Campaigns: Public, Quiet, Silent? What’s the difference?

/in , /by

woman holding finger to mouthIn working with non-profits who are in campaign mode, the only thing that causes more angst than whether they will reach their goal is “when to go public.”

“Going public” is a function of both the calendar and the campaign thermometer. And it is different for everyone.

Here are a few observations to consider in planning the public phase of your campaign.

  • Your campaign is in the public arena the moment your board approves it. It’s unwise to think otherwise or to try to control the flow of information. Milestones along the way, such as the announcement of major gifts or accomplishments, will gradually nudge it into the public consciousness.
  • The quiet/public distinction is mostly an internal one among your board, staff and campaign leaders. There are so many campaigns in process at any one time that your casual observer, even one who regularly supports your organization, really could care less.
  • The quiet/public distinction also is largely a function of campaign staff and priorities. It just makes sense to tackle the larger gifts first because: a) your campaign won’t succeed without them; b) they take the longest time to come to fruition and c) they provide the needed momentum to carry a campaign through.
  • Unless you have limitless staff resources, the folks managing the leadership phase are also the folks who will be managing the public phase. They can’t do both at once. So the best time for them to devote their energy to securing the $100-$1,000 level gifts is when the $1 million gift potential is pretty much exhausted.
  • Ideally you want to be toward the end of the campaign when turning your attention to the “y’all come” portion. It’s just good psychology to ask people to fill the last $500,000 or so of your $10 million bucket with smaller gifts than it is to fill the last $5 million with gifts of that size. It makes their gifts appear larger and their participation more meaningful.
  • To sooth the angst of your leaders wondering about when the campaign will go public, it would be wise for staff to spend some time early in the campaign developing a plan for what the public phase will look like (i.e. a major event, direct mail, a phone campaign, etc.) and inform said leaders that this will be implemented when the campaign reaches 90 or 95 percent of its goal. Often, their angst is less about when the public phase will be launched than what it will look like when it is launched.

The public phase is the costliest, least effective (from a pure fundraising) portion of your campaign. It is less about raising dollars than it is building awareness and leveraging the campaign to build excitement and participation and, hopefully, begin nurturing those donors for the next campaign!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Board Giving

/in , /by

graphic representing six board members around a tableBoards don’t give money to the non-profit organizations they govern. Individuals who serve on boards do.

Why the distinction?

Because it creates the correct paradigm for how development professionals should be approaching their board members for philanthropic support and measuring outcomes.

If I ruled the non-profit universe, I would ban the term “board giving” from our lectionary when it refers to the total dollar support from the board from one year to the next.

Here’s the problem: Say collective board giving jumps from $90,000 to $110,000 in a given year. Success, right? But what if that jump is attributed to a new board member stepping up with a gift of $30,000 and the remaining board members, who last year collectively gave $90,000, deciding they are now off the hook and dial it down to a collective $80,000. Would you say that your board giving is moving in the right direction?

The reality is that the “board” is not a single-brained collective moving in some sort of unified philanthropic direction. They are individuals, each differently blessed with financial assets and each grappling with the same life challenges, such as aging parents, financial setbacks, divorce, kids in college, as everyone else. And, as the illustration above shows, board composition is constantly shifting. This makes a strictly dollars-raised criteria not very helpful in gauging whether you are maximizing the philanthropic potential from each of your board members.

What would be some better tools for measuring board giving? How about these:

  • Each board members needs to give a gift annually. This tried and true measurement must be a stated criteria for any person asked to join a non-profit board in the 21st Century.
  • Each board member commits to including the organization in his/her will or through another planned giving vehicle.
  • Each board member commits to placing the organization they are serving within the top three of all the non-profits they support. Again, this provides a great place to have that intentional conversation board memberz about where your non-profit ranks on their priority list and what it will take to move it up the ladder.

Develop benchmarks accordingly. Let’s say currently only 75 percent of your board members give annually; 10 percent have a planned gift in place; and 25 percent have your organization in the top three of their philanthropic priorities.

A three-year benchmark might be 100 percent annual support; 20 percent with a planned gift and 35 percent in the top three. A five-year benchmark might be 100-30-50. An every-year benchmark is to commit to having a one-on-one, personal conversation with each board member about her or his philanthropic support.

These benchmarks (tailored and scaled to the size of your non-profit and sophistication of your development program) can be pursued and realistically attained regardless of the relative wealth of your board members and regardless of the composition of the board at any point in time. It also will maximize giving for the board you have now, not the one you had last year or five years ago.

Stop looking at your board as a single entity. Start looking at the individuals who comprise your board and begin approaching the task of “board giving” from this perspective.

In doing so, you will get the greatest support possible from your board as a collective and move much further toward your ultimate goal – creating a strong culture of philanthropy within all levels of your organization for generations to come.

Kill Your Darlings

/in /by

Kill your darlings

Anyone who’s been to journalism school knows the phrase “kill your darlings.” It means editing out the words and phrases that you’ve fallen in love with that drag down the clarity and power of your story.

In fundraising, we would do well with an annual review with staff and key volunteers titled “kill your tactics.” Or at least some of them.

In my work both with fundraising professionals and as one myself, I find great propensity to fall in love with tactics. It’s the stuff we actually get to do, to take pride in accomplishment. There’s just one problem with this love affair – when tactics become so ingrained that they become synonymous with strategy.

A tactic can be this: task your board chair to solicit all fellow board members in September of each year. The strategy is this: ensure 100 percent “stretch-level” board participation in the Annual Fund each fall to get the effort off to a strong start and show that leadership is bought in.

