Optimizing Your Capital Campaign Goal
As fundraisers, setting goals is what we do. However, it can be difficult to set measurable goals for staff and volunteers in the hopes of motivating them. The most obvious application is an overall campaign goal. I have seen too many campaigns where I was told the goal was to raise “as much as we possibly can.” However, that is not a goal; it’s an obvious objective. Campaigns need goals—otherwise, how do the staff and volunteers know they have succeeded? Furthermore, goals should be milestones that can be met. Part of a goal’s purpose is to give the team something they can surpass.
How to Optimize Your Capital Campaign Goals
1. Set Smaller Phase Goals
It is not enough to simply set a goal of $5 million to be raised over eighteen months without any intermediary points. Instead, set phase goals for different areas of activity in a campaign, and define the time allotted for each particular phase. For example, the Major Gifts Phase might occur during the early months of the campaign and extend for a defined period of time. Create a subgoal (a portion of the overall objective) for that phase. Consider inflating those phase goals, so that their sum is greater than the total campaign goal. Everyone should be pushing to exceed his or her goal, rather than merely meet it.
2. Track Your Campaign’s Overall Progress
In addition to phase goals, set landmarks on the calendar for the campaign’s overall progress. This process benefits from a sound campaign structure. One of the principal tasks in a campaign is to build a Campaign Executive Committee, a group of committed volunteers who have made a leadership-level financial commitment. Have this group meet regularly throughout the campaign, perhaps every three weeks. Set a quantifiable objective for the amount of desired activity between each meeting. For example, the committee may be responsible for conducting a total of $1 million worth of requests between each meeting. Divide the necessary prospects among the volunteers. This way, each person knows that they will have to report their results at the next meeting. Such a strategy pushes everyone to look beyond the campaign goal, toward the campaign’s ultimate potential.
The objective in these strategies is that each volunteer has a clear expectation placed upon them. If you want your volunteers to put forward their best effort, let them know that their work is being measured against a standard. The last thing they will want to do is come back to the next committee meeting—in a room full of their peers—and declare that they did not quite hit their mark. They will push themselves to exceed the expectations placed upon them.
Why Challenge Your Volunteers?
The counter-intuitive truth about these measurable goals is that your volunteers will thank you for it. True leaders want to be challenged. Your volunteers will welcome the opportunity to prove to you, and to themselves, that they are worthy of the task. We all have a deep-seated need to apply ourselves to some monumental challenge and demonstrate that we can “measure up” with the best.
Summary
If a campaign struggles, is it because the organization does not have the appropriate leaders, or because it is not drawing out their leadership abilities in the appropriate way? The latter reason is more often the truth. Capital campaigns take a team; leaders cannot do it on their own. It is up to us to show them what is necessary if we are to reach our campaign goal.
CDS has been a leader in nonprofit fundraising for the past three decades. Contact us for more intensive help with your major gift fundraising, strategic planning, or preparing for a capital campaign.