For charities response handling is the process by which supporter communications to the charity are managed. Generally this will include post opening, data capture, banking and thanking. Charities might also want to consider Gift Aid as part of this process. Response handling can be outsourced by charities to services companies like Woods Valldata who will operate on the charity’s behalf and provide regular or live data feeds back to the charity for their data records.
To put it simply, when you run any correspondence with your supporters that require a response – such as an appeals campaign, a weekly lottery, a one-off raffle, a survey, or even a regular giving programme for your donors, you need to process their responses.
This is usually a payment, but it could also be a letter, an email, a request, or a question, and response handling basically does what it says on the tin: it is essentially how you handle these responses.
Read this blog for more information of things to think about before outsourcing response handling