3  warnings before you start reading :

⚠️Its easy - You don't need a telefundraising department to organise a call–a-thon.
⚠️its effective - The call-a-thon produces monthly donors who will support you years.
⚠️its addictive - It can motivate you to start calling supporters every day.

As I told my clients, calling to a supporter is not rocket science... 🚀

This guide is based on the practical experience of animal organisations across Europe who organised Call-a-thons during the 2024 and 2025 year-end fundraising seasons. Some of these organisations did not have any experienced callers or telefundraising teams. For example you can gain 133 monthly donors after a three-day callathon with a team of nine people, or 10 monthly donors after one day with just two people.  (for context, see the complete results from 2023, 2024 and 2025).  Also, if interested in joining the Support group, click here (or reach-out akvile@growth-impact.eu directly).

🏆 This guide is about the patterns behind successful results. 

The guide was created under Growth and Impact group, organization which helps and supports other Groups and Specialists in getting Regular donors, Activists and Supporters. 

🎯The goal is simple: to help you organise a call-a-thon that will bring you regular donors.

⚡You will hardly find a better opportunity to test calling donors than during a fundraising campaign. The contacts are warm, you  have  fresh leads and there is a sense of urgency and a story to tell...

A call-a-thon is an event where employees, volunteers, and anyone else willing to call donors come together to reach out to a large number of potential donors. Typically, everyone calls at the same time, but you can also call individually while staying connected—for example, via an online call.

Calling for monthly donations can even be a fun! 

Confusing ? Lear more about HOW TO PRIORITISE contacts from Tušti Narvai.

One you have a right segments to call - create a CALLING SHEET  ( im sharing an example of calling sheet i used before we have a CRM   )  - Excel sheets work great, as always. If you have a CRM system, you can create the calling list there, to keep informations in one place. ☝️ 

The organisations listed below have each held at least one call-a-thon in the past. Some of them organise them for every fundraising campaign, including Tušti Narvai (LT), Svoboda Zvířat (CZ), Anima International (Poland) and Dzīvnieku Brīvība (LV). They are part of the Year-End Support Group and attend and share their experiences at GIG Telefundraising Academies and shared also experiences about Call-a-thones which allowed this deep dive to be created — amazing! 💚💚 💚 (A big thank you to all of them!) 👏

Here is Jess's ( VGT Austria) amazing plan for the whole call-a-thon. ( "to do" list included ☝️ ) 

Campaign context:  

🕐before  launch / during  launch: 💬 message in calls can be  "You are among the first people (our "closest ones") to hear that!' They will feel special and flattered that we "see" them!

if you decide to find bigger donors 4 matching funds than :
🫰Don't be afraid to tell them how much you need. ( The more, the better ? ) 

🧑‍🤝‍🧑Tell them that they can influence how many people will join and how successful the campaign will be.
Here is explanation "what is matching" that Sboboda Zvířat used. 

📞If you have a budget for matching funds, encourage callers to mention it during a call-a-thon! (  At first, callers thought "it's too complicated to explain", but then they realised it really works! )

🕣before every peak of the campaign (it depends on your campaign phases).   💬 message in calls can be"  You are one of of most active folowers"  = You are an animal right hero, animals ( chickens, piglets, foxes ...) need you NOW!  ( example in call structure of Dzīvnieku brīvība ( LV) ).  

🕕before the end :  💬 message in calls can be " You have a last chance to win this campaign and save thousands of animals from suffering "  = show the urgency ! ( "You have a unique opportunity to change the history" )  


Work day x weekend ?
I did not find any concrete pattern; it depends on what suits you and the other participants best. The main thing to remember is that every supporter is different. Some will be happy to have a conversation with you on Sunday evening, but won't be able to speak on Monday morning. Others will be completely the opposite. There is no ideal time to call, so you can have a call-a-thon whenever you want.

