Becoming "The Next Shiny Thing" - Part 2

Carrying out a 3-step Campaign Analysis is an effective way to underwrite the success of your next fundraising effort. In practice, the process functions a bit like a stripped-down Feasibility Study and Campaign Plan. Depending on your needs, you can leverage the understanding acquired from the Campaign Analysis to move quickly to the development of either—or both—of those documents. 

In Part 1, we outlined the first two steps. Once you have determined the scope of funding and identified a short-list of eligible prospects and funding programs, you are ready for the final step.

Step 3: Make specific recommendations for the execution of the campaign.

You’ve determined that the foundation for your campaign rests on a solid bed of existing and potential donors.

Now’s the time to put a few stakes in the ground and start making some recommendations about how you’re going manage the campaign and get at all that sweet, sweet money. 

The following are a number of enablers and “force-multipliers” that you’ll want to consider as part of your campaign. The sooner you and your team start considering these opportunities, the quicker you’ll be able to optimize and implement them.

Leadership: Organizational commitment makes great campaigns. The opposite also holds true.

You may be surprised how often an organization’s leadership runs for cover when you ask them to contribute their time, relationships, and dollars to a campaign.

As a donor, it kind of begs the question: “Why would I contribute my hard-earned money to your campaign, when you’re not willing to go the extra mile yourself?”

A great way to escape this reticence is to assemble a Campaign Committee of three to five people (volunteers, senior management, and Board members). In general, most Campaign Committees exist to spread responsibility and oversight for key deliverables to more people.

For you, their primary contribution will come in the form of prospect outreach and relationship development. Please keep in mind that Campaign Committee candidates seldom like to sign-on as fundraisers. So you will have to trick them. At least at the outset.

Ideally, your Committee should be chaired by the highest profile, most charismatic, and most engaged individual (preferably a long-time volunteer) within the organization.

In addition to human talent, capital campaigns also require a budget and resources. Depending on the size or scope of a project, it typically costs between 10% and 20% of the overall goal to engineer a cohesive and sustained campaign.

As you carry out your Campaign Analysis, try to determine the types of assets and resources you’ll need to invest in to get you there. Do you plan on developing a campaign website, or host public and private events? Will you be printing hard copies of your Case for Support (because printing is crazy expensive nowadays)?

Relationship Development: You’ve probably heard that old fundraising truism: “People give to people.”

I prefer to employ a modified version that says: “People give to people they know and people they like.”

There are lots of strategies you can employ to raise money. But successful fundraising almost always boils down to people talking to other people. When a prospect has been educated and informed and the timing is optimal, the right person is designated to “make the ask.”

It certainly is not rocket science. Look closely at your preliminary Campaign Pipeline and think about the ways you can touch those prospects over time (face-to-face meeting, event invites, online request, grant application, etc.).

I was working with a charity that had a large base of well-connected and enthusiastic volunteers. We decided to harness that energy and trained-up a team of outreach volunteers to approach a short-list of prospects and educate each of them on the project.

If the prospect demonstrated any interest in hearing more, the outreach team member would forward their name to the Campaign Committee. Before I knew it, I had members of the team lined up outside my door telling me about their success and asking me for advice on how to close the deal.

I want to touch on the subject of recognition and its importance to relationship development. Because we think of our charity’s work as inherently important and valuable, we can sometimes overlook the value of giving donors some token of our appreciation.

While you’re working through your Campaign Analysis, be sure to devote some time to fleshing out ways that you can honor and recognize your donors in front of their peers.

Think naming rights on your new facility, the development of a permanent recognition installation, or even the purchase of a unique (and reasonably priced) gift for everyone who contributes.

I was working with an organization that used to present long-time donors with a really fantastic gift when they passed a certain threshold of giving.

The gifts, though relatively cheap, were unique and handsome artistic pieces. More importantly, they spoke directly to the mission and vision of the organization.

I couldn’t even count the number of times I showed up at some big-wheel’s home or office—and there was the gift, given pride-of-place among their most treasured keepsakes and trophies.

Timing: Timing is as critical in fundraising as it is in love (perhaps more so). One of the most common mistakes charities make is to start the clock too early and provide insufficient time for their fundraising representative to get the job done.

I like to dump cold water on prospective clients, right off, by telling them that it can take 12 to 18 months to bring a new major gift donor on board (and sometimes longer). That’s from the time you identify them to the moment their check comes through the door.

How much time you’ll need to execute your campaign depends on your organization and its general state of readiness. Small campaigns with lower goals take less time. Big campaigns with big goals and complex projects take longer.

As a general rule of thumb—and assuming your project or program is ready to go right now—you’ll want to give yourself at least six months of planning, preparation, and market development time prior to launch.

Another critically important point is to get as many funding commitments as possible prior to the official launch of your campaign. I worked on a major crowd-funding project several years ago. The platform we were working with encouraged us to get 30% of our funding committed to the project prior to launch.

The logic their representative used was that no one wants to sit in an empty restaurant. It’s also why institutional donors, for example, always make it very clear that they want to know who has committed to the campaign, who has been asked, and who we’re planning to approach next.

Case for Support: More than anything else, your campaign Case for Support needs to be engaging, easy to understand, and achievable.

Developing a preliminary Case for Support is a like whittling. You take the answers to the 5Ws and add those to the other program attributes you’ve acquired from your team. Keep chopping away until you have five or six sentences that both represent the project and are sure to capture the spirit of readers.

You should also try breaking down your campaign into as many bite-sized pieces as possible. Then sell those component pieces to donors on a select, first-come-first-served basis.

Prospects like to be able to say, “I bought that piece of equipment for the new building” rather than “I was one of 1,500 people who contributed to the project.”

Before you send the Case for Support on to your leadership team, you’ll want to focus test the idea with other stakeholders, particularly potential donors. You may also want to consider methods like a quick online survey to further determine proof-of-concept.

Last, but certainly not least, don’t forget to start building a line-time Budget for your project. The earlier you start estimating costs and assembling contractor bids, the earlier you’ll be able to put a realistic ask in front of donors.

Final Thoughts

Probably the best advice I ever got in fundraising was to start every campaign by asking: “Is this a project I would contribute to?” Call it the ultimate “B.S. Test” to go with your Campaign Analysis.

Seeing your campaign and your organization in the cold light of day is not always easy or re-assuring.

By employing some straight-forward analysis (and applying my handy-dandy ‘Campaign Analysis Check-List’), you can know whether that next big campaign will go the distance – and how to take it there.

Read the first installment of this blog to learn about Steps 1 & 2 of the Campaign Analysis.