Hi everyone. Welcome. Just going to give us a couple seconds here for people to trickle in from the waiting room. All right. And we do have a full schedule. So I'm going to go ahead and kick off. I want to welcome everyone to the capital campaign process. What should you expect? I'm Christy Graham, case director of online education, and I'm so delighted you could join us. Before we get started, I just have a few brief housekeeping notes. This webinar is being recorded and will be provided to all of you. The slides are also currently available for download from the course tab on the event page. I'll drop that link in the chat in just a moment. We will be taking questions at the end, so please feel free to pop them into the Q and a box as they come to you. And at the end of the session, we'll get through as many as we can. And without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our first presenter, Kevin Wallace. Hi, everybody, and thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. As Christy said, I'm Kevin Wallace. I'm the president and partner with my cohort here, Melissa, with campaigncouncil.org. So a little bit about us. We are a nationwide consultancy. While Melissa and I, I'm in Arizona, Melissa's in New Mexico. We've also got another consultant in Georgia and then a data specialist in Florida. So we work around the country with just about every type of nonprofit that you can think of. So if you are in health care or you're in human services or you're special interests, we've probably worked with your type of organization before and specifically on campaign planning. So campaign planning studies, we've done well over 80 of those now. I've been doing this for 20 years. And then capital campaign management itself, we've done over 70 of those now. And raised probably over 200 million dollars and helping people achieve their visions, achieve the dreams of furthering the mission of their nonprofits. So let me go ahead and give us a quick overview and I'll let, I'll have Melissa introduce herself because I'm going to be handing it back over to her in just a minute. But let's look at our learning objectives for today. They are what to expect from each phase of a capital campaign. So when we're managing it, what do we, what are we expecting to be achieved there? And then also challenges that we occur that often occur during these different phases and how to get through those challenges. And then lastly, how to care for your donors. So with that, I will hand it over to Melissa. I'm going to shut my camera off and we'll get going. Yeah, it's great to be with you. As Kevin said, I'm Melissa, Melissa Seiss. I'm just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. And so I'm coming, we're both coming, coming to you today from the Southwest. As Kevin said, we work all over the country with schools, food banks, museums, nature organizations, all type of organizations to help get through the capital campaign process. And so that's what we're here today to talk about. And so we will get started. I will shut off my video as well so that we don't have any connectivity problems and we will get started. So our agenda today, we're here to talk about the stages of a capital campaign. And so this assumes that your organization or your institution has already gone through a campaign planning process. So that's also called a feasibility study at times. You've done the work of preparing your organization, your board, your major gift donor prospects for your campaign. You've developed a realistic goal based on your study findings, and you're ready to start the process of going out and soliciting those major gift donors for support for your campaign. So looking at the campaign, we're going to cover these phases that are typical to campaigns. And these are what we call them. Other consultants might have different names for them, but this is what we're going to look at today. The family phase, the quiet phase, leadership phase, community phase, closeout phase, and public phase. And so we're going to address the same components on each of these phases. We're going to look at an overview, the solicitations that take place during that phase, the communications during that phase, the possible stalls, and how you can overcome them. And so one thing I want to say before we go on is that even though phase two is called the quiet phase, actually phases one through four are quiet. This is when you are typically working with a consultant to help manage this process and focusing on one-on-one face-to-face solicitations of different levels of major gift donors. So you're not going out and advertising the campaign or asking for any unsolicited gifts at this point. So all of those phases are going to be quiet. So then in the public phase, that's when you make the big announcement and you're making the sort of every dollar counts kind of messaging. So with that said, let's get started with the first phase. That's the family phase. So the timeline we're looking at for the family phase is four to six months. And what we're doing during this phase, the bulk of it is really preparing the materials for your upcoming solicitations. So during your feasibility study, you hopefully have prepared a case for support that talks about, you know, the need that you're trying to fill and how that's going to benefit your community or your students or your institution, you know, that need and benefit playing out there as your rationale for your project. And then from that case for support, you're going to develop the other materials that you need for the campaign. So you may be developing a video, a brochure, and other things that we're going to talk about as we go forward. The solicitations during the family phase, that's your internal family. So we think about solicitations in the order of inside out and top to bottom. And so the family, that's that inside, everyone who's connected to the organization, the inside. So you begin your solicitations with your campaign team, that's thinking about the top. So you're inside and at the top. So those people who are working on the campaign are the first to make their gifts to the to the campaign. And then that moves to your other internal leaders, your board members, your top administration, and then possibly expands to staff and volunteers who are part of that internal family as well. And the goal you're trying to seek is 100% participation from your board and your administration, you know, you want full participation internally, before you start asking, you know, the outside community to support. And then you also want to give your staff the opportunity to learn about the campaign and participate. And you might expect a 30 to 50% participation