Category: Finance

Once the “Quiet Phase” has been completed and the various “campaigns” for the Hospital Family are well under way, solicitation can begin in the next group of prospects – corporations, small businesses and the individual prospects assigned to Divisions tasked with obtaining gifts in various specific dollar ranges (i.e., $3,000-$5,999 and/or $6,000-$9.999). But … there is still no public/media mention/evidence of a campaign-in-progress.

In doing your pre-campaign planning/analysis, you would have come up with realistic dollar goals (and, for some, dollar ranges) for each Division … goals that you know, based on research, cultivation and knowledge about the people in each Division, will be attainable.

Only after commitments (from the Quiet Phase, the Hospital Family, and other Divisions tasked with raising significant percentages of the campaign goal) have reached the “Safety Point” (80% or more of the goal has been committed and you know where the rest is coming from) can the Campaign go “public.” But … “going public” doesn’t mean that everything you know must instantly become public knowledge !!

A good rule under which to operate an extended campaign is that you should be able to reach your Campaign Goal without gifts/pledges from the “lower-rated” groups of Individuals, but you proceed with each individual “campaign” until everyone you want to have involved (and everyone who might want to be involved) has become involved.

Remember, no matter how well planned and how well led your campaign might be, there’s always a chance that something can go wrong; and, since the large base of lower-rated prospects is the group you know the least about, you can’t rely on any particular outcome of that “campaign.”

Some years back (too many for me to want to count) in counselling a capital campaign for a hospital, the person recruited to chair the Division responsible for soliciting pledges from $5,000-$9,999 made the decision that all of the people assigned to that Division as prospects weren’t going to be solicited.

We had prepared pledge cards for each of those 150 prospects, the Chair took those pledge cards … ostensibly to assign prospects to his various team leaders and solicitors, then informed the campaign leadership that he wasn’t going to do what he had agreed to do.

It was a good thing we had Plan B in the safe. Luckily/happily, the campaign reached its goal. The point being: The more extensive the Planning Study and the greater the depth of campaign planning, the more likely you’ll be able to ensure success.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

As with the basic campaign, you must start with the knowledge of where the commitments will come from to achieve your dollar goal … only this time you are not limiting yourself to a relatively few major donors. This time, in addition to the major donors, you will need specific sums from different segments of your constituency.

In a campaign for a hospital, for example, at the top of the leadership pyramid are the highest-rated prospects — some major donors, prominent members of the community, some board members and (maybe) a few docs.

These individuals have responsibility for setting an example with their giving, and for recruiting and soliciting those who will be the leaders of the various segments of the campaign – including the overall campaign chair. This is the “Quiet Phase” — the solicitation of those donors whose commitments will ensure reaching the first “Safety Point” (60%, 80%, or more of the goal).

The overall Campaign is separated into smaller “campaigns,” one for each segment of the constituency – the board, the administration, the medical staff, the nursing staff, each of the other hospital departments, the auxiliary, local (large) corporations, local businesses and the various segments of the broad community.

Each of those segments/Divisions must have a Chair, a person who will set the example, and recruit and solicit those who will solicit others in their Division. The Chair of a Division must be someone who is respected by the members of his/her segment and who has the clout to successfully lead a “campaign” limited to that segment.

Typically, the Chair for each of the Divisions of the Hospital Family are members of the Division they will chair, but they are not necessarily the Heads of their Departments – great care must be exercised to avoid the appearance of a Department Head coercing members of his/her Department.

As a practical matter, the “campaign” for the Board of Trustees should precede the “campaign” for the Administrators/Executives, which should precede the “campaign” for the docs … otherwise you’ll have the docs saying, “If they didn’t, why should we?”

In that context, the “campaign” for the docs should precede the “campaign” for the nurses, and those previous four “campaigns” should precede those for the rest of the hospital staff. Realistically, because you can’t solicit one segment of a hospital family (other than the Board) without the hospital grapevine spreading the word fairly quickly, the various “campaigns” for the different segments of the hospital family tend to be implemented within the same timeframe.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

The “basic” campaign is active for a very short period of time, with relatively few donors. It is often said that if you have a $1 million goal, find someone with $1 million get them to give it to you … and your campaign is over !!

Since that doesn’t happen too often, there should be a group of prospective major donors … able to make gifts equal to and larger than one-percent of the campaign goal. This group should be large enough to ensure reaching the goal and small enough that the goal can be reached in the shortest period of time. #

If you do decide on the “basic,” no frills approach … and only involve those few major donors whose commitments will assure reaching your goal, you will be, in essence, dipping into your major gifts program. ##

The keys to a successful “basic” campaign are in knowing which of your potential major donors are “ready” to make their commitments, and knowing what amounts they are likely to commit. You can only know this if there is a relationship between the prospect and your organization, and if you have been cultivating them for long enough to know that they are ready to say, “Yes.” ###

In addition, you must know if the project for which you will ask their support is something that they feel strongly enough about to want to support it; and, those potential donors must also know that they will get the satisfaction and the recognition they want/need by supporting the campaign/project.