The crucial point is to get people to call-a-thon  🧲

your colleagues are always busy, volunteers  have jobs, school, etc. ( Colleagues tend to excuse themselves by saying that they are too busy with the campaign. ( And always - they are afraid to call ) They are busy, I know, but this is important. A few hours can work wonders and you can strengthen the organisational vibe by having nice conversations with supporters and receiving feedback. That can confess that they are not callers, but the whole team and volunteers decided to call and thank them in personal conversations, which supporters will love! )

1️⃣Reach them in person (go to the volunteers' regular meeting and show them how easy it is! Maybe prepare a recording of a call with a supporter to show them how positively they react).  People are prejudiced against calls because they have experienced many pushy telemarketing calls, but you will do it differently!  Same with your colleagues.
💡 A good tactic is to find a buddy to promote the call-a-thon. Ideally, this should be the leader of the movement or someone outside the fundraising team.

2️⃣call them if you dont meet with them on regular basis - your goal is to have  YES/NO from them  ( if they dont know , call them later again ( they need to understand that you count with them + this call-a-thon thing is really important.  Follow up with email invitation.

 3️⃣if cant call - message/ email them (exapmple of invitation email for employees and example of message to volunteers )

4️⃣ remind them - via slack/sms/whatsapp 

in teams  - i recomend pairs or teams of 3 people maximum - you still want to be effective. The reason why in Svoboda zvířat ( CZ) had teams was simple - we have skilled telefundraisers, so i want them to support + give feedback to employees and volunteers in the team. Plus we use CRM system and only callers had "callers acces" to it. = they wrote notes about calls + send follow up emails for the others in the group. 

offline 🆚 online
It's possible to do it online. You can divide people into "rooms" and meet in the "main conference" room during a break – Zoom is great for this.

But even Animal International Poland managed to gather for a call-a-thon in one place, which was not easy because they don't have an office and work mainly online, living in different parts of Poland!

⬇️Just look how happy they were! ⬇️
 

Choose the warmest leads you have. 🔥🔥🔥
1) showed fundraising potential ( donated in the past, sended single donation now/ recently  or were thinking about donating = clicked to donation page but did not finish  a donation. )
                                      ➕
2) they are active / showed some interest (for exapmle people who were clicking around your emails )

The favourite segments in call-a-thons were:
Single donors (who donated during the campaign)

Former monthly donors (if you don't call stopped monthly donors, this is a great opportunity to renew them)

Recent monthly donors (the goal here is to increase their monthly donation)

put them to excel sheet and you are ready :)
💡Remember to mark the date on which they will set up the donation. Ideally, this should be today. If the donation does not arrive a few days after this date ➡️ call REMINDERS.

Last but not least point.

Atmosphere chilled yet focused and productive, with everyone aligned with the goals and understanding the importance of this campaign. 

Food motivates us all! Shared pizza worked well to strengthen relationships between callers, the team and volunteers, and created a stronger sense of community.

Support: be present, take breaks and share how it went. Remind them that its not just about the monthly donations, they are strengthening the relationship with supporters and the movement, and that this really matters!

Mood: Rejections are totally OK — it's a natural part of the calling process. Share realistic conversion rates ("Only 3/4 out of 10 will become monthly donors — you don't have to convince everyone" ot "only 50% of people will pick up the phone" ).

DRAW THE RESULTS: Have a nice, motivating visual representation of 'how many donors we won today'.

(on the left down) Every Christmas tree decoration represents one upgraded monthly donor (our goal was to upgrade monthly donors)  and everyone who upgraded have to drow own decoration desing :) 
It matched the internal counter (on the right, down)  that we used throughout the year-end campaign to share good news and track progress.

👉There are two levels of preparation for the call itself. 

1)  CALL STRUCTURE 🗺️
2)  CALL SCRIPT  💬

 You can create a call script, but it worked well create JUST a CALL structure – offering a few useful sentences and the main points of the call. Because the best approach is a personal one — we want callers to be themselves, not try to play the role of a professional caller. Authenticity and honesty always win over memorised scripts that don't sound natural.

Chat about VALUES

🧠This mindset makes things easier for call-a-thon participants. As part of the Svoboda zvířat (CZ) call-a-thon training participants were given the following task:

☕imagine what connects you to our supporters. If you were to go for coffee together, what could you talk about?

