Internal customer service

Photos: Jonathan Portillo on Pexels and (insert) Matthew Henry on Burst

This area of the site was written for very experienced trust fundraisers.

One might argue we have a moral duty to our Services teams, and maybe the beneficiaries of the service, to offer decent internal customer service to the teams whose work we’re trying to fund. Whether you agree or not, I’ve definitely met Services managers occasionally who’ve been put off working with trust fundraising again because of the bad experience they’ve had. In one or two charities where the Services teams were particularly strong, I’ve also seen them try and take fundraising from our funders into their own hands. (They have tried to do this despite the obvious risks that it posed: would the money really going to the most important part of the charity as a whole? Would it maximise the value of the funding opportunity? Would there be multiple applications to the same funder? Would the implications of the history with the funder be taken into account? etc).

So although it rarely comes up as a big thing, there’s a case for good customer service. What is that, then? My stab at it, in possible order of importance, is as follows:

• The thing that has most put people off from working with Fundraising is when Fundraising have asked for a lot of information about a project requiring significant development work on the part of Services and then they haven’t not actually fundraised for the project. You should have the knowledge and skills to be able to evaluate an early stage idea and inform people: “If the development goes in this direction there are a few funders that might be interested, more if you go in this direction, but if you go this way, forget it.” Occasionally something unexpected might come up to derail your guidance, but that’s basically the level you should be at to offer decent customer service.
• People are also put off by trust fundraisers who aren’t especially knowledgeable. That’s actually one reason I created this whole website: going into a new charity on a contract and being told “Great, a proper fundraiser” because I could do some of the things described in this website. (Mainly the expertise I was showing at the time was around understanding the funder properly and/or understanding how you put together a project.)  At one national charity where I worked, once I got to know my Services colleagues, I found they were quite sniffy about some of the fundraisers they’d worked with, describing them as “just kids”. I think this was mainly for their lack of knowledge, more than their physical age. This is often something Services just put up with, but I have seen a small number of Services departments commandeer swathes of funders when the trust fundraiser wasn’t up to it. That’s why this issue is so high up this list.
• Having to give different staff the same thing, even giving it to them a number of times, and/or presenting the same information to different fundraisers in slightly different formats. This one nearly always comes up in lists of complaints I’ve seen.
• Giving people demanding tasks at short notice. (I own up to speaking from experience on one occasion, here!) After a while, Services staff work out that what we do is pretty structured, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s more awareness of unnecessarily short deadlines than we think.
• “Why are we not fundraising for X?” In my experience, on a surprising number of occasions this is from either (a) a Services Manager who’s spotted a very well know trust that we’re already approaching for something else and they want it for their own work; or (b) they’re someone we don’t work with because they’ve either got nothing of interest to our trusts or they have been very difficult to work with in the past.
• Not feeding back on how the fundraising is actually going. This regularly comes up on lists of peeves by Services managers.
• Not responding to queries within a reasonable time
• I advocate a relatively flexible approach to who’s doing what in some fundraising situations. This has sometimes led to people finding it confusing who’s doing what when it comes to trust applications

Something that hasn’t come up as a complaint but I think is good practice: try and give the service manager a sense of how much time you need from them. You may know better than they do. They can then see the trade-off involved and commit properly.

My current charity was good enough to ask a few Services managers to feed back on my internal customer services for one of my appraisals. There were a few points that are of more general use:

• Fair enough, I needed a lot of information from them for my work. However, could I try and present requests as a list as much as possible, rather than separate points here and there
• I didn’t need to justify everything (an issue if, like me, you’re often slightly selling to people) – sometimes a simple “I need this” is quicker all round
• I could seem a bit rigid in my decisions about things. I suspect that what was happening was that, where something needed to be a certain way that didn’t work for Services, I hadn’t really explained it so they’d be satisfied
• I’m communicating a lot, it needs to be easily comprehensible so it’s actionable
• Give Services managers agendas before my meetings with them, so they can arrive more prepared

Sharing your applications and reports with Services

Services staff see some of our proposals, so they can see the use we make of that material. However, I like also to share some updates, even when it’s not for approval. Services staff can be surprised to see that everything they’ve provided has been used and how much work I’ve done, adding my own text, with what they’ve provided.

Robyn McAllister, my editor, made the very good point that it’s also worth thanking/stewarding Services staff. E.g. sharing the lovely feedback you get from a funder when they’ve read your report and using internal reward and recognition mechanisms to thank them.