For the “basic” campaign, there need not be a formal campaign structure with a campaign chair and/or other designated leaders. On the other hand, if you select a chair who is well known, who is committed to the organization’s mission, strongly supports the project the campaign will fund, and who has the skills and willingness to actually solicit the other members of the small group, you will have a volunteer leader who will make-it-happen !!

Recognition for that volunteer leader, and for that small group of donors can take many forms, but all leaders/donors must be recognized individually in a way that is significant for him/her. More on “Donor Recognition” in future postings.

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#(See: Constructing The Gift Table
##(See: What is a Major Gift ?? and, Who Is A Major Gifts Prospect ??
###(See: Cultivating Major Donors

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

Back in the early days of my career – when high tech meant you had a fax machine – one of my proposals to the National Endowment for the Humanities for an elementary school enrichment project was rejected, and we wanted to find out if it made sense to reapply.

I traveled from New York to Washington to meet with our program officer. He said we lost it on the evaluation, noting that our pre-test/post-test model required too much testing. So I asked him what he considered a good evaluation design.

His response was that if the children looked like they were having a good time; it would be considered a good program. We rewrote it following that advice, and it was funded and renewed several times.

That would never happen today. Funders have become consumed with the notion of outcomes assessment. Proposals must be clear about what will be accomplished with the money granted by the funder. They must clearly distinguish between goals and objectives. Goals are a general statement of intent. In the example I gave, providing an enrichment experience to a group of fourth graders would be a goal. But the outcomes need to be much more targeted.

They must detail the exact result the program will achieve for a specified number of participants, within a limited period of time. The objectives also need to presage the mechanism through which the program will be evaluated.

So the objective in our example might be “As a result of this program, 50 fourth-grade students will increase their understanding of local history by being able to attain a grade of 80% on the XYZ Standardized test of historical understanding.” That’s a long way from our program officer’s response. By the way, that’s how we wrote the proposal the first time, but it was more than 30 years ago.

Success in getting funded depends very much on knowing exactly what the grant project will accomplish. That should be one of the first questions one asks oneself. “What will be different as a result of this program?”

Funders not only want their grants to make a difference; they want to know exactly what that difference will be.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your grants program? Email me at Andrew@GrantServices.com..

A basic concept of capital campaigns is that you shouldn’t need to go beyond the smallest number of major donors necessary to reach your goal.

Referencing Tuesday’s posting, however, the decision you must make is what you want to accomplish with your campaign.

If you want to keep it simple, and all you want/need is to raise a specific dollar amount, that’s at one end of the scale — nice, short, simple and really, really, inexpensive.*

At the other end of the scale is the involvement of “the whole community/constituency.” That’s where you create an elaborate campaign leadership structure, run your campaign over 6 or 12 or 24 months, involve as many volunteers as can be put to work productively, and get as many people as possible to become donors … at a significantly greater expense than the bare bones scenario.**

Depending on the organization and its community/constituency, there may be many good reasons for involving a greater number of people than needed to reach your campaign goal.

In any community/constituency there are likely to be more important/influential/wealthy people than can be appropriately fitted into the basic campaign leadership structure, but they are people you might want to have involved … just to get/keep them involved with the organization.

But, any time you recruit leaders to be part of a campaign, you must have a legitimate, productive, worthwhile activity for them to lead – an activity that will add significant dollars to the amount raised. And, those leaders must get appropriate recognition for their leadership and accomplishments.

To legitimately expand your leadership cadre, you must expand the numbers of potential campaign donors to be solicited. You might also want to expand your campaign donor base to get as many members of your community/constituency involved in the process/project. Community buy-in, a feeling of ownership in the organization and the project, engenders greater long-term community/constituent support.

And, any time you get people to give to a campaign, no matter the amount given, they must feel that their contribution is helping the campaign reach its goal … and helping the community being served by the nonprofit.

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*The vast majority of campaigns come in at a cost of under ten-cents-on-the-dollar-raised; most campaigns come in at under a nickel.

**When you calculate return on investment for any but the most basic campaign, dollars-raised is only one factor. There’s no real way to calculate how what was spent on staff, publicity, mailings and events will result in more/greater contributions in the future – but, without doubt, there will be a return on that investment.

