Recently I was part of a campaign steering committee meeting with an organization that has just gone public with their multi-year campaign. After quickly completing an exercise designed to identify potential new major gift donor prospects, the committee began to ask questions and offer suggestions that took over the remainder of the agenda.
One committee member asked: “How are we communicating to everyone in the community about the campaign? My concern is that not everyone knows about it – perhaps we need more direct mail and social media exposure?”
And, then, a second committee member offered: “We should be sending all of our annual giving donors who have given in the last 3 years information about making a gift through their IRAs. This is a gold mine for future gifts!”
It’s not that more campaign communications or marketing for the different types of planned gifts -including IRAs – are not helpful suggestions. It’s that the staff already has thoughtful plans (or has already implemented the plans) for campaign communications and marketing that included these ideas plus many others. And, importantly, by turning attention to what the “team should be doing,” these types of distracting suggestions take away from the most helpful work volunteers can do for a campaign.
After the meeting, I thought more about the sequencing of the meeting agenda. I realized that the “campaign update” section of the agenda focuses mostly on campaign report – the dollars raised overall and for specific priorities as well as the donor counts. Of course, this is good, helpful, and needed.
But, this steering committee meets every quarter. And, in between each meeting, the advancement team is doing a lot of the campaign infrastructure work with direct mail, social media, email, phone, events, as well as other activities like giving days.
In an effort to get the steering committee to share more of their knowledge about other donors, be willing to engage others with the campaign, and employ more of their influence, my sense is that a “since we’ve been in the campaign” section of the agenda would help tremendously.
A “since we’ve been in the campaign” agenda item would allow the advancement team to remind the volunteers of the activities and strategies that have already been employed to support the campaign thus far. This could be a brief summarizing document that shares what has happened in the annual giving, major giving, and planned giving spaces in support of the campaign.
Sharing with the steering committee a brief reminder of all of the events, activities, direct mail, social media, etc., would also help these volunteers see that the team is capably administering the infrastructure of the campaign and that they need not dig in and “help” in this area.
What we truly need from campaign volunteers is for them to take ownership of the campaign’s success, actively advocate for it, and personally invite others to explore opportunities to get involved. We need them to be willing to use their personal influence to advance the campaign.
In turn, our responsibility is to minimize the potential distractions that can take them away from this vital work.
