“What is Phonathon?”
Ask most people and all you’ll get is a blank stare and a shrug of the shoulders. Ask one of the 40 past and present Phonathon student callers, however, and you’ll get one of two answers: the official one—Phonathon runs for a month each during the fall and the spring, is part of the Annual Fund, and is staffed by student callers calling alumni to update their records and ask for donations—or the more “real” one—at least one evening per week, you walk down the steps to the basement of the Alumni House, located behind Lipton and Garman, where you spend three hours staring at a pile of contact sheets, dialing the numbers listed on said sheet, and getting voicemails for anywhere from 40% to 100% of your calls. (One caller last year got all voicemails during her first few shifts, then netted a $1,000 donation during her first conversation.)
But that does not encapsulate everything that goes on in the basement of the Alumni House. Between calls, you snack on candy that the Phonathon Supervisor, Katie, thoughtfully provides every evening, Monday to Thursday. You listen in on other callers’ conversations, which range from the ordinary to the downright absurd. (One of my first conversations, as a novice caller, was with an alumnus from the 60’s who told me all about the many communes he had lived in after graduation, including one in Missouri, my home state. As if that wasn’t enough, he also reminisced about the time he tried to get the then Amherst president, whose name escapes me, to participate in an anti-Vietnam War protest; had the president participated, the alumnus gleefully said, he would have been thrown into prison.) After your first few calls, you start cherry-picking the contact sheets. You keep an eye out for alumni with your major, who went to your dream graduate school, who work in your dream company, or who live in your home state. (Side note: I’ve never been happier to see a Missouri address than when I come across a Missouri address on a contact sheet.)
Here I’d better focus on the calls themselves, because they are the bulk of the work at Phonathon. I’ve never had anyone yell at me, or curse at me, or say nasty things to me. These kinds of calls happen, of course; Amherst alumni are not miraculously endowed with constant good manners. I have had a few people hang up on me, either because they’re in a hurry or because they’re not interested in making a donation. Most conversations are fairly routine: you check to see if the contact information on the contact sheet is still accurate, then move into a “rapport section,” where you’re free to talk about anything, as long as you develop rapport. Hence the name. After you’ve developed a rapport, you move into the “ask section,” where—you’ve guessed it, you ask for donations. The call completed, you give the donation to Katie, who invariably gives an exclamation of delight, and you walk up to the blackboard—which always has a game like Wheel of Fortune or something like that—and play for your table. Then you return to your seat, aglow with your achievement, and start dialing the next prospect.
Of course, there are good calls along with the bad calls, when you encounter a friendly and chatty alumnus/a with whom you quickly develop a rapport. As an English major, I’m naturally interested in the different careers English majors take post-Amherst. I recently spoke with an English major who runs a company writing for Silicon Valley tech people. He had a sense of humor, refreshing in its rarity among an evening of rather dull calls, and gave me plenty of advice for the career search as an English major. When we ended the call, he not only gave a gift, surprising since according to him, he rarely gave over the phone, but he also invited me to contact him with questions. Although calls like that are rare compared to routine calls, they are not as rare as a stress-free Add/Drop week, but rather a good meal at Val—few and far between, but not impossible to find.