Major Gifts Campaign Leadership is The Master Key for Winning. “It’s not the will to win that matters –everyone has that, it’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”
Those were words spoken by Paul “Bear” Bryant, the legendary football coach for The University of Alabama. His words are also the essence of what Major Gifts Ramp Up (MGRU) is all about. Major Gifts Ramp is all about winning. However, in order ensure a win for your organization, you have to prepare to win. MGRU not only prepares you for winning, IT WINS!
Coaching is about preparation; preparation is about winning. The previous sports analogy applies to fundraising as well. For a successful fundraising program and/or campaign, there must be planning and implementation (like practice and playing). Successful football coaches, like “The Bear,” have good plans for a game (like a Case for Support). In addition, they implement the plan with team leadership (like a Chair person). If a football team doesn’t have an effective quarterback, they are not going to win. The same principle is true in major gift fundraising. Okay, enough with sports analogies, let’s talk fundraising!
My experience, both as a fundraising consultant and chief development officer, is that in order to ensure a campaign’s success, you must have strong leadership. Strong Leadership will in turn help you develop a winning campaign team of trained volunteers. Properly trained volunteers will successfully implement the campaign plan. All of this however, presumes that the campaign leadership team can present a compelling case for support to prospective donors. You might ask, “How do I recruit a campaign chair person, and how will I know that they will be successful?” There are three key steps that will help ensure the campaign chair will produce a winning campaign team. Those steps are: Recruitment, Training, and Implementation.
3 Steps to implementing Major Gifts Campaign Leadership
Step1: Recruitment
The Committee
Most of us fundraising professionals associated with NANOE (National Organization of Nonprofit Organizations & Executives), don’t believe that we should place the burden of leading a major gifts campaign on a board member. By the same token, it is very possible that the best candidate for the campaign could be a board member. The campaign cabinet should always be recruited from the community and may include board members also. The committee would serve as an ad-hoc committee to the organization’s governing Board. One of the benefits of creating a campaign cabinet from community members is once they experienced the organization’s major gifts campaign, there is potential for them to become future board members themselves.
Executive Summary
When there is a compelling reason to launch a major gifts fundraising campaign, the first step in implementation is to develop an executive summary. This summary will include why the organization needs to raise the money through philanthropy. As a fundraising consultant, I always planned to have the chair person(s) of the proposed major gifts campaign identified and recruited as soon as the client could furnish me an Executive Summary of the Case for Support. The executive summary is to be a simple 2–3-page document which overviews the rationale for conducting the campaign. The executive summary, like its ultimate presentation document, must be compelling, but simple. The purpose of this document is the recruitment of leadership to the Campaign Cabinet who will take ownership in the “fleshing out” of the final, larger, public document to be used in the campaign.
Selecting a Campaign Chair
You might ask, “Where do I find the campaign chair person?” Using the football team analogy, how do we find the best coach? This is the most critical question. Many nonprofits make the mistake of naming an “Honorary Chair” person. The thinking is that his or her affluent name will be sufficient to draw in significant gifts for the campaign. While honorary chairs or co-chairs can be an asset and offer credibility to the campaign, there must still be a “real” chair person who, like the football coach, has the ability to lead the team to victory.
Case For Support
The campaign chair(s) should be recruited early in the campaign process. They should be selected soon after the case for support summary is in printed form. This will ensure the chair person can help “flesh out” the final version of the Case for Support that will also contain the campaign plan.
My reason for this is that in producing an important document like “The Case,” staff and leadership of the nonprofit organization in need of philanthropic funds can sometimes be confusing to potential donors in the presentation of the facts. Though they are technically correct, they can also be unintentionally confusing to the prospective donor who may or may not understand institutional jargon or professional terminology and acronyms. The layperson volunteer leader can help to draft a document that is better understood by the potential donor. They can help create a document that relates better to his or her understanding of the institution and its need for support.
Selecting Campaign Leaders
When the Case Summary is finalized, develop a list of potential campaign leaders (chair and cabinet members). These leaders should be people who have the standing and credibility for recognition in the community as being the “guarantor” of the importance and urgency of the campaign. The person (or persons) for chair (or co-chair) must be one who is committed to the success of the campaign: “If my name is on it, it’s going to be successful. We will not fail to achieve our goal.”
