Route: Straight to the Right Person

Last week we discussed how to "bring order to chaos" with the many different requests for donations someone like a Public Affairs Director receives on a regular basis. Now that those requests are received in a streamlined manner, how do you ensure they get to the right person?  Enter our second "R" - Route.  Below are three instances where routing requires a specific approach to ensure that requests end up in the right hands.

Handle a mountain of requests single-handedly:  The company is a nationwide cafe chain and a hybrid of corporate cafes and franchises. ONE person manages several hundred locations for the corporate headquarters. That equals thousands of request per year and a lot of work. How do you manage that volume of requests?  The organization adopted an online solution that sorted each request up front based on zip code.  Requests for corporate giving go to the right person and those for franchises are directed to one of a number of other people, removing the huge hurdle of sorting through thousands of requests. The right person handles the request from the get-go, leaving nobody hanging.

Create a path by asking the right questions:  A large soft drink bottler and distributor donates product and provides event sponsorship.  Requests are handled based on how much was donated or given away for sponsorship support.  While this could be a recipe for confusion, this company’s online system requires all requesters to answer a sequence of questions that helps determine if the request should be handled by the corporate or local office. The location is pinpointed and other pertinent information such as non-profit status and dollar amount of the request helps determines who takes action.  What could be a giant headache becomes painless when set up online.

Give employee advocates a voice:  A large grocery chain has multiple locations throughout the United States, with each division serving a different geographical region.  Many requests for donations come from employees and there are some non-profits and community groups that the company has supported for years.  When moving from a manual to online submission system, the company wanted to ensure that long-time relationships were respected and nothing fell through the cracks.   In this instance, a simple question -- “does an employee sponsor your request?”  was added to the form and requests championed by employees got routed to a specific folder for special handling. This guarantees the company can continue to build upon long standing relationships with community organizations they value.

Routing needs can be complicated or they can be simple.  Regardless, Versaic streamlines the process up front so requests get to the right place at the right time.  Stay tuned next week for the 3rd R- Review.  Or if you are eager to learn more, download our eBook, The Five R’s of Great Philanthropy Management.