Initial Activities in a Capital Campaign: Doing Something at Once!
It is easy to feel overwhelmed when contemplating the enormity of undertaking a capital campaign. How to get it established? What to do first? Where to begin? Who to ask for what and when? Do I work on the case or find a leader? Don’t worry, this is normal. Take it one step at a time. It is best to remember the age-old axiom; “you can’t do everything at once”. But rest assured there is hope, because: we can do something at once! A campaign is much like any other project in that it has a beginning, middle and end (hopefully, a very successful one!). This article is offered to help you manage the beginning.
It is essential to quickly and effectively set the pace and tone for the campaign. Thus, it helps when beginning a campaign to deliberately focus on several areas of action that will get the campaign off to a good start. First, every campaign begins with a plan. Start by compiling a plan that includes the fundraising principles you will be employing, a description of your primary constituencies, the organization of the campaign leadership including roles and responsibilities, a table of gifts to measure progress, a preliminary communications and cultivation plan, campaign time tracks, and an operating budget.
On a parallel track, start building your case for supporting the campaign. Begin by considering your needs and determine what you think are the main, overriding, and most compelling reasons for the campaign. Start with some basic elements and build from there:
- A brief mission description or statement
- Some relevant history of the organization
- A key, compelling rationale for the campaign
- A description of the needs
- A description of the project
- Some benefits
- Endorsements
- Giving opportunities
- Ways to give
The best case statements are focused outward toward the community, rather than inward on what the organization wants or needs. From this you can develop eight to ten compelling reasons why someone should support the campaign and start using them as “rallying cries” and focus points.
Once the plan and case are underway, you can begin to concentrate on four areas of activity:
1. Recruiting leaders
Every successful capital campaign requires an effective, committed leadership team. Building that team is one of the very first priorities of a campaign – a team responsible for the success of the campaign. Leaders should:
- Make a top-level gift
- Provide linkage to corporate, foundation, and individual prospects
- Participate and host campaign events
- Publicly endorse the campaign
- Assume responsibility for the success of the campaign
- Attend all campaign meetings
- Serve as key campaign spokespersons
- Recruit other leaders
2. Asking
After all, this is a “fundraising” campaign, so at some point we need to begin asking for gifts. Pay particular attention though to the order in which gifts are requested and strive to maintain the integrity of the gift level at which you are concentrating. For example, if you are seeking six-figure pledges first, do not go about requesting smaller gifts at the same time. This will erode the gift level to the lower levels. Start by:
- Determining your “Top 10” and “Second 10” prospects
- Make top $ visits as soon as possible
- Look for initial challenge gift(s)
3. Teaching
Work closely with volunteers, professional staff and leaders to understand and accept the campaign plan. By doing this, they will “buy into” the methods and procedures you are recommending and become advocates of the plan to others. Focus on:
- Orienting volunteers to the plan, timeline and fundraising methodologies to be used
- Training volunteers and leaders on how to ask
- Developing a reporting mechanism so volunteers have an accountability tool
4. Organization
Work internally to set up the necessary tools to conduct the campaign:
- Develop campaign operational materials
- Develop campaign public relations materials
- Schedule and conduct campaign meetings
By implementing and maintaining an orderly and disciplined approach to these initial tasks, your campaign will begin to take shape, gather momentum, raise funds and become credible to volunteers, donors and prospects alike. Each member of your organization will establish ownership of the effort and the intensity of fundraising will increase dramatically. This intensity will coincide with the broadening of the effort from the few top prospects to wider constituencies. Most importantly, you will begin to raise significant funds and have an expanding donor base. All because we decided: we can do something at once!