ABA Raises the Bar on Telemarketing

The American Bar Association is considering testing direct mail and telephone scripts that strongly encourage credit card payment to boost membership renewal rates.

The ABA is the largest volunteer professional association in the country, with 400,000 members, including 300,000 attorneys. Lawyers are offered a free one-year membership when the pass the bar exam; after the first year when payment is requested, retention is about 40%.

Membership levels are crucial, said Roger Marcus, the ABA's director of database marketing at the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing's annual DM Days last Friday.

"We're a major lobbying organization," he said, noting the association needs around 17,00 new members annually to meet their recruitment goals. "The more people we have, the more important we look."

The ABA's main recruitment tool is telemarketing, he said, noting that as a nonprofit, the ABA is exempt from many of the Do-Not-Call regulations.

The association will take a sale without upfront payment, asking for a credit card on the phone first, then offering to send a bill, or as a last resort, a "trial" membership. ("No pun intended," Marcus noted. "But lawyers do respond to the word trial.")

The ABA has several dues classes, varying from $100 to $300 depending on the number of years since the attorney has passed the bar. Marcus noted that the association doesn't have the funds to call everyone on its list, so analyzes the file based on past responses to see which have the best likely return.

The connect rate for calls is about 90%, while the contact rate with the right person is about 40%. The response rate for the 25,000 name universe of people who dropped off the member file recently is 50%, while the response rate for the 65,000 name universe of people who have fallen off in the last one to three years is 35%.

Conversion rate for those willing to pay immediately by credit card is 95%, while conversion for "bill me" responders is 35%. The conversion for those who ask for a trial membership is only 15%.

Nonprofit associations need to have definite goals in their fundraising programs, said Frank Roman, a nonprofit consultant. The group must recognize whether it has short term or long term goals in mind, and like any marketing organization, have a clear idea of how it is measuring its return on investment.

"We're a major lobbying organization,"

That's the truth.

Here's information on just one of their commissions from www.discoverthenetwork.com:

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION COMMISSION ON IMMIGRATION POLICY, PRACTICE AND PRO BONO

--Part of the Open Borders lobby

--Supports expanded rights for illegal aliens, even at the expense of American national security

Once a bulwark of social conservatism and the rule of law, the American Bar Association (ABA) has been lurching leftward for many years. It currently supports a moratorium on the death penalty, gun control measures, the Legal Services Corporation and an International Criminal Court, so it is not surprising that it has taken the standard left-wing positions on immigration.

The ABA Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice and Pro Bono consists of thirteen individuals appointed by the ABA President. The Commission directs ABA efforts to ensure fair and unbiased treatment, and full due process rights, for immigrants and refugees within the United States. The Commission was formed in 2002 by the merger of two existing ABA entities: the Coordinating Committee on Immigration Law and the Advisory Committee to the Immigration Pro Bono Development and Bar activation Project. The Commission provides continuing education about trends and court decisions, and develops pro bono programs that encourage volunteer lawyers to provide "high quality, effective legal representation for individuals in immigration courts, with special emphasis on the needs of the most vulnerable immigrant and refugee populations." The Commission also advocates changes in immigration laws and procedures.

According to the ABA's 2003 Legislative and Governmental Priorities regarding immigration, "The ABA supports legal immigration based on family reunification and employment skills, due process safeguards in immigration and asylum adjudications, and judicial review of such decisions....the restoration of public benefits to legal immigrants and refugees, and improving the wages, working conditions and legal status of farm workers in the United States. The ABA opposes laws that require employers and persons providing education, health care, or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status." Under a separate heading dealing with anti-terrorism, the ABA states that it "opposes the incommunicado detention of foreign nationals in undisclosed locations by the INS or the Department of Homeland Security. The ABA supports disclosure including the names of the detainees, the nature of the charges involved, and public removal hearings except in extraordinary circumstances."

Immigration issues are also a concern of the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities (IRR) which publishes the quarterly journal Human Rights. Each issue of Human Rights focuses on a single topic. Immigration was the topic of the Winter 2001 issue and its theme was set out by section chair Michael S. Greco as "the deplorable condition of immigrants' rights in twenty-first century America and what needs to be done to correct it." In his essay, Greco related how "in 1997, the ABA approved a statement of principle that federal, state, territorial, and local governments should permit the use of languages in addition to English to improve communication with government, promote understanding of duties and responsibilities under the law, and provide access to the justice system. Most recently, IRR joined with other ABA entities and national minority bars in opposing any diminution of legal permanent residents' rights to contribute to political campaigns "in the same way that the law permits other citizens to contribute."

But in fact, even "legal permanent residents" are not "other" citizens, as they are not citizens at all.

Greco also recounted how his IRR and the then-Coordinating Committee on Immigration worked to defeat the 1996 immigration reform legislation because it sought "to create a special court to receive secret evidence against aliens in deportation proceedings, impose new and onerous financial obligations on immigrants' sponsors, and restrict legal immigrants' and refugees' access to public benefits."

In 2002, the ABA Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice and Pro Bono received a $75,000 grant from the Open Society Institute.

http://www.discoverthenetwork.com/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6511

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