One Tuesday evening in late August, freshman Taylor Herrmann sat in front of a computer monitor, waiting for someone to pick up the phone. All around her, fellow Roll Call Phonathon staffers filled the Alumni House basement with a cacophony of mostly one-sided chatter.
“Hi, I’m calling on behalf of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association … ”
“Thank you, Mr. Meyers. We really do appreciate your donation!”
“I’m a third year student, yes sir … ”
“Is there a better time I could call back?”
Like most Phonathoners, Taylor works two nights a week, 6:30 till 9:30, calling up Tech alumni across the country to seek donations for Roll Call, the Alumni Association’s annual fund. Every year, Roll Call funds go toward enriching the Institute experience: Donations fund scholarships, groundbreaking research efforts, student life programs, even campus developments like Technology Square. And many of those donations result from conversations between alumni and Phonathon staffers, all of them current Tech students.
Tonight, at the beginning of her shift, Herrmann plopped her backpack down at one of the basement’s 10 computer terminals, logged in and donned a headset (like a drive-through attendant, or Beyonce, might wear). Back in the day, Phonathon callers manually dialed potential donors and recorded pledges by hand. Now the computers do most of the work, cycling through a database and randomly selecting numbers to dial. If no one picks up, Herrmann hits a button on the screen—“NOT HOME”—so that the system knows to dial the number another time. Tonight, she hits “NOT HOME” over and over again.
This week, the Phonathon staffers—led by Laura Renna, the Alumni Association’s annual fund coordinator—are focusing their efforts on alumni who have given in years past, so when somebody does pick up, it’s an easier sell. “We’ve already had 60-something pledges tonight,” Renna says. “Our goal is to have 2,000 by the end of the week, 350 in three days—I think we can do it.”
In the cubicle opposite Herrmann’s, Grace Little, a second-year student about to declare a major in international affairs and economics, is having better luck. A few nights before, during her first shift, she brought in 44 pledges alone. She’s on a roll tonight, too. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done. It’s literally my second day and it’s probably one of the coolest jobs I’ve had,” she says between calls. “The hours are awesome. I worked as a secretary for my dad’s law firm for a couple of years but this is the first time I’ve done something like this before. They’re all fantastic people.”
“It’s funny,” says Gisele Ferandel, an industrial engineering major and a seasoned Phonathon caller. “Sometimes you’ll call people that had this job before, and they’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, of course, I know how hard it is, thank you!’”
A little bit after 7 p.m., Herrmann finally gets her first pickup; the alum isn’t home, but his wife says to call back later. Herrmann notes it in the system, then moves on to the next call—and the next, and the next. A long string of “NOT AT HOME” calls can be tedious, and the occasional unfriendly voice on the other end of the line can be rattling, but all told, the gig’s worth it.
“I like talking to people, and when they’re nice and like to talk to you, it’s great—it’s like motivation knowing that you can get out of Tech and survive,” Herrmann says. “I tend to stumble over my words sometimes. But at the same time, it’s good experience. It’s good to be able to talk to people in a professional setting. And learning how to talk to people about money is not a bad skill. It’s a lot more than just a two-days-a-week job.”
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