rate from your staff. So you want to give everyone the opportunity, but there's no real expectation there. And so that's kind of a basic overview of your family phase. Let's get dig a little deeper. The first step of that family phase is to assemble a campaign cabinet. So that's three to five board or staff members who are going to finalize the case for support, edit the solicitation materials that stem from that case, and then be trained to help make solicitations. So they will be trained and then do the work of helping identify and prioritize and determine ask amounts for prospects for each phase. A lot more to go on with that. But that's just just kind of a brief start of where we're what we'll be looking at. So the campaign materials during the family phase, you might create a campaign video. This is a very useful tool. It's a scripted video that your organization's leaders, top donors, board members, go on camera and tell people why this campaign is important. It's a great tool because it allows you to really state your case the same way every time. So the same message going out, and you can let the video do some of the some of the work for you. You know, this video, you know, we think of a capital campaign as an investment. The philanthropist is investing in your institution or your organization to see a return in your community. So you really want to have a balance between emotion, you got to have some emotion in there, but you've got to have the investment piece in there. So the the video's got to show why this is the right investment for your prospect. And then this isn't a public video, this is for use in one-on-one solicitations during the campaign. So it's not something you're putting on your website or in your social media posts, things like that. You may use it that like that later on, but during this this these quiet phases, it's for your one-on-one asks. If you're interested in examples of capital campaign videos, you can find some at www.campaigncouncil.org slash video dash video slash campaign dash video dash examples. So a few examples there. So continuing on with materials, a campaign brochure. So you know that brochure is based on that case for support that you developed. That case is really your depot of information that you're going to draw from. Our brochures are typically more of an eight-page booklet that, you know, lays out the the background of the organization, the challenge that you're facing, and the solution that you have. And so, you know, the brochure should really match the image of your organization. If you do very slick, you know, marketing materials, you're going to want to match that. If you do more budget-friendly things, you're going to go that way. But you know, you can create a piece that tells your story and resonates with your donors at many price points. So it should just match, you know, your organization style. You're also going to want to develop a solicitation letter. This is a letter that you take into a solicitation with you. It's not something that's mailed. And really, it's going to give background on your campaign and then ask the donor to do three things. To champion your campaign, so you know, be a positive voice for your campaign and your organization in the community. Open doors to other donors, if that's a possibility, and give a specific amount. So in capital campaigns, we don't make any open-ended asks. We determine what an appropriate ask for this particular donor will be, and we ask for that specific amount. And so that's part of that letter. And then you might have a campaign FAQ sheet that complements the brochure, can provide additional information. If anything has changed from your brochure that you need to update, you can use that there. Board members, things like that, you might want to have on hand. Again, none of this is public. This is all being used during your quiet phases in your one-on-one asks. Other materials you need to develop before you start solicitations. Project renderings, you should just have those to use in your campaign materials. It's just good for people to see, you know, what your vision is. And donors understand that this can change, but it's just, you know, give a general taste of your vision so that people can get on board with you. And the other thing you might create is a gift plan. Typically capital campaigns operate over multiple pledge years, so you might have a three or five-year pledge period. And so you might develop a gift plan like this. On the left-hand column is sort of the names of the different ranges of gifts. And then next is the ranges of amounts. And then broken down into, this is a five-year example. So five-year annual payments, 20 quarterly or 60 monthly payments. And this allows people to see how those amounts, you know, stretch out over the pledge period. It also allows people to see what they might, they might never think they could do a $50,000 gift, but maybe when they see it broken into $833 a month, that makes more sense to them, and they can do more than they've ever done before. So the gift plan also gives the solicitor a different way to ask for that specific amount. So I can go in and have a letter that for Kevin that says that we'd like you to consider a gift in the $50,000 range. And that's what I would say during my solicitation. Kevin, would you consider a gift of $50,000? Or if I'm using a gift plan, I can go in and say, Kevin, would you consider a gift in the founder range? Then Kevin can look at the gift plan. He can see what the founder range is. He can see how that lays out over five years, and that will help him make a better determination on what he can do. It also is, eases a little bit of stress on the solicitor asking for, you know, a named range rather than a specific amount. But the result is the same, that you're challenging someone to consider a specific amount. And so a gift plan can be helpful. Other materials, naming opportunities. Your campaign might provide naming opportunities to donors. And so that's another material, that's another piece that you're going to want to have in your toolbox when you go into solicitation. So this is just an example of a naming opportunities for a $3.5 million campaign that we worked on for a radiation treatment facility in Central Washington. So as you can see, naming the facility had the highest recognition. And so it was valued at $1 million. So the amounts aren't based on how much it costs to build that piece of the building or outfit that, you know, room. It's more about visibility. And so that's what you're going to think be thinking about when you think about naming opportunities. Typically, we don't like to go beneath $20,000. You might have other ideas, but