we call a "security mail" during the call if the person we're talking to doubts whether we are actually calling from our association or not. Daily, we are talking to people that have been scammed before, so that is why it's important to us that we can verify where we are calling from. Furthermore, we use Adversus to send out a verification email. Here, we'll inform the contributor about the deal we've made and welcome them as a member or contributor."

Predictive dialing and Journeys

By combining Predictive dialing and Journeys, Christina Formann assures that her agents' available time is fully used while simultaneously using all leads optimally - also leads that they didn't reach to begin with. 

"We are pleased about the Predictive dialer, as it gives us a lot more time on the phone. Our campaign strategy setup is important because we have a lead bank, where it's essential to use the leads during the period we have permission to contact them. For us, it's about recycling the leads that make sense to recycle. Through Adversus, we automatically sort the leads we have tried to reach six times and send them to a Journey. This Journey then opens the leads on a new campaign later - without us having to do anything. This way, we make sure not to lose them."

A new strategy during COVID-19

When COVID-19 hit Denmark, it caused changes in the work process, and The Sclerosis Society needed a different strategic focus.

"When our employees were sent home, our management changed the strategy for all outbound activities. Instead of fundraising, we had to call to say "thank you" to existing contributors and members. We actually experienced that people were happy to get a hug over the phone." 

Despite these changes, the Telefundraising department could easily adjust to the new strategy. It only took minor changes in the setup of the campaigns.

"It was easy to accommodate the new workflow. We re-named relevant campaigns to "thank you campaign," and I deleted unnecessary result data fields, so the fundraisers only worked with "success" and "not interested." And then we were ready. It also meant that we could tag leads correctly, so we, later on, can measure if it has made a particular difference."

It was still possible to maintain high quality and activity when working from home, where Christina Formann closely followed her fundraisers.

"We reached an extreme amount of people every day. It was crazy. In my experience, Adversus was stable and worked really well. Our live listen and live overview were functioning impeccably, which were my main focus during that time - ensuring the calls' quality."

Today, as the only department within The Sclerosis Society, Telefundraising has returned to its usual surroundings at the office. This benefits their team spirit, where results across the department fuel the motivation. To help visualize these results, The Sclerosis Society uses Plecto Dashboards that give an easy overview of the team's activities. 

"I believe that it's a team sport to fundraise, which makes it hard to do by yourself from your living room. We use Plecto for fast rewards whenever we make a success. We also visualize hit rate, number of successes, and answered calls because we think those are the most important data," Christina Formann finishes.

Read more about The Danish Sclerosis Society and the work they perform right here.