And then, depending on the type of organization you are, you could consider a series of events along the way, for various milestones that you might hit. Perhaps when you hit a certain percentage of the campaign beyond 50 percent, maybe at 75 percent, maybe at 90 percent, you'd have events, press releases, or create some synergy around those milestones or when groundbreakings occur for new facilities or when priority projects have been fully funded, or you've made great progress towards the total funding amount for those campaign priorities. All of them are opportunities to pause, celebrate, and excite everyone about your momentum. These can be virtual events, they could be events held within your organization for your staff, these can be events and milestones where you bring donors together to celebrate the success. But there are moments in time where you celebrate, you announce, and again you publicize your momentum and success and celebrate it. So now, we've gone through the pre-campaign planning phase. We've talked about the quiet phase of a campaign which can again be up to 50 percent of your campaign timeline. We've talked about the public phase of your campaign. Ultimately, most of us hit our goals and once we hit the goal, we have a couple of choices that we have to make. But at some point, we've got to close out the campaign and say it's done and celebrate success, announce our success, and move on. You can do this a couple of different ways. Many organizations, the moment they hit the dollar goal for their campaign, will put a stake in the ground and celebrate. Sometimes this is actually before the timeline expiration that was originally announced. Other times organizations will hit the goal, announce that the goal has been met but that they're going to continue to fundraise until the timeline has expired. This gives organizations the opportunity to continue the momentum, perhaps raise the goal and still adhere to the original timeline. Rarely do these two things happen in unison, where you hit your dollar goal according to the exact timeline you set out. When that does happen, obviously, you're in great shape and you can close out your campaign. But generally, one happens before the other. The dollar goals reach before the timeline and occasionally, the timeline comes and the dollar goal hasn't been met and therefore you have to extend the campaign. All of these are milestones along the way that you'll have to track and make some specific decisions around. But ultimately, once you hit one or both of those milestones, you have the opportunity to close out your campaign. What happens when you complete the campaign? Let's assume a successful campaign, where you steward your donors, you give them special recognition, you sort of wrap it up and thank them for everything that they've done, you celebrate, you do press releases, you might choose to do events, series of events, like big event to honor and thank your donors and you most importantly demonstrate the impact of the campaign. Tell your donors what was funded and what good occurred because of that funding. Sometimes you have a facility that may have opened as a result of a capital project or a facility that's partially built, or a minimum ground has been broken for a new facility. All of those are ways of demonstrating the impact of a campaign. Depending on your organization, it might be something you've done in the public, things that you've advanced, if you're in higher education it might be the number of scholarships you've created, you might introduce student recipients of those scholarships to your donors again to demonstrate the impact that the campaign has had as a result of the goodwill and the financial support of our donors. And because we worked with volunteers during the campaign, they deserve extra special thanks. So finding appropriate ways to thank your volunteers above and beyond the fact that there are also donors, is an important part of closing out a campaign. Here are a few additional considerations. Now that we've talked about the stages of a campaign, here are some other things that if you're involved in a campaign either planning one or you're in one, that you should think about or at least consider. Do you want to have Campaign Counsel? This is generally hiring an outside consultant to work with you throughout your campaign to offer advice, unbiased advice, impartial advice. Very often those of us working on campaigns, we get so focused that we lose sight of some things and having an outsider come in periodically to work with us, to critique us, to offer us thoughts and counsel can actually be a tremendous value-add to the success of a campaign. So the question is, do you hire such campaign counsel or not? Many organizations use campaign counsel but many do not. It's something that should be considered at the beginning of a campaign. Marketing and communications are a very important part of any campaign and doing a lot of marketing and a lot of communicating to our donors is essential. In fact, you probably want to ramp up the amount of marketing and communications you have with your donor body and your perspective donors. This communication is both internal and external. The internal part applying more to your staff and volunteers, the external part applying more dear donors and prospective donors. This increased communications can happen in a lot of different ways, newsletters, e-newsletters, social media, press releases, events, and other ways of letting everyone know the success of the campaign and the impact that the campaign is having. Economic conditions. They can matter. They can have a dramatic impact on a campaign. If you think about a five to eight year campaign, it's highly likely that at least one economic recession will occur during that time period. And while we can't control the overall economy, we do want to take into consideration as we plan campaigns, as we launch them, as we set goals. Think about the current economic state that we're in and project out at least pondering what could happen in the five to eight year period for which you're conducting your campaign. The timing of a campaign should not necessarily revolve around the economic conditions or climate, but they should be considered. Very often, organizations have postponed the public launch of their campaign due to things like severe economic recessions. Others forge forward but change their timelines, giving themselves a bit more time. This is also one of the great benefits of having a quiet phase affiliated with your campaign because it gives you more time to assess and understand the economic conditions you're faced with, and that will help in turn drive when you go public with your campaign and ultimately when you might end your campaign. And then organizational milestones or strategic planning process. If your organization is going through a major strategic planning process or charting a new course or a new path, or taking on new challenges, that might very well be a good time to think about having a campaign. Different milestones or different needs that your organization have, or for many of our organizations that do 5-10 year strategic planning processes, we can piggyback the campaigns onto those planning processes in a way that allows us to fundraise for what is deemed strategic by our organizations. So the timing of a strategic planning process and a campaign should be thought about. Mainly you don't want to launch a campaign and then mid-campaign go through a strategic planning process that could take you in radically different directions. You want the strategic planning process to precede any public launch of a campaign. So in summary, we've talked about a lot of things today. But primarily, we've talked about three types of campaigns: capital campaigns, those that are for bricks and mortar, endowment campaigns, and comprehensive campaigns. Noting that comprehensive campaigns are by far the most common types of campaigns that we launch in today's fundraising environment. We've talked about the campaign phases, both a planning phase that precedes the campaign, a quiet phase, a public launch, and the public phase of a campaign, and then the campaign close. And we've talked about the different things that occur during these four phases and the timelines that might be affiliated with these phases. And generally speaking that the quiet phase is about 50 percent of a campaign, the public phase lasts about 50 percent of the timeline of the campaign. So hopefully, you've gotten to know a little bit more about campaign planning and the different types of campaigns that happen within the development and fundraising world. Thank you for joining us today.