it just becomes sort of logistically difficult if you have a lot of very small naming opportunities. And so we try to keep it at that level. And then you're going to want to have a simple gift intention form so that in a solicitation, if Kevin says, yes, I can give at the founder level, I can pull out a form for him to make a commitment to the project. So this can be as simple, as complicated as you want to make it. Simple forms work. This one, we don't try to address every possible scenario in this form, but people can put it in their notes, or you can make a very complicated form if that's what your organization needs. So these are the materials that you're going to develop during the family phase. And now we need to be trained on how to use them during an ask. And so Kevin is going to talk about this part of the family phase. Thank you, Melissa. Everyone, so we've got our materials at hand, and now we're going to train that same cabinet that helped us pull those materials together, keeping in mind that not everyone on the cabinet is going to feel comfortable making solicitations. That's okay. Maybe they will later on. We just want to make sure everyone gets trained up and can get some practice in there. And one of the hurdles that we face during solicitation training specifically is that people feel like they're selling something, and it takes a little bit of time to really kind of get everyone on the same page with, we're not selling anything. We're giving people the opportunity to invest in something that's going to improve their community or their state or the nation. So it's a little bit of like, let's just think about this differently. Yes, we're asking for money, but we're also providing opportunity. Now, looking at how we practice with our clients on this, we use written materials, we have a video, and then oftentimes we're also, well, not oftentimes, always, we're also doing role play. We need you to practice these things. And some things to remember about making solicitations is we always want to be super authentic with this. We don't ever ask for money over the phone. We're always, always, always trying to get one-on-one personal asks. Sometimes we need to do them virtually, and that's okay too, not nearly as good, but we want a quiet, controlled environment. Restaurants, bad idea for solicitations because we're asking people for money, and sometimes it's a lot of money, and that's going to be really awkward if the waiter or waitress is coming up and saying, hey, you want to try a dessert? And it's just not good etiquette. We also want to make sure that we've got a personal connection that we can share. What is my story of supporting this hospital? My kid got sick and all of a sudden I got involved with with pediatrics, and therefore I fell in love with the team and I started giving to, you know, et cetera. So we want everyone to have a story about it. We want us all, as Melissa said, to make a very, very targeted ask. So we're not just saying, hey, do what you can. We're saying, hey, silver, gold, $100,000, would you take on this naming opportunity? And then after we make the ask, and this is where it gets really hard, you got to close your mouth and wait for them to respond. And sometimes it seems like it takes forever, but once we make the ask, we have to then be quiet and wait. So our training is done. Let's talk a little bit now about family asks. We are, so family, this is your campaign cabinet. This is your board. This is your administration. I want you to ask in that order. The campaign cabinet got everything started. They should be the first ones being solicited. Then the leadership, your board, they are in most instances a governing body. They're in charge. So they should be the next ones to give. And then your administration. Then staff can come after that. And we usually use letters and like a simplified brochure to ask our staff. We're going to dig in a little bit more with the staff, but it's important to ask them. And it's important to not just say, hey, how about a couple, you know, donate a couple of cups of coffee, pay period, because oftentimes your staff have a lot more capacity than that. And then finally, during this family phase, some campaigns want to select committee chairs, that's cool. I don't see it nearly as much today as I did when my career started. However, a couple of criteria, they're major gift donors, they're well connected in the community, and they are willing to open doors, i.e. to open up their philanthropic network to you. So if you can hit those three, then they're going to be a good committee member. Now, that was the order, cabinet, board, administration. The campaign cabinet members, remember, we've gone through the training, and then they're going to make asks of themselves. We want them practicing real, live asks. It's so much easier if you've got a friendly body sitting across from you, and you can ask them and know that if you make a mistake, they're going to be forgiving. All right, don't worry, go back to the start, let's try this again. So we practice on ourselves. Open versus specific with your board and staff, it kind of depends on your philanthropic culture. So if your board is used to making big gifts to your organization, then make it a fun event, make it open, make it, you know, everyone, we already know you're going to do your best. Joe's going to give 10, and Sally's going to give 50, and, you know, everyone do your thing. But if this is the first time you're doing it, yeah, ask for specific amounts, do them one-on-one, make it more personal so that folks get that this is new, this is different. Now, coming back to staff, I've been in several campaigns, especially when we've got a huge staff of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people, and let's say it's a hospital, and I'll get pushback on the administration. Well, you know, they're not happy with us right now, we haven't given them a raise in a couple years, and they're thinking about unionizing, and, you know, they come up with 100 excuses not to solicit the staff, and it's just, it's a bad idea, man. You've got to give them the opportunity to give. They are your face in the community. We want them to have a good experience at this campaign. We want them to have fun about it. We want them to realize it's not about money, it's just about them getting the opportunity to step forward and support us. So let's take a quick look at just an example of what a staff, you know, kind of a choice letter would look like. So this is presuming 26 pay periods a year, and you've got automatic, you know, withdrawal from their pay period, or per pay period, and so we just give them this list and say, hey, if you want to