There must be a job description for both campaign chair(s) and the campaign cabinet committee (samples may be found in the MGRU Cloud).
Step2: Training
Implementing “The Case”
The completed and produced (in brochure form) Case for Support will be used to train the Campaign Cabinet (committee) and as a supporting document to review with prospective donors to the campaign. “The Case” will accompany all proposals for philanthropic gifts. This whole process is demanded by the mantra of successful major gifts fundraising: If you have a compelling reason, backed by a sound plan, the money will follow.
The CEO, Chief Development officer, staff, and campaign leaders (Cabinet) need to be trained in how to present “The Case” and how to “Make the Ask.” One of the primary purposes of “The Case,” is to train the volunteer leadership to thoroughly know the rational (justifiable purpose) for the campaign, and how to represent it to prospective donors. However, we don’t want the campaign cabinet members to actually help produce the document! It’s not necessary to impose that time-consuming task on them. We would rather allow them to offer input, review the staff’s production efforts, and ask them for final approval. The process of the cabinet’s input, review, and approval prepares the leaderships team to be asked for their advance gifts; the first gifts to the campaign. It will also be used as a “leave behind” document as part of the cultivation process and making the ask of prospective donors.
Making “The Ask”
Along with the printed Case for Support, a Campaign Visitors Manual should be prepared for the campaign cabinet members as well. This manual will provide the campaign’s volunteer leadership team a detailed campaign plan with timelines, steps in the fundraising process, suggestions for dialogues with prospective donors, script for how to make “the ask,” and much more (Samples may be found in the Cut and Paste Library of the MGRU Cloud).
The campaign cabinet members must also be trained in the art of making the ask of a potential donor. Most people don’t like to ask for money. Even the thought of it can be intimidating for volunteer leadership members. Don’t assume that people know how to ask for a major gift, even though they might be “people of means” themselves. I find this to be true of some development (fundraising) people also. That helps to explain why the default efforts to raise funds for a nonprofit organization are often special events, direct mail, and seeking grants.
Make sure you train your volunteer askers (“the Campaign Cabinet”) how to make the ask. You can watch one of my “Making the Ask” seminar presentations which can be found in the MGRU Cloud.
Step 3: Implementation
When the campaign cabinet is recruited and trained, and prospective donors have been identified, qualified, and assigned to individual cabinet members (five names each), the campaign chair will launch and implement the campaign plan. Regular, monthly campaign cabinet report meetings will need to be conducted in order to keep the campaign on schedule and provide accountability from each committee member.
The campaign’s chair(s) must lead by example and assist each of his or her cabinet member as needed. A good coach wants each of his team members to succeed, and will provide whatever is needed for success.
Closing Thoughts
When I think about successful major gifts campaigns, I see the commonality in all of them: they had a compelling case for support, the case was backed by a sound plan, and the plan was led and implemented by a strong, dedicated campaign chair.
I was trained by Ketchum, Inc., to be major gifts fundraiser. At the time Ketchum, Inc. was the oldest and largest nonprofit fundraising consulting firm in the country. When I think back on one of the very first major gifts campaigns I served as a consultant on, I am reminded of one instance in particular. They assigned me to a client in Memphis, Tennessee that was a nonprofit youth organization in need of raising funds to build new residential cottages and renovate existing ones.
The husband of a governing board member was recruited to be our campaign chair. We’ll call him Spence. He was a prominent businessman who was determined to raise the money needed to help change the lives of children who, without help, would be destined for hardship or worse.
Spence put together a campaign cabinet from the greater community of Memphis. The cabinet was full of young, up-and-coming business and industry professionals who together, not only made their goal, they tripled it!
When I was first introduced to Spence, he said to me, “Hall, we’ve got to help these children! Don’t worry, we will raise the money!” He knew how to play the game. He knew what it would take to win. He had proved it in business, and he proved it again in the nonprofit sector.
Great win coach! Good game!
Major Gifts Campaign Leadership: The Master Key for Winning was first posted at Major Gifts Ramp-Up
For more articles like Major Gifts Campaign Leadership: The Master Key for Winning VISIT HERE