But what if your board chair’s idea of soliciting fellow board members is to hand out pledge forms at the beginning of the meeting and tell everyone to hand them back at the with the inspiring message of: “Just put something down so we can count you as a donor.”

Hmmm. Might be time to revisit your tactic here. Or are we so committed to this being the chair’s job, that we have totally lost sight that this particular tactic (which is nowhere engraved in stone) is actually sabotaging our greater strategy? And the list goes on:

  • The event or gala that has outlived its useful lifespan.
  • The “buy a brick” effort that costs more to implement than the revenue it brings in.
  • The Annual Fund drive that has no clear purpose or direction.
  • An “endowment building” effort with no case of how a stronger endowment will make your nonprofit more effective at serving the community.

Before you launch into your next strategic planning process, examine your tactics. Broaden your vision beyond “how can we make the gala better” (i.e. improving a tactic) to “is the gala the best way to bring people together to form community and raise awareness and funds for our mission?” (i.e. focusing on strategy).

Killing your darlings isn’t easy, which is why so many remain on life support year after year. In just about every case of darling demolition I’ve encountered, however, the long term benefit invariably outweighs the short-term pain.

Data-Driven Campaign Planning

/in , /by

A new, data-driven approach to campaign planning

The time-honored campaign feasibility study is designed to help nonprofits test whether their aspirations and campaign dollar goal are achievable. Done well, it is in effect the “soft launch” of a campaign and sets you up for success.

But the process most consultants use in executing the study is backwards. It usually goes like this.

  1. Client wants to raise money to support a new program, endowment or physical space
  2. Client makes a “guess” about how much they can raise
  3. Consultant helps client build a case for support based on the “guess” goal
  4. Consultant tests case with client’s top donors
  5. Consultant facilitates a wealth screening of client’s donors to determine capacity
  6. Consultant gathers all the appropriate data and delivers recommendations for campaign goal, case and next steps.

When you look at this, immediately a few process questions come to mind.

  1. How does the client derive at the “guess” for a campaign goal? What data is that based on?
  2. Why doesn’t the wealth screening come at the beginning to help inform the goal to be tested?
  3. Why are we testing a dollar goal with key donors before we know whether they have the capacity to actually realize that goal?

Instead, the campaign planning formula at JP Fundraising Solutions looks more like this:

  1. Client wants to raise money to support a new program, endowment or physical space
  2. Consultant/client conducts a wealth screening to determine capacity within existing donor pool
  3. Consultant and client review the data and supplement with potential sources typically not included in a wealth screening (e.g. public funding, grant support, “outlier” donors) and set a target campaign goal base on those inputs.
  4. Consultant shapes case for support where items add up to target goal.
  5. Consultant tests case with top donors
  6. Consultant gathers data and delivers recommendations for campaign goal, case and next steps.

The benefit of this approach is that once we have a realistic range for a campaign goal, we can focus our energy on building a compelling case and determining whether donors who we know have the capacity to support that goal are willing to buy into this vision. If they don’t, then we have a case problem; not a goal problem.

The second benefit is that by doing a statistical analysis first, the nonprofit leadership, including staff, board and volunteers, can proceed with confidence that its goal is attainable. Getting everyone bought into the goal at the outset drives momentum and helps eliminate fear and anxiety, the two most dreaded enemies of motivating campaign volunteers.

For a deeper dive of how this approach can be put to work for you, contact James Plourde at JP Fundraising Solutions for free 30 minute consultation.

Righteous Indignation

/in /by

The glow of righteous indignation

In a way, it was so darn satisfying: the wave of condemnation heaped upon those Seattle-area hospital systems for allowing large donors to jump to the front of the Covid vaccination line as way of thanking them for their past support.

As a fundraiser who has made his share of boneheaded decisions over his storied career in the service of his employers, I could both wince at the news and muster empathy for my peers in the line of fire.

Don’t get me wrong. This was unquestionably a boneheaded move of epic proportions. And, by now, no one knows that better than the development folks who said at some meeting, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea to thank our most loyal donors….”

But is taking our high horses of righteous indignation out for a well-deserved romp the only thing to be gained from this saga?

As I understand it, the hospital systems recruited these donors to be volunteers to help with the “dry run” of the vaccine administration process, which included giving them with an early shot (no word about who among this group would qualify for the vaccine anyway because of their age or life circumstances).

Albeit ill advised, it was not a quid-pro-quo situation (as far as I’ve been able to tell, no one “bought” a vaccine in exchange for a specific donation). It was a cultivation move.

Cultivation is one of the pillars of the development process. It means doing nice things for the people that help fund our missions. The greater the funds, the nicer the things. EVERYONE in the development field does it.

And now might be a good time to look at what we do, why we do it, and the implications of it all. To wit:

  • Do we arrange special access to the Presidents and CEOS of our institutions at fancy cocktail parties to the people who we feel could offer the best insights and perspectives, or to those who give at the President’s Circle level?
  • Do D-1 Powerhouse football programs reserve the best seats for disadvantaged families whose sons help lead the team to victory or to their most generous boosters?
  • When a performing arts group brings a celebrity into town, do they reserve a meet-and-greet time to their “participation donors?”

To be sure, the Seattle hospitals crossed a line.

But I hope the only lesson we learn from their transgression isn’t that people with lots of money get things that people with little money don’t.

Otherwise, it will indeed be a missed opportunity for some badly needed introspection on the lessons of privilege, wealth and access, and how we blindly go about leveraging those things to do our work.