give, select one of these numbers, and, you know, my personal preference is, you know, don't start it at a dollar, because everyone's going to choose a dollar just to say, hey, I gave. Start it a little bit higher. $3.85 a pay period is hardly anything, and when you go over five years, by golly, they're a $500 donor, and there you see it goes all the way to $50,000 with somebody contributing almost $400 a pay period. You know what? I've seen that before. I've seen it at a private school, and I was blown away, and the administration was blown away, because nobody knew that this teacher had that sort of capacity, but we didn't put a ceiling on it, and to our great surprise and pleasure, this gal came in that high. So don't set a ceiling. Invite them to participate, and just make it about, hey, if you want to do this, great, and if not, no biggie. All right. This is also the phase where we're going to start looking at prospects and discussing appropriate ask amounts. Now, how do we know how much to ask somebody for? Well, we either learn that during the feasibility study, or we've got some experience with them on their past giving. Maybe we've used a search engine, a well-screening engine to give us an idea of what they've given in the past and what their capacity is. Stages of life, so important. You know, do they just have kids getting out of college or starting college? Where are they in their career? All these things that we should be looking at, and then we want to assign prospects. Again, we're still in the family phase. We've still only got a campaign cabinet, and we want to start doing whatever assignments we can. So you say, all right, Melissa, so you know Christy. How well do you know Christy? Did you both give at about the same level, or do you have about the same capacity, and are you, how are you networked together? I mean, is it kind of like one of those uncomfortable family asks, in which case, you know, maybe you don't want to do it, or is it, you know, we've done this before, and we give to each other's organizations, and we're all good with it. So we assign them based on peer-to-peer and comfort level, and then I don't want you to think that your prospect list at any time is static. I've been in campaigns where we've been into it for two years in the active solicitation process, and all of a sudden, somebody brings up another individual's name. They're like, hey, is Jane Doe on our list of potential donors? You're like, nope, she's not on there, and then everyone's like, oh my god, I can't believe we didn't include Jane Doe. So we're always revisiting lists. We're always growing them, and we're always trying to get more great donors on there. So if your list in the beginning is like, I don't know how we're ever going to get to three million dollars with this, don't worry. Things can grow. Now let's look at potential stalls during the family phase. Number one problem is getting bogged down with material production, all right, and we want to make sure that if we're a glossy, you know, high, everyone, our image is great, and we always put out great materials, then you need to do that, and please be ready to pay for it. The biggest stall that we hit is, but this is more in particular with smaller non-profits, is they're like, no, my cousin does graphic design and layout and printing, and he's going to get to this, but he's really busy right now, and so, you know, we're waiting for a month. We're waiting for two months as the cousin is able to finally get to it. So, you know, just be leery of things that are free, because they often cost us in time, and then pledge commitment procrastination. What does that mean? It's that your board members, your cabinet members, your staff, they're not making their pledges, and we can't move to the next phase without our family being complete. It's okay to pressure them, especially with your board. Hey, we need your pledge form. We need to move on. You're on the board. We need you to do this with staff members. You know, you're, they haven't made their pledge yet. Well, okay, throw a campaign wrap-up party. We do this all the time with, you know, we're going to give you a free lunch if you've signed your pledge form, and by the way, you can sign your pledge form right now. So, these ways we can kind of push them forward into actually making a decision so that we can move to the next phase, which we're going to do right now with Melissa. Great, yeah. So, now we're, so that family phase is very bulky. There's a lot of things to do. There's a lot of training. There's a lot of materials to create. So, now we kind of streamline into the actual solicitation phases, and so this quiet phase is the first piece of that timeline about, this should take about three to five months, and this is three to five months to make the high five, six, seven-figure gift solicitations that you need to make in this phase. Again, we're thinking we're going inside-out, so we're going out now, and we're going top-to-bottom, so we're looking for those highest-level gifts during this phase. The size of those gifts is going to depend on the size of your campaign. So, a $3 million campaign, you're looking for kind of mid-to-low six-figure gifts in this phase. A $10 million campaign, you're looking more for a seven-figure gift and more high six-figure gifts. So, you're trying to reach, you know, those highest levels during this phase. You want to make those solicitations when you can assign them to a peer. So, Kevin kind of talked about, you know, a peer-to-peer solicitation. If you don't have a peer for that person yet, then don't assign them during this phase until you do have that person on your committee that can ask them. Recruiting is going to be important during this phase. You want to, you know, you started with this small cabinet, now you're going to start adding people to your committee. So, you want to add people who have given to their capacity and who love your campaign and are willing to help you reach more prospects. So, those are the folks you're looking for during this phase. Capital campaigns really work on that 80-20 rule. 80% of your funds are going to come from 20% of your donors. That's for the overall campaign. You're probably not going to get to all of, you're not going to get to the 80% during this phase, but that's what you're striving for. You're trying to reach and ask your top donors during this time when you have the right solicitor. And your goal for this phase, half of your funds raised. You want to try to at least raise half of your funds during this quiet phase. What do the solicitations look like during the quiet phase? So, these are face-to-face, peer-to-peer solicitations. What we know about giving is