The phone rings and it is a UCLA student on the line. He is
calling an alumnus to ask for donations to the university.
Regardless of how much the alumnus decides to donate, he might
never know the student he is speaking with is not employed by the
university for which he raises funds.
UCLA and the University of California have brought in two
outside firms to conduct work on their behalf in two areas dealing
with finance.
At UCLA, the Call Center is now under new management. The Call
Center is an organization that employs students to contact alumni
and other members of the UCLA community in order to ask for
donations and inform about UCLA news and events.
The funds raised by callers are “unrestricted,” and
are used at the discretion of the chancellor, said Phil Hampton, a
spokesman for UCLA. Last year, the center raised over $3 million in
unrestricted funds, said Arielle McFadden, a supervisor for the
UCLA Call Center.
RuffaloCODY, an outside firm that specializes in fundraising for
non-profit organizations, is now in charge of the UCLA Call Center,
Hampton said.
He added unrestricted funding is becoming increasingly difficult
to raise, in part because donors ask to have funds donated to a
specific cause or program within the university, making it
unavailable for general use.
Even though the Call Center had shown progress, Hampton said it
was in the best interest of the Call Center to bring in RuffaloCODY
and its experience in the field of fundraising.
“They have the pulse on key changes in fundraising,
non-profits and universities,” Hampton said.
McFadden said technology used by RuffaloCODY will help callers
improve calls faster, and hopefully raise more funds with time.
Under the management of RuffaloCODY, student employees will now
receive different caller incentives during their employment.
Student employees make up the bulk of the Call Center with
approximately 100 students, Hampton said.
Incentives are bonuses awarded to employees based on criteria
arranged by management.
Before RuffaloCODY began running the Call Center, there was a
caller-incentive program based on performance of the callers,
McFadden said.
Called nightly incentives, if a caller gets a donation that is
on a credit card or a large donation, among other requirements,
they will receive incentives that will appear on their next
paycheck. The UCLA Call Center is currently the only call center in
the nation to offer nightly incentives.
RuffaloCODY brings several new criteria for caller incentives,
such as attendance, making callers eligible for incentives.
RuffaloCODY also offers callers tuition assistance for the student
employees, Hampton said.
McFadden said the incentives based on performance encourage
growth in productivity because they reward those callers who make
the extra effort, whereas there is no reward for those individuals
when incentives are based on attendance or other such
non-performance related criteria.
At the moment, there are no incentives being offered to callers
outside the attendance incentive, McFadden said. Call Center
officials and representatives from RuffaloCODY, including CEO Al
Ruffalo, are still in negotiations over the caller center
incentives program, McFadden said.
Call Center officials are trying to make a compromise with
RuffaloCODY that would allow for nightly incentives for employees,
in addition to new forms of incentives, McFadden said.
Student employees are still being paid the same wage of $9.82
per hour, Hampton added.
At the UC level, Fidelity Investments was contracted to manage
retirement plans for UC employees. There are two main retirement
plans for employees: the pension and the supplemental, said Noel
Van Nyhuis, a spokesman for the UC Office of the President.
Only the supplemental retirement plan, which is optional, was
“recently transferred,” Van Nyhuis said.
“We were over-capacitated with the staff we had and it was
in response to a lot of the needs of our employees and to
accommodate the expected growth in the coming years,” Van
Nyhuis said. “It seemed like a logical choice.”
The information system used by the UC could not accommodate all
the information for all employees, Van Nyhuis said. He added, no
employees lost their jobs as a result of this switch, and financial
cost had nothing to do with this change. Van Nyhuis said he was
unaware of any other cases of third-party firms being contracted to
work with the UC.