Campaign Readiness – Leadership

Campaigns are not “business as usual.” Far from it.

Your campaign is a once-in-a-decade, perhaps a once-in-a-generation, opportunity for your organization. So, don’t sell yourself short.

Instead, make sure you’re prepared to seize the moment.

How?

Read more: Campaign Readiness – Leadership

Good planning—lining up everything you need on the front end.

Running a successful campaign takes resources and infrastructure above-and-beyond your “business as usual” fundraising operation. And that’s OK. Most organizations easily raise enough money in a campaign to justify extra investments in staffing, marketing, events, etc. But sometimes fundraising leaders need to help other executives at the organization get comfortable with this idea.

This next series of articles will give you an overview of everything you’ll need to be ready for your next campaign.

First, I need to point out a few key assumptions I’m making at this stage:

1. That you have a green light from your organization’s leadership. Your Chief Executive, senior staff, and Board are all aligned; everyone agrees that a campaign is necessary and that now is the time. If you don’t yet have this level of buy-in, focus your efforts here.
2. That you’ve done feasibility work to validate your case for support, your fundraising goal, and your timeline. Additionally, through that process, you’ve identified some candidates for key campaign leadership roles. If you need more information about feasibility studies and/or are trying to decide if a study is right for you, check out my article on the topic.

With that good foundation in place, it’s time to focus on other essential components of campaign readiness: leadership, infrastructure, communications, and staffing.

This post will focus on the first of those: leadership. And we’ll tackle the others in future posts.

The Campaign Chair’s Role

Who is going to be the public face of your campaign? Do you need a Campaign Chair?

Well, it certainly helps to have a good Chairperson, particularly if they’re well-known, well-respected, have a strong network, aren’t afraid to ask for money (and are good at it), and are going to make one of the largest gifts to the campaign.

That’s the aspiration anyway. And, yes, it’s a tall order!

You might not be able to find one person who checks all those boxes, but you’ll want to get as close as you possibly can. Ideally this individual is already on your board or is closely allied with your organization in some other way. However, sometimes strong volunteer leaders reveal themselves through a feasibility process.

There is no force more powerful in a campaign than a well-respected chair who is leadership donor,   fully-aligned with institutional leadership, and motivated to succeed.

The Steering Committee’s Role

From there, it is useful to build out a broader leadership group for your campaign. Some organizations call this a Steering Committee, others call it a Campaign Cabinet.

So, who do you want on your Steering Committee?

In short, you want more people like your dynamic campaign chair—people with access and influence.

In any big campaign, you’re going to need help opening doors and getting meetings with key people. And then you’re going to need help motivating them to give generously. So you need Committee members whose phone calls get answered and who are willing to leverage their social capital for your good cause.

It would be wonderful if you could pack your Steering Committee full of volunteers like those described above. But again, this is an aspiration. You need to start with the best available volunteers at any given moment. Then build from there. You can always add more people later.

In terms of roles and responsibilities, Campaign Steering Committee members serve as leaders and advocates for the campaign, championing its goals outside the organization. Don’t miss that word: outside. I strongly recommend that you focus your committee externally—and primarily on fundraising.

Members, of course, must be among the first to make a personal financial commitment to the campaign—the more generous the better. Their early support positions them to help in identifying, cultivating, and soliciting major donors, and leveraging their networks for support.

After your Committee members have made their own commitments, review prospect lists with them. Task strategically about approaches, cultivation plans, and asks. For inexperienced members, help them both understand the process of major gifts cultivation and help them to fall in love with it.

Secondarily, you can deploy your Steering Committee to either host special campaign events or attend events as ambassadors for the project. 

And finally—although you will likely do this first—involve them in strategic planning and solicit their input on goals, timelines, and budgets. You often need to involve your Committee in these activities on the front end to secure their buy-in and deepen their overall investment in the project. But again, once your campaign is rolling, focus them on fundraising.

Furthermore, depending on your organization’s internal capacity, members of your Steering Committee may also get involved in campaign communications and/or public relations.

The Committee should meet regularly to review progress and refine strategies going forward. It’s not uncommon for Steering Committees to meet more frequently at the start of the campaign, perhaps even weekly, and then dial it back to monthly or quarterly once the campaign really gets rolling.

Your Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Advancement Officer (CAO) should serve on your Campaign Steering Committee, at least in an ex-officio capacity. But let’s also define these roles more specifically, starting with your CEO.

The CEO’s Role

Your CEO will undoubtedly be involved in all major campaign decisions leading up to the start of actual fundraising. It’s crucial, however, to develop and agree upon a perspective early on regarding their involvement in fundraising. There’s no way around it, during any serious capital campaign, the CEO must be involved in cultivating and soliciting gifts. But the extent of their involvement depends on their skill, willingness, and other obligations. Key questions to consider include:

• What is their skill level and interest in soliciting gifts?
• What is their bandwidth for additional campaign fundraising?
• What threshold of gifts will they focus on?
• How large will their portfolio be?
• What type of team is available to support CEO asks?

Answers to these questions will, of course, vary by organization. For instance, I worked on a multi-billion university campaign where the President wasn’t really involved in cultivating or soliciting any gifts of less than $10 million. At smaller organizations, however, it makes sense for chief executives to be involved in some six- even five-figure asks.

The Chief Advancement Officer’s Role

The next crucial leadership role to define is that of your Chief Advancement Officer. The main questions here are how your CAO will divide their time between:

• Supporting the CEO and other leaders in principal gift strategy and solicitation
• Doing their own fundraising and portfolio work
• Campaign operations and management

Campaigns create extra work for fundraising teams, and for CAO’s in particular. Additional responsibilities include liaising with marketing and communications, overseeing the donor pipeline, managing and motivating staff, and wrangling volunteer groups. Larger organizations often hire a dedicated Campaign Director or Campaign Manager to serve as a central coordinator and operations manager, freeing up the CAO and others with fundraising responsibilities to focus on cultivating and soliciting gifts.

Applying the “not business as usual” mindset is essential when considering the CAO’s role during the campaign. In many cases, it isn’t reasonable to expect them to continue with their existing responsibilities while also running the entire campaign, especially in larger organizations. We’ll delve deeper into this topic in a subsequent post specifically about staffing.

So, it’s crucial to clarify the CAO’s role from the start. Factors influencing this decision include the size of your organization and campaign and the CAO’s strengths and interests. If your CAO is a natural fundraiser, ensure they have ample time to focus on principal and major gifts—developing strategies and making asks. If they’re more of a managerial and operations expert, they might oversee the campaign while someone else leads the fundraising fundraising efforts.

To Conclude

Define these roles early and clearly to set your campaign up for success. Remember, building a strong leadership foundation is just the beginning. We’ll delve into the other essential components of campaign readiness in future posts. So, stay tuned for our upcoming articles, where we will explore infrastructure, communications, and staffing—key pillars that will propel your campaign forward and ensure it’s transformational for your organization.