The answer is obvious: our values, our love for animals, and perhaps the way we live and our pets :) 
So the call should resemble a coffee date – there's no need for professional phrases. Just be friendly and give them the space to explain what motivates them to support animal rights. 

🎯The goal is to encourage them to verbalise their own relationship to the topic, because that is THE REASON why they should get more involved and become monthly donor.  

STORYTELLING

If callers are unable to encourage supporters to open up, they can always resort to storytelling. Storytelling is effective. Even sharing some harsh details will provoke an emotional response.

"Imagine - right now, somewhere near us, in a narrow, crowded cage - in dust and noise - a chicken is standing on a metal grate. She can't even walk or spread her wings. And there are thousands of such chickens in Latvia. "  ( scrtipt from Dzīvnieku Brīvība (LV))

or :
"Did you know that, right now, millions of animals are confined in laboratories and subjected to painful, invasive experiments?
Every day these animals experience fear, stress, and suffering—and in almost every case, they die in those laboratories." ( script from Te Protejo ( CHL))

Emotions motivate us to do things, such as start a monthly donation. It's a great way for people who don't have time to be activists — they have jobs, hobbies and families - that is totally OK! There is  great way for them, cause one of the most effective way how to help chickens like Suzana is monthly donation ... ♥️

💵 and amount of monthly donation is totally up to them - it depends how animal rights are important for them and how much they can 

⚠️The majority of movements created a script to prepare volunteers and employees as much as possible. However, bear in mind that the best calls focus on supporters. You can use open questions and storytelling as an alternative to make script better, but you should always encourage volunteers to find their own sentences/ questions and not treat the script as a manual for how things need to be done. 🤖

4 POTATOES structure 🥔🥔🥔🥔  ( basic structure on the left, carousel with description on the right ) 

THE HAND structure 🖐️ ( used in Dansk Vegetarisk Forening (DK)  and Dzīvnieku Brīvība (LV) )

 You can create a call script, but it worked well create JUST a CALL structure – offering a few useful sentences and the main points of the call. Because the best approach is a personal one — we want callers to be themselves, not try to play the role of a professional caller. Authenticity and honesty always win over memorised scripts that don't sound natural.

Chat about VALUES

🧠This mindset makes things easier for call-a-thon participants. As part of the Svoboda zvířat (CZ) call-a-thon training participants were given the following task:

☕imagine what connects you to our supporters. If you were to go for coffee together, what could you talk about?

The answer is obvious: our values, our love for animals, and perhaps the way we live and our pets :) 
So the call should resemble a coffee date – there's no need for professional phrases. Just be friendly and give them the space to explain what motivates them to support animal rights. 

⬆️⬆️⬆️This is really good, isn't it? And you know what? The side effect — even if people say no now — is strengthening relationships with the movement! People will be more active and follow you for longer — that counts too, right?

As every fundraising activity, also Call-a-thon needs to be measured!

Don't forget to measure the results!

PROMISES  ≠  REAL MONTHLY DONORS 

The goal is to ask supporters to start a monthly donation immediately during the call. If not, ask them, 'Will you start a monthly donation today?' ( Why? "Because it's urgent! Those animals are suffering every minute they're kept there." )

BUT ...❎ 

⭐2 movements ( Dzīvnieku brīvība (LV) and AETP (SI) thanks to call-a-thons started or are starting internal telefundraising teams!! 🎉 

⭐Thanks to the call-a-thons, new donors were brought into the movement and valuable feedback about the campaign was collected.

⭐The majority of movements valued the shift in mindset among participants the most, from "we don't want to annoy people with phone calls" to "telefundraising can be an effective and pleasant way to raise funds for organisational growth and sustainability". It is a valuable experience of "live" communication with supporters and donors.

⭐Anima International Poland has proven that it is possible to upgrade monthly donors with unskilled callers (employees and volunteers) . "Six of us managed to get 26 upgrades in 3.5 hours." 🎊 

⭐No one regrets organizing the callathon; only Animal International Bulgaria shared that they were sorry they didn't manage to hold a callathon during the last year-end campaign. 