people give to people, right? If I'm face-to-face with you, sharing with you what I'm passionate about and asking for your support, that's going to be much more effective than a social media post or a direct mailing. Especially for these large gifts that you're going for in this phase, you have to be face-to-face. And you have to be asking for that specific amount. People don't know how much you're striving for. They may not give to their capacity when they could. So, those are the things we're focusing on. Sometimes we have to do virtual meetings. That's okay, but the same rules apply. It should be peer-to-peer. It should be asking for a specific amount. Again, don't make the ask if you don't have the right person to open that door or to make the ask. You want someone who is giving at a similar donation level to be making the ask of that person and someone who has a personal or professional relationship with them. They should be someone that you have their number in your phone, and you will come up on their phone when you call, and they will answer. I mean, that's the ideal situation is people who are close enough to each other that I'm going to take their call because they've called, and I'm going to listen to what they have to say. That's what you're striving for during these solicitations. Be aware of committee members who are reaching too far outside their circle. They really should be a peer. It shouldn't just be an acquaintance. They should also be giving at the same level. If I've only made a $1,000 gift, I probably shouldn't ask Kevin for a $100,000 gift. We should probably find someone who's given in that high five to six-figure range to make the ask of Kevin. Want to be honest about willingness and capacity to make an ask. It's okay to say, no, I'm not the right person for this solicitation. Let's hold on them until we can find a connection to the right person. Communications that are going to go on during the quiet phase. Mailing a monthly campaign newsletter to all your prospects. This is a newsletter that's just going out to your list of prospects, not to your entire donor database. This is just to the people you've identified as prospects for this campaign. It's a controlled message, educating and cultivating these folks about the campaign so that when you do call them to make that solicitation, they are warmed up. They know what's coming. It's a simple newsletter that we use eight and a half by 11 front and back. It reinforces your case for support and it provides campaign updates and progress. You're just keeping top of mind with that group of donors that you're sending this to. You want to take the time to do the little things to improve your readership on this newsletter. Personally addressing envelopes and hand stamping when you can. Having a cover letter that goes in with it, hand signed, and if you can put a little note on it, if you know them, that's great. All those things just help elevate the importance of the ask that's coming. You can also send an electronic version once the letter is mailed, but we really feel like the direct mail is the really best way to reach these donors that you're going to be trying for. Just an example of a newsletter. This is the Radiation Treatment Center campaign. Just a story about a donor who was giving in honor of his wife. So it was a story about what he went through, what his wife went through, why this campaign was important to him, and why it will make the lives of cancer patients better once the Radiation Treatment Center is built. Now I think we're moving on to Kevin and the quiet phase stalls. Yeah, thanks Melissa. What happens when we're stalling out in the quiet phase is more often than not, we're trying to pick on ripe fruit. And what I mean by that is it's somebody that has not given to us before or has not given to us at a level that they're ready to do so. Maybe they're familiar with, but not with the specific project we're doing. They haven't been getting our newsletter. They did not participate in our feasibility study. And or sometimes it's just because we're not able to make a good ask and it's getting the right committee member. Melissa and I have both already discussed this. It's just important, hey, don't rush the process. If you don't have the right person to make a good ask, then wait. We had a client years ago with a big library project that we were doing in one of the larger philanthropists. I mean like hundreds of millions of dollars within their foundation. And we had interviewed her during the feasibility study and we knew she loved the library, but we just did not have that person that was at that level of giving on the committee. And so we're like scratching our head and how are we ever going to make this happen? And then finally, months later after we already wanted to have made the ask, but we were waiting, one of the committee members was like, you know what? She's got a daughter-in-law here in town and she adores this daughter-in-law and maybe the daughter-in-law will sit on our committee. And so we solicited the daughter-in-law. We got her on our committee. She was a great committee member. And she went in there and made an ask of her mother-in-law and came out with a darn near a seven figure check. I mean, literally a check. So the daughter-in-law obviously didn't have that sort of capacity, but she was the right person to be making the ask. And we waited and we waited and gratefully we didn't rush it because we got a great gift out of it. And that's the way I want you to think about it. Making a bad ask, you know what that does? That extends your campaign. That lowers your return on your investment. So please don't do so. All right. Let's look real quick at motivations. Benevolence, ego, legacy, and peer pressure. Melissa was just showing you that newsletter of that donor for the Cancer Treatment Center. That was almost all legacy now. He was already a very benevolent man. He had given gifts throughout the community for several years, but this gift had a couple more zeros on it. Why? Because we understood and we approached him on a legacy platform of his wife. So knowing what's going to motivate the donor is such a key element into getting great gifts out of them. So remember these, try and identify, you know, are they just a great community leader and they're always giving that's benevolence or a lot of times with corporate donors, we're going to go in there and say, hey, you know, XYZ company gave $25,000. We would really like to see you in there. Like, well, there's no way XYZ is going to give more money than me. So that works as well. All right. Let's move back over to our agenda and talk about the leadership phase. So we've made as many, you