Ingredients for Capital Campaign Success August 5, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE

If a capital campaign is in your organization’s future, you will want to do everything you can to ensure success, including:

• having strong annual fund history,
• setting a realistic goal,
• establishing a sufficient pool of qualified prospects,
• building strong staff support,
• creating gift acceptance policies,
• setting up a campaign organizational structure, and
• purchasing an adequate donor software system.

Strong infrastructure is a key prerequisite to a successful campaign. A good donor software program will enable you to assess the level of current support, identify major donors, and track campaign gifts and pledges accurately. In addition to software, other infrastructure requirements include gift acceptance policies and office procedures for handling donations. A planning study will help you identify your internal strengths and weaknesses and assess community support. Analysis of successful campaigns point to three additional ingredients as the most crucial:

• writing a compelling case for support,
• recruiting a committed board of directors, and
• developing strong volunteer leadership.

These three key ingredients should be in place before a decision is made to go forward with a capital campaign. Let's look at them one at a time.

Case for Support

To conduct a successful capital campaign, an organization must first have a clear, compelling case for support that inspires and motivate volunteers and donors. The case is often referred to as being “bigger than the organization.” It talks about the people who will be served, the importance of the project to the community, and the difference the donor can make in the lives of people by supporting the campaign.

Once the preliminary case is tested during a planning study, it should be reviewed again in light of input received by community leaders. If it is found that the case is not strong enough, the time may not be right for your organization to run a campaign, at least not for this project.

Board of Directors

Board commitment must be present before an organization proceeds with a campaign. Board commitment means that the board is committed to this campaign in every respect—emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and financially. The board should pass a resolution approving the campaign once the planning study report is received and discussed. At last five or six board members should be willing to serve on the campaign cabinet.

One hundred percent of the board must make a financial commitment before any other gifts are solicited for the campaign. It will be crucial to show other funders that the family of the organization has made its commitment first, and at the highest level possible for each board member. This is the time to ask board members to stretch their giving to a truly visionary level.

Volunteer Leadership

Good volunteer leadership can make or break a campaign. It is essential to select a campaign chair or chairs who can inspire others to become involved and to support the campaign—even if the selection process takes several months. A recruitment package should be prepared that includes the case for support, the campaign timeline, and position descriptions for each member of the campaign cabinet, along with an organizational chart.

The campaign chair should be someone who believes in your organization's mission and supports it wholeheartedly, ideally someone who has been involved with your organization, and someone who is known and respected in the community and has the ability to both give a leadership-level gift and to solicit leadership gifts from others.

Once the campaign chair is in place, others key positions on the cabinet should be filled. These volunteers will, in turn, recruit others to serve on the campaign as needed.

With effective volunteer leadership, full board commitment, and a compelling case for support, most campaigns will succeed.

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Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE, is president and CEO of Capital Venture, a full-service consulting company that specializes in capital campaigns, development audits and plans, and board development and training. Linda is the author of numerous books; her new book on capital campaigns will be released later this year. For more information on capital campaigns and other fundraising information, visit www.cvfundraising.com.

Middletown Area Senior Center July 29, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

"Fundraising is the art of maintaining relationships, and GiftWorks makes that easy," says the volunteer fund director of this organization.

In 2005-07, the Middletown (Ohio) Senior Citizens Center conducted a fund drive and built a new, state-of-the-art facility.  But there was not an on-going campaign to support the facility.  As a recent retiree, I volunteered to help establish a development department to conduct an annual campaign.  In the past, as a college administrator, I had done fund raising, but I had never operated a software program.  Upon the recommendation of a professional, I purchased GiftWorks.  And I am glad I did!  I downloaded the manual and set up the program.  At every step I found it easy to use, and there was always support available from GiftWorks if I needed it.  After two or three weeks, we were up and running.

To make a long story short, we have been able to raise over $70,000 since I began in November, 2008, and I am very proud of that.  All of my records are neat, up to date, and easy to manage.  Fundraising is the art of maintaining relationships, and GiftWorks makes that easy.

The mission of the Middletown (Ohio) Area Senior Center is to serve maturing men and women by addressing those needs and interests that contribute to their continuing health, employment, and independence.  In the current economic atmosphere we need to help support our senior citizens, many of whom are quite vulnerable.  As it turned out, the increased need for home-delivered meals, transportation, in-home care and other programs operated by the Center have caused membership to triple in one year to 2300 members.  An increasing number of persons over 60 years of age has placed a heavy burden on services, and the Center needs to fund vital programs for the elderly.  An on-going annual campaign maintained and supported by our GiftWorks Program will help make that possible.  I have been more than happy to recommend GiftWorks to other organizations with which I am familiar.

 

Getting the Most Out of the Holidays December 13, 2005 By

Your mailings are out, your events are almost all in the past, and you're looking forward to the holiday break. In the meantime, what are you working on?

A lot of our customers are working on their 2006 budgets. Some are using the time as an opportunity to clean up after another long year. And some are taking stock, thinking through what they can do next year.

I'm planning a lot. I find the best way to get things done is to set the general plan, set specific goals and dates, and then get buy-in from my co-workers. From there we finalize the plans and get to work on them. Plan, engage, execute. I'm pretty sure I borrowed that from Andy Grove of Intel, but it's a good one.

So what are you doing as the year closes? Post your comments below.