⭐its cheap -  everyone can use their own phone, you pay only for pizza 

⭐people dont need a lot of training - 1 or 1,5hour training is enough. Callers just need to ask, listen ( dialogue 🆚 monologue ) react + be proud ( "Im doing great think for great movement" ) which will help to have good fundraising mindset.

⭐ Long-term financial stability - Sometimes the result of one day calling may not seem like a large number of monthly donors, but multiply that number by your expected lifetime — a minimum of 12 months, perhaps 24? Now you can see why monthly donors matter, and that even a small call-a-thon can have a significant impact. 💰💰💰

This benchmark is commonly used by other movements to measure cost effectiveness : 
12 months income: 1 regular = 10 * amount
5y income: 1 regular = 30 * amount  

🦶🏻Step 1

Choose your audience – which segment will you be calling ? WARM LEADS 🔥+ financial potential 💵 = ♥️♥️♥️

🦶🏻Step 2

💏Recruit callers -The way in which you invite them is important. Ideally, it should be in person or over the phone. It's a great way to get people on board — it's easy and people react well! (Tease them, don't scare them!) 👻

🦶🏻Step 3

Prepare calling structure - few parts, hand 🖐️ or 4potatoes 🥔🥔🥔🥔 stucture will help them to navigate trough the call and still find their own way.
❣️Authenticity is what sets these calls apart from robotic call centre calls.
😊Imperfections can be overcome with honesty and a smile. We are humans, and that's the beauty of it. 👯

🦶🏻Step 4

Run training : One / one and half hour is enough. The main things are motivation and a positive mindset. Callers aren't begging for money; They're offering people the opportunity to support animal welfare even further by making monthly donations, which is the most effective way. ( ➕It totally makes sense, because supporters have already taken the first step by signing a petition, writing to MPs or attending a protest. )

📞Show an example of a call (call record) - it does not need to be perfect ! (For example, a call transcription made by a caller from Svoboda Zvířat.)

🦶🏻Step 5

RUN THE SHOW:  
🍕 Snacks, pizza and refreshments

☺️ Safe space and supportive atmosphere (mistakes are totally OK!)

⏳ Frequent breaks and energisers to stretch

🕹 Playful – ring the bell/Tibetan bowl when you have a donor, play BINGO or draw the thermometer

🦶🏻Step 6

Measure + Track outcomes : put the UTM link to follow up emails you send after call to know exactly who started to donate thanks to a call ( what is UTM and how to use them to track donations ? here is great intro from Dominika ( Albert Schweitzer Stiftung, DE)  

🦶🏻Step 7

🍾Celebrate right away (don't wait for the final results from reminders) ; share the results with team + be proud + follow up participants about FINAL results

📔Organising
HOW TO PRIORITISE contacts from Tušti Narvai
CALLING SHEET  (To create a list of people to call during the Call-a-thon, and to keep notes and track next call dates and promised payment dates.)
"what is matching"  eplanation for callers that Sboboda Zvířat used.

💬Inviting people
invitation email for employees
message to volunteers

🧑‍🎓Training
training structure ( for 60mins)  

☎️The Call
call structure of Dzīvnieku brīvība ( LV)
script from Te Protejo ( CHL)
script from VGT Austria 
universal 🌎 call structure ( for  Call-a-thon or everyday calling to supporters, from Svoboda zvířat (CZ))
call structure posters  🖼️
Storytelling structure example about saved chicken Suzana from Slovenia ( AETP)

📞Real call transcription  ( Svoboda zvířat ) +  Call record (in Czech)  -  At least you can be sure that the transcription is not fake or AI-generated. 🙂

strategy for calling reminders ( Svoboda zvířat, CZ )
strategy for calling reminders ver-2. (  Dzīvnieku brīvība, LV ) 

👾Gamification
BINGO! ; Thermometer; Christmas tree visuals  

🧮Measure the results
UTM tracking introduction  

📞How can I start calling systematically?
Would you like to know more about how TELEFUNDRAISING can work? 👉HERE 👈 is a detailed overview of how it all started at Svoboda Zvířat (CZ). (from one caller to eight callers in the team who bring in around 80 monthly donors every month.)