Capital Campaign Resources | 1 Page Guide

Capital Campaign

Capital Campaign Resources

Please see below for some of articles and resources I have posted on capital campaigns.

Permanent Link: Capital Campaign Resources | 1 Page Guide

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Listening Tips & Tools | 1 Page Guide

Listening Tips & Tools

Below please find all of the articles I have written on topic of listening:

Permanent Link: Listening Tips & Tools | 1 Page Guide

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Major Gifts Survival Tips

5 Ways To Keep Focused

In spite of the tough economy major gifts are still out there and available to fundraisers who are focused. Donors are pulling back from new philanthropic ventures as they try to protect their top 3 to 5 charities. They want to keep giving as they realize many nonprofits are facing severe operating challenges. Here are major gift fundraising survival tips:

1) Check your list of all major gift donors from the last 2 fiscal years – are you in their top 3 priority list for charitable giving? If you don't know, go out to meet everyone on the list and ask.

2) Is your board giving to its maximum potential? Spend time to research their giving in the community, their networth, and their understanding of your mission. Then interview each pboard member to help set the pace for giving in a tough economy.

3) Challenge grants work for your annual fund as well as for capital campaigns. Find a lead donor to challenge your other major gift donors to respond right now.

4) Position your organization with your major gift donors and prospects. Repackage any newspaper stories and mail them to your donors. Set up an email newsletter with once-a-month case stories of how your organization benefits your community.

5) Take extraordinary steps to thank and steward your current donors so they feel special and more committed to your organization. Ask board members to make thank you calls. If you're a school, have faculty make thank you calls and students send thank you notes (the more authentic student-funky the better). If you're a hospital, have physicians and nurses call to say thanks or volunteers send personal notes.

The bottom line: it's no longer business as usual. Fundraising is going to take more time and more money to raise the same amount of money. Make your major gifts program high-touch and high impact.

Permanent Link: Major Gifts Survival Tips

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/01/major-gifts-survival-tips.html

Two More Major Major Gifts

Keep Qualifying Donors

The San Francisco Chronicle just announced two major gifts to Stanford University to help fund the new Precourt Institute for Energy.

Stanford alumnus Jay Precourt donated $50 million. He studied petroleum engineering before working in the oil and natural gas business. "I'm quite concerned, having been in the energy business my whole life, with the fact that we are importing energy from insecure, unreliable sources who are, in many cases, not friends of the United States."

An additional $40 million came from Stanford trustee Thomas Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor. they are both alums and funded the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy within the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Funding will enable Stanford to hire eight faculty and offer 20 graduate student fellowships.

The lesson here is that you need to keep qualifying donors who have done well in this tough economy. Don't stop raising money, just raise money more strategically. Ask donors how they are doing.

A good example – I was in the Midwest working with a client and talking with a campaign volunteer. We were getting acquainted and when I asked him what he did, he said banking. I asked how they were doing. To my surprise he said 2008 was their best year ever and they expect 2009 to be even better. Who knew.

It's critically important to keep your ears open and listen to potential donors' sense of their networth and the urgent needs that philanthropically can solve.

Photo courtesy Stanford.edu

Permanent Link: Two More Major Major Gifts

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Donors Still Respond to Great Causes

Band to Inauguration

One of the six chapters in my book, Winning Gifts, is titled: Make Your Case.

I’m an absolute maven and champion for the importance of great case statements and stories to motivate donors, volunteer fundraisers, and staff.

Here’s a recent example that confirms my theory (by the way, I may be prejudiced by the story as I am a marching band nerd from high school, clarinet and drum major, and from college, saxophone and drum major).

The New York Times reported that donors had contributed $130,000 to help the Blue Eagles from South Cobb High School in Austell, Georgia accept an invitation to march in the Obama inauguration parade on January 20th. 90 bands were selected from 1,300 applicants. South Cobb High School has a great band tradition that had fallen on hard times before new band director Zachary Cogdill came 4 years ago and brought the program back to power. More than 50% of the students are eligible for free or reduced price lunches and over 90% come from single-parent households. Many students work part-time to support their families.

The band had only weeks to raise the money but a popular Atlanta radio show helped promote their cause and people responded. The school’s website got more than 16,000 donations bringing in more than $70,000. 86 companies have offered in-kind donations and local military contractor Lockheed Martin donated $20,000.

So what are the winning case elements here? Why do donors feel like this is a Winning Gifts proposition?

A great opportunity for a successful program
An inspiration leader in band director Cogdill
An authentic and urgent need
Visibility of the case, this time through the radio station
A website to capture donations
And, now a national newspaper story

People want to help solve problems, help good programs be more successful, provide good kids with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

And, oh yes, it’s a marching band.

Permanent Link: Donors Still Respond to Great Causes

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Capital Campaign Consulting

Do You Always Need a Consultant?

Of course not.

However, unless you've personally been through 5 to 10 capital campaigns doing a campaign without guidance is like building your house without ever having built any kind of structure before.