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Watch for Part #6 of Capital Campaigns, next Thursday, November 12th.
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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

It’s important to understand that, for many nonprofits, the benefits of conducting a successful capital campaign often extend beyond merely raising a specific amount of money. Of course, the purpose of the campaign is to raise the dollars, but an effective/successful campaign will also have a number of very worthwhile side benefits:

• The more people who support/give to the campaign, the more people who
  create/enhance a bond with the nonprofit organization.

  Where the “campaign” period (the actual timeframe needed to attain the dollar
  goal) should be as short as possible, the visible campaign can last much longer —
  as long as needed to involve as many members of the organization and/or the
  community as is realistic. To a point, the more people involved, as volunteers,
  donors and/or event participants, the larger your constituency becomes and the
  stronger your constituents bond with your NPO.

• It makes everybody feel good – campaign leadership, volunteers, donors. It makes
  all those folks feel good about success, and it makes them want to stay involved
  with the organization.

  People that have been leaders/volunteers for a successful capital campaign take
  away a feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction, that they will likely want to repeat.

• It gives others (potential leaders & donors) a look at how an organization
  treats/recognizes its volunteer leaders and donors, and makes them think about
  how they could get the same “treatment/recognition.”

  Different people have different needs that have to be satisfied.
  If people who were not involved in your campaign see how the needs of others were
  satisfied, next time there is an opportunity to participate as a leader/volunteer these
  folks would be more likely to want to be involved.

• When properly publicized/marketed, it educates a broad spectrum of participants
  and non-participants about an organization’s mission, leadership and current
  and future programs/services.

  A campaign goal can represent many needs to be satisfied with a specific dollar sum.
  Once the goal is attained, each of those satisfied needs can be discussed in various
  kinds of publicity/marketing pieces over many months after the campaign. Every new
  and/or expanded service the NPO provides is something to brag about!!

• Donors tend to give more to a major campaign than they have to the organization’s
  ongoing fundraising; and, after completing their campaign commitment, they tend
  to give at levels higher than they gave before the campaign.

In essence, a capital campaign can have a great impact on an organization’s marketing and community relations.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

Reading Hank’s postings on “Corporate Fundraising,” made me think about a recent series of conversations my firm has had with a potential client about managing a conference (including a major dinner event) for them.

During one of those conversations, I was asked about assisting them with getting corporate sponsors for the conference. My response to that question is always the same.

While I have contacts with some corporations, I will only make the connection between the client and the corporation provided the organization’s mission and interests dovetail with those of the corporation. No point in setting up a meeting that goes nowhere because the corporation is not remotely interested in the organization’s goals and objectives.

If there appears to be a match, then it will benefit both the organization and the corporation to have me call my contact at the corporation and set up an introductory meeting; and, there are times, depending on circumstances, when I will go with the client to their first meeting with the corporation.

I do that only as a part of my relationships with client organizations and with corporations, not for a percentage or commission of any support a corporation might provide to a nonprofit.

I make it clear to my clients that I am not a “fundraiser.” I do not sell tables to corporations for a client’s dinner or luncheon or ask them to sponsor a coffee break at a client’s conference. I do not “dial for dollars,” but I do make connections … there is a difference!

No one can legitimately make the case for a corporation to support a nonprofit as well as can be made by the board members and staff of the organization. And, by “legitimate,” I mean that when the nonprofit makes its own case it’s a lot clearer that no “middleman” is going to get a piece of the corporation’s support of that organization.

Sometimes nonprofit organizations don’t understand or ignore the difference between having a conference and special event firm help them make the connection versus raise the money for them. They often only hear what they want to hear.

To them, the idea that a conference and special event firm has connections to corporations means that they (the nonprofit) won’t have to “get their hands dirty,” that someone else will get the big bucks for them.”
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Have a comment or a question about creating or expanding your special event? Email me at Info@NatalieShear.com. With over 30 years in conference and event planning, we can help you turn your vision into reality.
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Have you seen Natalie’s ebook on Special Events ??

Being “ready” for a Capital Campaign does not mean that the CEO and/or Board/Staff members have decided they want or need to raise a lot of money.

Being “ready” means that all the elements are in place to assure success if a capital campaign is implemented. An organization/board cannot risk committing to a capital campaign until it is (formally) determined that they are “ready.”