know, hopefully we're at about half of our goals. Now we're in the leadership phase. Again, depending on the size of your campaign, four to six months, we're still looking at major gifts. We're not lowering our sites. We're still trying to focus as much as we can. But here's a really big part about this is strength and conditioning. We have to grow our committee. Sometimes committees get stagnant. Sometimes they get worn out. And that's simply because we are not getting donors to join the cause. And it extends our reach. It extends our enthusiasm. It's a motivating factor. So we got to get stronger. And then also on the conditioning side, we got to continue communicating the vision to our committee members. We need to keep them engaged. We need to keep them looking at the goal and staying true to that goal. And then also telling our stories outside of the committee. That's using, we'll talk more about communication, but getting the solicitor just really, really grounded in the good work that we're doing. And then finally on this, on the goal side, we would like to, in the best of worlds, get to about three quarters of our campaign goal within this one. Sometimes we get there, sometimes we don't. And that's why we've got these different phases to kind of back up and grab things. We're still going face-to-face here, people. Please don't ever back away from, this is your highest return on investment. Excuse me. Peer-to-peer, face-to-face, maybe virtual if you need to, but please don't mail out materials. Please don't just make willy-nilly asks in the shopping center. Elevate the ask at every time. And then we're recruiting more committee members. Now, real quick, here's the best way to do it, is you identify a person that you want on your team. They're a great community leader. They're super enthusiastic about your project. Then you solicit them, solicit them, make sure that they're giving at a level that is equal to their capacity. So if you've got somebody that often will give $100,000 to a great nonprofit in your community, you ask them for $100,000. And if they come in at $100,000, great, they're all bought in. But you know what I've also seen? Is I've seen a solicit great community leaders and they come in at $5,000. And you know what? I still love them, but I don't want them on my committee. They're not all in, they're only partially in and that could hurt us down the road. So we only ask them to join the committee if they've made a good gift. And then what are we asking them to do? Please come to the meetings where Melissa and I and the rest of our team, we're always hosting monthly meetings in person with the committee. But maybe these people don't have time for it. You know, they're super busy. They don't want to, okay, great. As long as they can open up some doors, that's gonna be fine. And then recruiting is, remember we were talking about strength and conditioning. We got to bring in fresh blood. So always work on bringing in those new folks that can reinvigorate you. Coming back to communications, it's always about controlling the message. If you're sending out press releases and that's what you're depending on, you know what? They can change your message. So don't do that. Do the controlled newsletter, continue doing it. And then you can also start at this point your foundation grant requests. And we don't always need to wait this long. Typically though, you're gonna need to wait to at least you've got about half of your funds raised. Foundations want to see community support before they start really investing in your nonprofit. So the leadership phase is when we're reaching out and continuing our communication and also starting to engage more with the foundations that are on our prospect list. All right, let's take a look at some stalls within this phase with Melissa. Oh, wait. Here I am. Sorry, I was on mute. I didn't want to cough into the mic stall. So these revolve around failure to recruit. Kevin talked about the importance of growing that committee. Without continuous recruiting, you get burnout. People just get tired. It's hard to make those asks and people burn out. So as long as we keep seeking those new committee members, we're gonna keep that blood flowing. We're gonna keep the network and connections growing. And so that's the major stall that you find in the leadership phase. So then we move on to the community phase. What does this look like? Timeline, four to six months. This is when you're going for kind of a more low five-figure gifts. You're really growing your campaign base. You're looking at new donors. You're looking at lapsed donors. And those are still gonna be significant gifts for you, but you're moving from that top to bottom. You're moving down. Goal for this phase, we want you to get to 95% of your campaign funds before you go public. Face-to-face, peer-to-peer is really the most effective way for you to get the best gifts possible. So we want you to strive for that through 95% of your goal. Community-based solicitations. These are still face-to-face and peer-to-peer. Like I said, you're going to get the highest return with this kind of solicitation and continuing to grow that committee. I mean, that's just throughout the campaign. That's what you're doing because that's gonna allow you to reach people you haven't been able to reach yet and keep your committee growing. Solicitation. So follow up with tenacity. It's during this phase that you're still gonna be following up with people you've solicited in previous phases. So in the quiet, in the leadership phase, there's people who have said, well, I need to think about it. And so you're doing follow-up. Realize you're doing important work and you deserve an answer. So for them to ghost you is not acceptable. You need an answer. And so there's some strategies that you can use if people aren't being responsive. You can go to mailing a personal letter with a pledge form saying, hope you remembered our ask. Here's another pledge form in case you've misplaced it. Lots of phone calls, lots of emails, hitting them at least once a week to say, I'd like to hear your answer to our project. You can also ask a different person to follow up. If there's someone else on the committee who knows them, maybe you've recruited somebody new to your committee that is a colleague or a personal friend, have them reach out. And maybe that jars them into giving you an answer. Also present a match or a challenge. This is a good time to say, if you've gotten a matching grant or a challenge grant, you can use that to create a sense of urgency. We've got this match. If you can make your $10,000 gift today, that'll be matched and your gift becomes 20,000 or a challenge. We need to raise the last 