The Long Game. Always.
What is this campaign building? Your next campaign!
An average billiards player can make this shot.
An outstanding billiards player both pockets the shot AND leaves the cue ball in a good place on the table for the next shot. The great pool player is always thinking about this shot, and the next, in equal measures.
The same is true in fundraising. A decent fundraiser can make an ask. An outstanding fundraiser understands today’s action—even when it is a solicitation--as the set-up for the next move.
· This donor conversation will include a plan for the next one
· People will leave this fundraising event with expectation of what’s to come
· This capital campaign is a steppingstone to the next campaign.
I want to talk about capital campaigns. And I’m talking to leaders of smaller non-profits (churches, camps, schools, social services, etc.) with annual budgets under $10 million.
Most small non-profits do an occasional capital campaign as a way to generate revenue for a project: a new building, a remodel, expansion, adding a program. They raise funds. They build the thing. Then they stop.
That’s fine if all you care about is this shot.
But you are zealous to build your organization, so that mindset needs to change!
If you want to gain momentum, you will set non-revenue goals for this campaign, with an eye toward your next campaign in 4 or 5 years. In addition to hitting the revenue target, aim for goals like these:
Receiving more gifts than last time.
Increasing the average gift size.
Engaging more volunteers (and first-time volunteers!)
Mentoring new staff in their first campaign.
Fostering shared language in your culture
Having fun!
A few years ago, I came to a church that warned me: “Our last campaign was awful, and we are not likely to do one ever again.” That was useful information for me. I had already been given a campaign goal.
Within a few years we started our campaign planning process. I promised them that our top priority would be this: “When this campaign is successfully completed, people will say, “That was fun, let’s do it again!”” It became a stated goal; one we discussed all along the way.
Of course, it came true. (You get what you measure.) We hit our financial goal, but more importantly people felt great about what they had done together. They had fun! And they wanted to do another one.
So we did.
Because we now had confidence, and a rolodex of volunteers and new leaders, and identified donors, we were unstoppable. We raised even more in campaign 2; took on a very ambitious project; and had even more fun doing it.
The key here is to stop thinking like a campaign director, and start seeing your organization and your stakeholders through the eyes of a major gift officer, or perhaps a spiritual director.
The campaign director has a short-term mindset – raise the money from “the base” in order to build the project… as if the project is the point! (It isn’t.)
The major gift officer, on the other hand, looks at that list of donors and prospective donors and sees that each of them is at a unique place in their financial capacity and their ever-evolving readiness to give. Major gift officers envision a long-term relationship with each household. Through the years, over multiple pledges and campaigns, you will be helping them grow and mature into donors who experience joy at making the best gift they can, again and again.
The spiritual director sees campaigns as an opportunity for caring conversations, for overcoming challenges together, for listening and deciding to change. “Are we building trust? Are we fostering commitment?” These outcomes are much more important than building that lodge, gym, fellowship hall.
It’s not binary; set out to build trust while you’re building the project!
That mindset requires you to think beyond this year’s budget pledge; to look past the current campaign project.
Just for fun, lay out a completely unofficial Twelve-Year Plan with three campaigns, many projects, lots of opportunities to engage donors. Don’t show this plan to everyone, it’s just for you. Look at it sometimes, to remind yourself that your current campaign is just one inning; the game will have nine innings (or more!).
That mindset will also take pressure off you. Hey, you don’t need to harvest every crop now. They come ready at different rates. Some, like apples, take years before they produce. You don’t need to do everything now… if you campaign regularly.
Get really good at it.
Grow a deep-rooted culture of giving.
Set yourself up for the next shot.