The process of determining readiness, what we call a “Planning Study” (see: The Planning Study … Almost Always The First Step, addresses a number of issues, including:
1. Board Support for the Project — Emotional, Intellectual and Financial:
Do all board members feel strongly about the project; do they agree that
this project is the best way to provide for a specific need in the community;
and, will they support the campaign financially to the best of their ability?
2. Community Support for the Project:
Do the vast majority of community leaders agree that this project is the
best way to provide for a specific need in the community?
3. Competition — Other Regional Campaigns/Projects pending or active that
may detract from your visibility/need and may have a stronger attraction
to your potential donors.
4. Availability of Capable and Willing Campaign Leaders who will set an
example – will they help identify other likely major donors, give
significantly and ask others to do the same?
5. Access to Individuals with Wealth – just having a list of wealthy people
is a waste of time … if you don’t have real access to them,
6. The perception, by the wealthy, that you will satisfy their needs
7. Community perception of the need for your service
8. Community perception of the quality of your service
9. Community perception of how well you manage your money
10. Policies to guide leadership through a campaign
11. Sufficient funding on-hand to pay the expenses of a campaign
12. Sufficient staff with an understanding of the development process … to
support a campaign. To plan for and conduct a capital campaign one
should have the requisite broad experience in development. That’s why
most organizations hire capital campaign counsel to assist … in one or
more aspects of planning, investigation, preparation and implementation.

A properly constructed Planning Study helps to identify potential campaign leadership and prospective major donors, and begins/extends the cultivation and “buy-in” processes necessary to a successful campaign.

(Watch for Part #4 of Capital Campaigns, next Tuesday, November 2nd.)

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we should be able to answer your questions.

• A capital campaign is not a “fundraiser.” It is as far beyond a dinner event as building a motorcycle is beyond building a skateboard.

• A capital campaign is not for the faint of heart. In conducting a capital campaign, an organization puts its credibility and its future on the line.

It is one of, if not THE most important and risky things a nonprofit organization will ever do !! Should a campaign fail — as many do (because of poor planning, lack of long-term preparation, inadequate fundraising skill and/or insufficient campaign experience), an organization’s credibility and future fundraising prospects can be harmed, irreparably.

• A Capital Campaign is not (for the most part) about the needs of the NPO. It’s mostly about the needs of the potential donors. The question is, in essence, “What will the donor get by gifting/committing a large sum of money to support a specific project?

• A Capital Campaign is not for Public Awareness … until you’re ready to announce the campaign. And you don’t announce a campaign until (at least) 60% of the goal has been reached – 80% is better, 100% is best. (More on this, later). You don’t even discuss the possibility of a campaign outside of the organization’s leadership.

In the context of public awareness, a capital campaign should be pretty much completed before there is any groundbreaking or other visual sign that there is or will be a need to raise money. Beginning the project that the campaign will fund, before the campaign begins, (strongly) suggests that the organization already has most-or-all of the needed funding.

• Capital campaigns cannot be an excuse to raise a lot of money – there must be a goal that relates to specific URGENT needs.

• A capital campaign is not an effort that should be taken on by the inexperienced, even after reading my entire series of postings on the subject.

Capital campaigns are a synthesis of everything else we do in development; but, because much of it takes place in a relatively short timeframe, and because so much more is at risk, the skills and experience required to design and implement these efforts must be at a level much higher than those needed for ongoing fundraising.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

This series of postings (don’t know yet how many will be in the series) is to help you understand and prepare for a capital campaign, so that, when you hire a staff campaign director or engage counsel, their time (and your money) will be used most effectively.

To start, a definition: A Capital Campaign is an intense effort to acquire sufficient commitments to add up to a specific large sum, for a specific valid/urgent purpose.

The word “Capital” refers to the money needed to erect/expand/renovate a building; it includes funding needed for the purchase/installation/overhaul of (major) equipment; and, has come to include funding to create/expand an endowment. (Endowment campaigns will be addressed in greater depth in a future posting.)

The term “campaign” has it’s origin in a military context — although it’s rarely used that way today. It referred to the actual period of time that the troops were in the field, engaged with the enemy. It was/is a period of action/activity that, ideally, had been planned very carefully. In this context, it is the period of time in which most of the needed dollars are solicited/pledged.

The “intensity” of the effort refers to having board members, staff and other volunteers commit the (additional) time and energy necessary to achieve the dollar goal in a specific (relatively short) timeframe. The typical campaign was designed to take 12 months – but it’s gotten a lot shorter. (More on that, later.)

Typically, a capital campaign solicits pledges – significant dollar commitments to be paid over an extended period. Fifteen/twenty years ago, the period was five years, but considering the societal changes and people’s reluctance to commit to that long an obligation, three years is now typical.

The “specific sum,” the goal of a campaign, is an amount that will allow the organization to pay for the (building/equipment) “project” that is outside its normal/ongoing budget requirements. This cannot be an arbitrarily chosen dollar figure voted on by a board or committee; it must be one that has been determined through a very careful/detailed process.

“Valid” means that it the nonprofit organization was asked to justify why the project was needed, the NPO could clearly explain/demonstrate that a real need exists in the community and that the project would address that need.

“Urgent” excludes any project for which the NPO could accumulate the funding over an extended period of time without the need for a special fundraising effort. It would also exclude any project for which there is not a demonstrable need for the service(s) that will be made available because of the project.
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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.