200,000 of our campaign and we have this challenge. And so we need your answer now so that we can meet that challenge. And then just realize procrastination is common. Don't take it personally. This is sort of human nature. The best practice to avoid this is during your initial ask. You make the ask. And if they say, I need to think about it, you say, okay, is a week enough time? Let's schedule another time to get together. And so if you can get back face to face with them in a short period of time, you can avoid this sort of back and forth and phone tag and things like that. So that's what solicitations look like in community. Communications, you're continuing that monthly campaign newsletter to your prospects. And then that's your main piece of communication. But you wanna resist sort of the group asks and the quick fixes. So we think about the Oprah syndrome. I have a client right now in Taos, New Mexico, and Julia Roberts sometimes lives in Taos, New Mexico. And so it's like, well, can't Julia Roberts just give us a million dollars for our food bank? Well, does anybody on the campaign know Julia Roberts? No. Does anybody know anybody who knows Julia Roberts? No. Has Julia Roberts ever given a million dollars in Taos? No. So let's not spend a lot of time on Julia Roberts. Let's work on these 10 and $20,000 asks that we need to get through. Also avoid sort of the, if we can get a thousand people to give $100. That works with a huge, if you're St. Jude's and you can send a mailing to every address in the United States, that's gonna work for you. If you're a local school, an institution, your donors are going to be more local, more regional, more statewide. And so resist the urge to reach out in those ways. Stalls in the community phase, just failure to ask. People just get tired of asking, don't wanna make those calls anymore. Your committee just is stalled. Possible solution for this. I mean, one of the solutions is just you have to do it and adding more people to your committee can help because they're not as tired. But moves management can also help if you have staff making asks. Moves management requires extra effort and sort of you've got 90 to 120 days to get through this process. You can require that of staff. Volunteers, that might be too big of a reach unless they're just a really committed volunteer. But that might be a piece that you can think about if you get stalled in this stage. So now Kevin's gonna talk about another piece, the closeout. The closeout. Thanks, Melissa. So closeout is we've got people out there that have not, they've been solicited, but they have not returned their pledge form. So it's just gonna really, the length of it's gonna really depend on how many people out there fall underneath that category. This is something that is often overlooked. People will just leave the folks that haven't returned their pledge form alone. And they'll be like, well, they're just never gonna respond to us. And I get it, it's hard, but we have to give it a little bit of time because the reward can be great. And oftentimes like we've got a campaign right now where there's probably over 600, well, there is over $600,000 in closure. It's a lot of money. We gotta figure out how to get these people to make up their mind. So it's just hard committee work, man. And the worst part about it is that we start to take things personally. We start to feel as though, they just don't like us anymore and they just don't wanna give to us. And that might be it, but it also might just be that if you get somebody else on the committee to give them a call and or you try and schedule a personal meeting with it, that you can actually get them to close. Maybe they're just super busy and they keep putting it off and they do love you. So it takes a little bit more tenacity on doing this, but oftentimes it's really worth the effort because you've got some money sitting out there and you just gotta get top of mind and get people to make up their money. So let's look at some stalls that occur within the closeout phase. You're just saying, I just don't wanna bother them anymore, but the reality is the longer you wait to get a decision, the smaller the gift is going to typically be. So the more they put you off, the less relevant you become and the smaller their check is going to be. We've got some leverage that we can do here. Naming opportunities are running out so you can use some scarcity tactics. End of campaign is going to run out and we wanna get you on the donor board. So in order to be recognized as a donor in this great community project. So there are things that we can do to get people to make their pledge. A lot of times people are gonna say, well, they'll make their pledge when we break ground. Well, maybe, I just want you to be, if you've got a real good reason to break ground, winter's coming, if we don't get this thing done, then we're gonna miss an entire year. Okay, that might work, but also it might seem like you've now turned from a capital campaign into a debt reduction campaign because now you're gonna have to borrow to get stuff done. And that is not a place that you're gonna wanna be. All right, let's take a look now at the public phase, which is the last phase that we look at. We are almost done. Please don't start this until you're at about 95% or more of your goal. It's gonna be about a two to three month long process in order to build momentum and frequency. And who are our targets? Well, everyone that we have not personally solicited. So hopefully not great prospects. And if you still have a great prospect out there, you still might wanna push for a one-on-one solicitation, but absolutely everybody else. You're doing direct mail, you're doing social media posts, you're online now allowing people to give through your website. Your goal is to get to 101%. So more than your goal, you wanna get more money. And oftentimes people will say, well, Kevin, we're out there doing a $10 million campaign. How many people are gonna really complete their pledges? And for the most part, you can count on as long as you're stewarding well about 90 to 95% people, are gonna fulfill their pledges, which is why in this public phase, it's really nice to go ahead and actually bring in more money than you're going for. So we open it up to everyone and we stay relevant. And that goes on to communication. Do not stop with your newsletter. Do not stop staying in front of them. And in fact, now go into the press releases. And maybe get on the radio and go in front of the Rotary Club and just throw your message out there as much as you can and as frequently as you can so that as you're building towards the end, you are super duper top of the mind with everybody. All