So now that we've discussed the pre-campaign planning items, let's talk about the quiet phase of the campaign. This is sometimes referred to as the "lead gift phase", this is the portion of the campaign where often our largest gifts are secured and those gifts from our donors, who are closest to our organization are secured. We have not yet told the world that we are launching a campaign, but we are quietly telling our best donors and our key volunteers about the campaign. We're testing ideas, we're testing campaign priorities, and we are securing the largest gifts from those core volunteers and those donors that we know best. This is also a time to develop the case for support, and to test it among our key audiences making sure that what we're saying the campaign will do, and how it will advance us, is well received by our donors and volunteers, that they rally behind it, that they support it, that they understand it and that they get very excited about the case for support. The case for support is "Why give/why now?". And every organization needs to have a compelling reason why someone should give to the campaign and why now it is important to give. It's very important during this quiet phase to have this case well-developed and ready for prime time when you go public with the campaign because once you go public and once the case is out there, it's hard to change it, it's hard to go backwards. Trusting our best donors, trusting our key volunteers to really give us honest and candid feedback about our case for support not only gets them more bought into the campaign, more excited about the campaign, but ensures that we have the very best case for support that we could possibly develop ready on day one when we go public with our campaign. What else happens during the quiet phase? A feasibility study will often help us define our goal. Now, we talked about a wealth screening and a capacity analysis to identify how much money we might be able to raise and from whom we might raise those dollars. A feasibility study takes that one step further, it combines the case for support, and our capacity where we go out and talk to prospective donors about the case for support, and why this campaign is in the planning stages, and why it's important. That helps us define the priorities and ultimately helps us define our total dollar goal. You'll recall earlier during the pre-campaign planning, we set a Working Goal, that's what we think we can raise. But now during this quiet phase of the campaign, we are actually defining the goal and getting more confident in what the dollar goal should be when we publicly announce our effort. A feasibility study, generally done among our closest donors and volunteers, will help us define the dollar goal and the funding priorities in their final form before going public. And again, during this phase we want to solidify and activate those volunteers that we talked about recruiting earlier. During the quiet phase you have the opportunity to really test run your volunteers. Make sure you've recruited the right people, finalize your recruiting of your volunteers, and testing them, giving them the opportunity to shine as volunteers or for you to identify which are stronger than others and if you've recruited the right group of volunteers for your overall structure. You're really refining their activities and really activating them, and moving them forward, and getting them ready for that public phase of your campaign. And then, finally, during the quiet phase we're going to increase our marketing efforts. We're not necessarily going to yet talk about the campaign publicly, but we are going to demonstrate fundraising momentum. During this quiet phase, we may very well announce some of the largest gifts, we may market the projects we're putting forward sort of one by one, and how we're making progress towards those goals without necessarily calling it a campaign. But what we want to accomplish during the quiet phase of the campaign is to demonstrate momentum, to demonstrate that we are raising more money on an annual basis, to demonstrate that we're moving in the right direction, that we have donors stepping up, making large transformational gifts. This is a very important part because it gives us some speed as we get up to the point where we want to publicly announce our campaign, and people will see us as successful, and that we're growing and moving in the right direction. So, increasing marketing efforts is very important during the quiet phase of a campaign even though we haven't officially announced the campaign itself. What's next? We launch, we publicly announce the campaign. And general rule of thumb in the fundraising industry is, once you've achieved 40 to 60 percent of your goal, once that is attained, you can publicly announce your campaign. So for example, if you're announcing a one billion dollar campaign, once you have hit $400 to $600 million worth of that goal, it's probably time to publicly announce the campaign. Occasionally, organizations will do it sooner and some actually wait till they're beyond 60 percent of their attainment before announcing. But in general, you want to be somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of your total goal in the bank or pledged before you publicly announce the campaign and the campaign's goal. This is important because you've now during the quiet phase tested your priorities, you've begun to raise money for them, in many cases, your largest donors have already come through with their commitments, and that should, in general, get you to about half of your goal. Now, we haven't talked a whole lot about the campaign timeline other than to say that every campaign has a timeline. Some campaigns might be short, three years maybe five years, but more and more campaigns, in general, last five to eight years. Some organizations will go as long as 10 years. But the industry standard is five to eight years. Generally speaking, when you are about halfway through the campaign timeline is when you publicly announce your campaign. This could vary depending on how successful you've been at closing gifts during the quiet phase, but as a general rule of thumb, about half of the money should be raised by the time you are 40 to 50 percent through your timeline. This will also help you judge whether or not you've set an appropriate goal and or an appropriate timeline. Of course, these things can all be adjusted leading up to the public launch, you can change your goal the day before your public launch, you can change your timeline the day before your public launch. The point is, you now have enough confidence in your ability to hit your dollar goal within the time frame that you have set. That's what's important before you publicly announce the goal and the timeline. At the time of the public launch, you're also going to unleash or display to the world what's your campaign logo, brand or theme is. Most campaigns are branded, most of them have a theme of some sort and this is the moment in time where you put out that brand, that theme, that logo. Of course, you'll announce your dollar goal. Many organizations will choose to also announce a donor goal, the number of donors they'd like to make gifts during this time period. You would announce your timeline, when the campaign started and when you anticipate it ending. And of course, as we've discussed before, you will highlight key initiatives or projects that you intend to fund and you're going to share the amount you've raised to date. The amount you've raised to date overall, but also on a lot of these key initiatives, if you've raised 50 percent of the goal for a new building, you might announce that as well. Again, going back to this forward momentum and success that you've been having during the quiet phase, during the public launch, you really want to put an exclamation point on that momentum and success to really propel you forward to the end of the campaign. And, if you're using a campaign volunteer structure as we mentioned earlier and you've recruited top notch volunteers, at the time of the public launch you would also introduce those volunteers to the world. You would introduce them to your other donors, you would let everyone know who your campaign volunteers are and what type of leadership roles they're taking in your campaign. What should happen during a public launch? You should create a sense of urgency, it's very important to tell your constituents, your donors, your prospects, why this campaign is important, why now, and why it's urgent that they get involved. You'll obviously continue to close major gifts during the public phase of the campaign, as I said earlier, this could be up to 50 percent of your timeline, you will be in the public phase of the campaign, so you'll have to continue to close major and sometimes leadership gifts. Very often, new major donors emerge in the second half of campaigns, during this public launch, because they've now heard about something exciting that you are doing, and very often we get additional leadership or transformational gifts during the public phase because of this new group of donors that emerge. You will also make a broad-based call for support among all of your donors and prospective donors, and this also means a ramp-up of your annual giving efforts. We mentioned earlier that very often annual giving donors, generally defined as those giving under a thousand dollars or under five thousand dollars each year, many of them become major donors by the end of a campaign. But also, during a campaign we are identifying more and more donors even at the lower levels because they will become future major gift donors, maybe 10, 20, 30 years from now. But it is important to expand the base of support during the public phase of the campaign and really, again, using the momentum, excitement, and enthusiasm of a campaign to bring in new first time donors even at the more modest levels.
