The Bridewell Theatre is to be found just off London?s Fleet Street, in a building which was originally a bath complex for the local print workers, writes Adrian Salmon.
It dedicates itself entirely to musical theatre and, in just 10 years since it was founded, has gained a pre-eminent reputation for its work, famously producing the world premiere of Stephen Sondheim?s ?Saturday Night? in 1997. In the autumn of last year, the Theatre faced imminent closure following the withdrawal of support from the Corporation of London. The St Bride Foundation, which owns the building, was unable to continue with its annual subvention to the Theatre. Moreover, the Foundation was forced to ask the Theatre to pay an annual rent of £90,000 where previously it had operated rent-free. The Theatre had to raise over £100,000 by April 2004 in order to secure its future.
When Tim Sawers, the Bridewell?s Executive Director, contacted me, I was unsure how much help telephone fundraising from the Theatre?s audience could be. The Bridewell has a database of approximately 12,000 people, but we had to assume over half had attended more than three years ago or only once and were therefore not good prospects. The standard calculation in telephone contact of this sort is that only 40% of prospects will offer the potential for contact (incomplete contact details and unavailability being mostly to blame). This meant that we might potentially only be able to contact around 1,500 to 2,000 people, and generate around £6,000 net income over 12 months ? hardly a big dent in the £100,000 so urgently required. Nevertheless, Tim and the Trustees decided that if they didn?t at least try, they would never know, and so we proceeded with a test campaign in early December 2003. We mailed just under 2,300 attenders with a letter outlining the Theatre?s situation and letting them know we would be calling in the next week to ask for their help.
The attenders were categorised as follows:
- Loyalty scheme Members 98
- V2 (2 attendances in 2 years) 747
- V3 (3 or 4 attendances in 2 years) 762
- V5 (5 attendances in 2 years) 199
- V5+ (5+ attendances in 2 years) 493
After a week?s calling it became clear that something very special was happening. Here are the pledge results as they stood on December 10, ten days after calling began:
These are staggeringly good figures. The key calculation in telephone fundraising is the return on investment, where the income raised is calculated in proportion to the cost of the campaign. A good Year One Return on Investment might normally be in the region of 1.5 (ie. £1.50 raised for every £1 spent on the campaign). This places the return of £12.94 on a £1 spend (see the table above) in context! By this point, cash gifts and donations made by credit card alone had covered the costs of the campaign, and the Theatre was now looking at ongoing income of around £10,000 a year from regular gifts by Standing Order.
It was clear that even those people we would normally categorise as infrequent attenders felt a deep commitment to the Bridewell, and we decided to roll out the campaign and call those people who had only attended once in 2 years. A further 27% of these people pledged gifts! So, at the time of writing, the Bridewell stands to have raised just over £35,000 from 2,600 audience members ? at a return of nearly £3 for every £1 spent on the campaign in Year One.
The telephone campaign has been immensely helpful to the Theatre in approaches to local companies and also to potential major funders, including Arts Council England. It has also helped the Theatre negotiate with the Corporation of London, and they are currently awaiting the outcome of these discussions.
Adrian Salmon is Account Director for The Phone Room Ltd. t: 01865 324293;
e: adrian.salmon@phoneroom.co.uk