Hello again, I'm Shaun Keister, the Vice Chancellor of Development and Alumni Relations at UC Davis, and today we're going to talk about campaigns. The different types of fundraising campaigns that exist in our industry including capital campaigns, endowment campaigns, and comprehensive campaigns. We hope that which you will get out of today's session is a review of the different types of campaigns and their various phases, to learn more about the essential building blocks for successful fundraising campaigns and to learn more about the tools, that are often utilized during these campaigns. Why do a campaign? Maybe we start there because this is important fundraising can happen with or without a campaign wrapped around it and we can call each year raise a lot of money regardless of campaigns. But why do we do them in the first place? We've a lot of reasons why we choose to do fundraising campaigns in our business. One is to create a sense of urgency and a specific timeline for which our donors can react to and rally around a certain period of time, and a campaign in a certain effort. So first and foremost, creating that sense of urgency will often have donors move up their giving or make decisions about their giving earlier than what they may otherwise have made such a decision if they weren't involved in the campaign. It's also a call to action. It gives us the opportunity to say to our donors we need you now more than ever. Timelines that we apply to campaigns which are very depending on what our efforts are, do help us as the fundraisers apply some pressure to our donors to make their decisions about gifting. It's not always an easy decision for donors to make and very often donors take an ample amount of time to decide about their gifting. Campaigns give us that opportunity to force the issue a bit and apply some additional pressure to our donors to make a decision perhaps faster. They also, campaigns, allows to increase visibility and enthusiasm. When we have a campaign, regardless of what type of campaign it is, we often market it very aggressively. We refer to it often. It's often our websites and in our printed materials for our organizations which gives increased visibility, excitement, and enthusiasm around the campaign. Campaigns also encourage donors to stretch or give more than they ever had before to our organizations and very often, campaigns can encourage donors to make bigger gifts than what they were otherwise thinking about. Internally, campaigns do a lot to motivate our staff and our volunteers for our organizations. It's an intense period of time where we all work extra hard at a faster pace than what might otherwise be normal, but campaigns really can motivate staff. It gives them something to look forward to, something to strive for and allow staff to stretch not unlike our donors. And really philanthropy has become an essential part of the organizations future. That's why doing campaigns often allow us to raise money faster and also, for those of us who do more than just raise money within our organizations. It places philanthropy at the forefront of what is important and great examples in higher education. Of all the things that higher education must achieve, and different colleges and universities must achieve, having a campaign puts philanthropy front and center and reminds every one of its essential role in our success. So let's talk about the different types of campaigns. There are many types of campaigns. But three in particular that we want to talk about today. Capital campaigns generally refer to campaigns with a specific timeline to raise funds for a building or a series of buildings. Think of Capital campaigns as those that are focused on bricks and mortar to build structures or renovate existing structures. Now you will very often hear the term "capital campaign" used as a catch-all phrase for all different types of campaigns. And many organizations refer to their campaigns as capital campaigns regardless of whether or not it's a campaign to build a building or a bricks and mortar campaign. But technically, a capital campaign is, in fact, a campaign that's predominantly focused on building buildings. An endowment campaign. These are efforts to secure gifts in the form of endowment, to build the endowment during a set period of time. Priorities are generally items that benefit from endowments. In higher education, these might be scholarships, professorships, or endowed chairs. In other organizations, it may be program endowments that guarantee the future of the organization. Endowments, as we've talked about before, are those gifts by which the monies continues to be invested and only the payout, a small percentage, generally, three to five percent a year is utilized for the cause. The idea behind these endowment campaigns very often is to ensure the donor's legacy, so that they know that their gifts will go on giving or keep on giving even beyond their lifetime. Endowments are truly meant to go on in perpetuity and last forever. Many organizations who want to secure their future, secure the guarantee of support well into the future, choose to rally around endowment campaigns as the focus of their major fundraising efforts. And finally, what is most common in our industry is what we now refer to as comprehensive campaigns. As I mentioned earlier, these used to be referred to as capital campaigns. But a comprehensive campaign is really a campaign that has a specific timeline, whereby all of the priorities are set and marketed. But all gifts and all gift types count toward the overall total effort. So for example endowment gifts would count, capital gifts for buildings would count, annual fund gifts would count. All donors, all gifts count within this specific time frame or timeline of a comprehensive campaign. These are the most common campaigns because they're the most donor-centered. They allow donors to give to just about anything, within the time-frame of the comprehensive campaign, which also again allows us to raise the maximum amount of funding during our timeline. So, how do you know if you're ready for a campaign? How do you know if your organization is ready to launch any of the types of campaigns we talked about. Comprehensive, capital or endowment campaigns? A lot of building blocks go in to campaign preparedness. Let's talk about a few of them. And let's talk about more specifically the questions that an organization should ask itself as it begins to think about a campaign. Is your organization ready for a campaign? Do you have the appropriate staff? Not only the appropriate number of staff, but the right people in the seats at the right time to advance the campaign. Do you have the appropriate infrastructure to move a campaign forward? This could mean a lot of different things but very often it means the back office of a non-profit organization. Do you have gift processing? Do you have donor relations? Are you prepared to thank your donors appropriately? If a campaign truly works, the number of gifts, the volume of gifts, the frequency of gifts all go up significantly compared to a business as usual fundraising effort. Therefore, additional support for the infrastructure is almost always an essential ingredient of a campaign. Have you identified your fundraising priorities? This is perhaps the most important aspect of marking whether or not you're actually ready to launch a campaign. Do you know what you want to raise funds for? Are those priorities, those fundraising priorities marketable and are they something that your donors can get excited about? And we'll talk more about that later. But you cannot start a campaign without fundraising priorities. So it's very important for an organization to spend an ample amount of time thinking about what do we want to raise funds for? Again, going back to our types of campaigns, it might be capital, building a new building, renovating space or it could be endowment efforts that will help the organization into the future or some of all of the above. But the reality is you have to have priorities and you have to have projects to market throughout the campaign to create that sense of urgency and to excite donors. And finally, do you have the right budget? Do you have enough budget to ensure the success of the campaign? Campaigns do cost money and they are costly in the sense that there's additional marketing that needs to be done, of course, as we mentioned additional staffing may be necessary, and an additional investment in the infrastructure. All of these things allow you to raise more money. But they don't come without a price tag. Therefore, ensuring that you have the right budget and enough budget dollars to get through the entire campaign, is critical before launching a campaign. Another question to ask. Are the donors ready for the major campaign? Of course, you, the organization might be prepared, the staff might be ready, you may have the appropriate budget. But are your donors really ready to step up and rally behind a campaign? And given the goal of a campaign is to increase and stretch the giving of your donor base and often a campaign should allow you to identify new major donors to your organization, are the existing donors appropriately cultivated and stewarded such that they are ready to make additional and often much larger major gifts to your organization? And then is there a strong annual giving base to build from in order to secure new major gifts. Statistics show us that roughly 85 percent of major donors first make lower level annual fund gifts to an organization and often for as long as 10 to 15 years, prior to making a major gift. So does your organization have an appropriate donor base? Which often means a lot of annual giving level donors, that are ready to step up and make major gifts during the timeline of your campaign.