I remember when my kids were little. They wanted a tree house. We have huge pine trees so I decided just to build a fort-like stand alone structure for them in the midst of our trees. I'd seen some in magazines so I just wrote the plans on the back of an envelope. We got the tree house, but it ended up being 16 feet high, wasn't square, had gaps in the floor, it took 3 days and 10 trips to the lumber yard to build, and it was so wobbly I had to rope it to a tree for stability. The kids had a blast with it.

Would my next one be better? You bet. Would the first one have better beteer with good plans and a guide to teach me how to do some basic carpentry; someone to tell me what mistakes to avoid? Absolutely.

When I had my own regional consulting firm I hired a great guy out of a local private higher education institution. He had 35 years of fundraising and campaign experience throughout his career. He wanted to retire, but keep his hand in the fundraising game. I taught him how to do philanthropic market research studies (feasibility studies). After a couple of studies he said:

"I never used a consultant in my career. In hindsight this was a big mistake. Sure we were successful, but I can see now we could have raised a lot more money with some outside perspective."

Check out the Giving Institute for a list of great consulting fims around the country and the world. Invest in your program. Build a partership with a consultant to challenge your thinking, the ideas of your organization's staff, and to provide outside training to your board.

Image courtesy of weburbanist.com -- not my treehouse

Permanent Link: Capital Campaign Consulting

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/01/capital-campaign-consulting.html

Major Gifts Still Coming in This Tough Economy

Gifts Are Still Out There

Drexel University just announced a $25 million anonymous gift. Announced in The Chronicle of Philanthropy Daily Update with indepth information from the Philadelphia Inquirer this gift apparently came from trustee Richard A. Hayne, founder and chairman of Urban Outfitters, Inc.

Hayne's gift will help Drexel purchas a new media, arts, and design school building. "In some small way, I hope I'm giving back."

The University noted that the donor challenged Drexel to raise an additional $30 million but the gift was not contigent on that goal being met.

Drexel's fundraising is going strong in spite of time times -- in the second year of the quiet phase of their campaign, they have a 46% increase in new donors.

The Inquirer article noted that ". . . according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, the large individual gifts that are made in tough economic times tend to come from confident, successful entrepreneurs."

Permanent Link: Major Gifts Still Coming in This Tough Economy

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Fundraising Training Sessions

2009 Training Opportunities

Last year, 2008, with the publication of my book, Winning Gifts: Make Your Donors Feel Like Winners, I presented at conferences throughout the country. Here is what's shaping up for the first part of 2009.

Listening to Donors – February 6th, Volunteer Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Virginia)

Endowment & Planned Giving Campaigns – March 11th – AFP Capital Chapter & The Planned Giving Forum of Sacramento (Sacramento, California)

Effective Fundraising Techniques for Nonprofit Organizations – April 17th – Lorman Educational Services national teleconference

Understanding Form 990 Changes – April 28th – Lorman Educational Services (Portland, Oregon)

Creating a Culture of Philanthropy through People Centered Fundraising – May 19th (see next entry) – AHP Midwest (Bloomington, Minnesota)

Listening to Donors: Essential Skills of the Win Win Ask – May 19th (see previous entry) – AHP Midwest (Bloomington, Minnesota)

Great Nurses for a Great Community: An Innovative Case for Care – June 27 (see next entry) – AHP Canada (Montreal)

Listening to Donors and Fundraising Volunteers – June 27 (see previous entry) – AHP Canada (Montreal)

For a list of last year's presentation click here. Please contact me if you need a speaker for your local fundraising group, your board of directors, and your professional fundraising staff.

Permanent Link: Fundraising Training Sessions

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/01/fundraising-training-sessions.html

Annual Fundraising in a Comprehensive Campaign

An Annual Fund Example

In a recent issue of CASE Currents, there is a good example of the role of the annual fund in a comprehensive capital campaign. The case history was from Westlake-Harvard School in the Los Angeles area recognizing their annual fund program as a Gold award winner.

Some simple facts included:

$25 million of the $125 million campaign came from the annual fund
Parent participation in the annual fund was boosted from 70% to 89%
17% participation rate from alumni
96% for faculty and staff

Techniques that helped them achieve the goal included outreach dinners with the president for parents considered prospective major donors and a student thank-athon.

The strong parent participation resonated wiht me. Several years ago a colleague's sone was admitted to Princeton. Jim was amazed at how quickly parents were brought into the giving family.

While universities and private schools frequently include the annual fund in their comprehensive campaigns, many other nonprofits do not -- and should. An aggressive annual fund early in a comprehensive campaign is a great feeder syste to the major gifts effort at the back end of a campaign.

Frequently when a campaign starts you know who your best 50 to 100 major gift prospects are. but, you're not sure the final 50 to 100 will be to help close out your campaign in 3 to 5 years. Get your annual fund going now to feed your major gifts program tomorrow.

Permanent Link: Annual Fundraising in a Comprehensive Campaign

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/01/annual-fundraising-in-comprehensive.html

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