In a recent post on this site, long-time marketing professional Ralph Siegel said: “There are always new trends, but telemarketing is still a significant growth area and continues to be a choice method.”

Like the newest tools of technology, you need to evaluate what might work best within your own organization. But telemarketing, as opposed to many of the choices available, often means contracting out work to a specialized firm. If you choose this route, we suggest you look carefully at the service providers because stories such as this, unfortunately, occur to often.

from Charity Navigator:

Professional Fundraisers on the Hot Seat

… we advise donors to steer clear of professional fundraisers that call on behalf of non-profit organizations. Not only do most take a cut of your donation which results in less of your money ending up in the charity’s hands, but most of these for-profit companies don’t really care about the cause they’re promoting.

A law suit filed by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo against four telemarketers accuses the companies of deceiving the donors they were contacting, in addition to not being forthcoming about the fees they received for their telemarketing services. The four organizations in question kept an average of 76% of funds raised, meaning only 24% of each donation made it to the charity.