right, let's go ahead and look at some stalls right now in the public phase. Is that? It's me. Okay. So stalls, yeah, exhaustion. Sorry, I have a cold, I apologize. So I have to shut off when I'm not talking. So exhaustion, this is the last two miles of your marathon, but you've just got to put in as much effort as you had in the past 24. Recommit, set specific goals for this phase, for communications, for asks, for putting things out there and then stick to them. Just do as much as you can and work as hard as you can to push through this because it will be worth it. These are gonna be donors you're gonna add to your donor base. These are probably gonna be new donors or re-engaged donors, donors giving out higher amounts. And so they are going to expand your database for future fundraising. So do not let this exhaustion stop you. So other things to consider, just our campaign wrap up. So stewardship, throughout the campaign, you need to be recognizing donors, you need to be thanking donors, you need to be reminding donors. Once the campaign is done, you're thinking about what kind of donor recognition formally are we going to do. We don't want you to spend a lot of time or money on this donor recognition. You don't wanna make it too complicated for yourself. You do wanna honor people, but don't make it really hard. So this is an example of a donor wall from one of our clients, a school in Tucson, that we really love. Each tile is separate. It can be adjusted and moved if needed. A solid brick in a wall can be problematic if you need changes. So if you can keep things flexible, that's great. And whatever you do for donor recognition, make sure you've been keeping track of how your donors want to be recognized throughout the campaign. And then triple check that their names are correct before you print anything. So we don't wanna have to redo things. So, and just do your best to make this as easy as possible on yourself. Donor stewardship can get unnecessarily complicated. So try to avoid that. But do, everyone wants to be recognized and everyone wants to be thanked. So make sure you're thinking about those things. So that is it in a nutshell. We really wanna take your questions. We've got about five minutes. So we want to get to those. And I think Christy's gonna join us. Sorry, my computer's running a little bit slow here. Hopefully you can hear me. Yes. Oh, there I am. So we did get a few questions that came through that I hope we have time to get to all of them. So someone asked early on during that family phase, why you suggest a solicitation letter when there was so much focus on sort of that face-to-face? And I'm not sure if it's on purpose that this is a solicitation letter in that case. Yeah, that letter is... Oh, go ahead, Kevin. Go ahead. Oh, that letter is not... You go. That letter is not something that's mailed. That's something that you're taking with you into the face-to-face solicitation. So when you come to that point of the ask, you've shared the video, you've shared the brochure, you've told your own story, you've asked them to champion, to open doors. To consider this gift level. That's a letter you can just use as a tool to put in front of them, to look at what you're asking. You share it along with your gift plans. And it's just another tool to help you, the solicitor, through that process. And it's a leave behind. It's something that you can actually say here, keep this, and they've got it so they can reference back to it. Great, thank you. Someone else asked, when we were assessing the level, so when you're talking about, don't ask someone who only gives $1,000 to make that $100,000 ask. She's asking, could that be a ranking member of the admin who personally does not make that kind of money? Like the president of a small college is not a millionaire, but she's the president. So we sent her to talk to say, Melinda Gates. Yeah, yeah. And that's, it's better. We're actually facing this right now in another project where it's the executive director of the organization that has all of the contacts and has the ongoing personal relationships with these longtime donors. So she is the best person in many instances to be making the ask, but we're trying to pair her. We're always trying to work in groups of two. We're trying to pair her with a committee member or a board member that is more aligned within their sphere, within their network, within their peers. So there's, you do the best you can and oftentimes it is your executive director because they've got a good relationship. Thank you. Someone else asked, we are in the beginning of a strategic planning process. What is the ideal timing for the feasibility study and engaging consultants to maintain momentum without putting the cart before the horse? Yeah, so when you get through your strategic planning and I'm doing this right now with the clients where they're having a hard time actually looking out far enough to make a project that is quite frankly visionary. So once you are in that part of your strategic planning process to where you have this awesome vision and you're able to describe how it's going to move you forward and maybe you've got some idea of how big it's going to be and where it's going to be and that's all not completely necessary, but you've got an idea of how you're moving the needle for your organization and what that's going to take, that's a great time to invest in a feasibility study because your consultant that's doing it, if you're going that route is going to need to be able to share that grandiose vision with your donor population. And again, if you've got renderings or if you've got a specific building that you're going to use, that's great, but that's also not completely necessary. We've done probably a dozen campaigns over the years to where all the nonprofit did is laid out their vision and the community responded with, let's put you over here in this building or let me go ahead and give you this piece of land because it would be great for meeting that vision. So when strategic planning reaches that point to where you've got a unified awesome vision, that's when you can jump into your feasibility study. Great. And I think we are actually at time. So we unfortunately didn't get to all of them, but thank you everyone so much for attending. Thank you, Kevin and Melissa for joining us and sharing your expertise with us. And I hope to see everyone at our next webinar. Yeah, thank you. Thank you all and if you've got questions, reach out to us, we'd be happy to address them. For sure. Thank you so much.

capital campaigns

nonprofits

fundraising

donor relations

Christy Graham

Kevin Wallace

Melissa Seiss

campaign phases

stewardship

campaigncouncil.org