Episode 46: Campaigns - The Value of Mini-Campaigns

Thank you again for your time here on “Around with Randall”. Today, part three of our look at campaigns. We started with the important concepts of feasibility study issues. We then jumped into the second of the four-part series, the idea of case development and some of the challenges there. The last two, we are going to be looking more towards the future and maybe some of the things we should be thinking about that will look and feel a little bit different. Today's subject is all about the idea of a mini campaign and how that maybe contrasts with what we think about in a traditional comprehensive campaign. 

So, let me start by making a definition or creating a definition. A comprehensive campaign is one I think that has traditionally been utilized around the concept that we're going to take all the needs that we have and we're going to put them into one campaign and try to create an overarching message that moves the organization forward. If you're in a large academic medical center or a university or a very large organization that has some great opportunity, particularly at the highest end that you really can capture a community's attention. That group of non-profits and organizations has become, at least in my opinion so small that when we look at the totality of nonprofits that most shouldn't be thinking about that. 

Which leads us to this concept of what I think of, and maybe what's entitled in the industry is a series of mini campaigns. That would be the opportunity to bring a whole lot of different needs together, maybe even at different timeframes, and that they overlap so that you're raising money for many different things all at one time. That may sound complicated. It's actually a lot easier. During the next 10 or 12 minutes, I want to talk about why I think the value of mini campaigns is so important. In some ways that is the tactical that we try to get to at the end of every podcast is giving you something to take away. Well, the takeaway is here are the reasons you probably should be thinking about this.

So, when we talk about mini-campaigns, let me give you my four big areas of rationale as to why I think this is such a good idea. I'll break them down a little bit in detail on some of the reasons why I think these are the big four. Number one, it energizes leadership, donors, and volunteers in a way that a traditional comprehensive campaign can't. Number two, it focuses on a positive, short timeframe. Number three is that it gives specific objectives. Number four, it bridges the time gaps that we sometimes have to endure. So let me unpack those a little bit. 

So, the first one I mentioned was energizing leadership, donors and volunteers in a different way.

Comprehensive campaigns can be sometimes complicated because we've got to bring a lot of people on board with the needs of the organization. So, if you're in a university, and you're the Chancellor, you've got to have all the Deans on board. If you're in health care in a larger hospital, academic medical center, you've got to get all the service lines on board. And then all of those people, the deans and the service lines, if we take those two larger entities. If you're in a zoo, you have got to get everybody, all the departments on board. Then got to push down one more level and say, okay, now what are your needs? And then it goes down one more level. And what you end up with is a lot of people thinking we need money, but I am not sure they see the enthusiasm. 

Take your board for an example. Do you have board members who probably have different passions, different things that they want to accomplish, different things that move them? If you have a comprehensive campaign, it's all being pushed under this idea of one thing that we're trying to do. That sometimes works. I was on the board of the Ronald McDonald house. The whole board said we're going to rebuild and double the size of the house. So that was a unifying factor. Then that's a comprehensive campaign. But let me give you another example. You have a board and let's take, education as an example and you've got some board members or volunteer leaders who love the law school and some that love the medical school and some that love the arts and they don't see the needs of the others that important. If you were able to run multiple campaigns, mini-campaigns, you could energize those board members, those leaders, depending on what their needs are for the things that are going to benefit them, that move their passion, their emotion. It's able to capture that enthusiasm of those that want to participate in that specific mini campaign area. 

The other thing is it reduces the idea of what I call approvals. So, if we go back to a hospital or a university, the number of people in a comprehensive campaign that have to approve stuff is a mile long and five miles deep and 12 miles wide and it just takes forever. But if you're doing a mini-campaign, as long as the organization has the right structure. Let's take again, education, the Dean of the law school sets out the priorities. The faculty probably need to buy in. There may be an advisory group that's involved and the fundraising elements. You can get those people together pretty quickly. Now, if they're moving the law school, that may mean they are building. That may mean they've got to have some master planning process, but it's much easier. It's also driven more for what we're seeing as priority is program support instead of building support. Program support doesn’t need a master plan in the sense of where things are going to sit.

It's how we use the money to better the service that we're providing. That's endowments and that's support of the particular needs inside a program. All things you're spending money on, or want to spend money on anyway. Also, if you're in a comprehensive campaign and you have an open position or an interim position that makes it really hard to get people to approve it. And thus, there's a slow-down in the process. 

The last thing about energizing leadership, I don't want to forget. Internal leadership, i.e. fundraisers, think about the growth opportunity in a mini campaign, if you allow a service area, let's say in healthcare to take ownership for the fundraising efforts. So, you're raising $3 million for three pieces of equipment. That major gift officer who's probably assigned to that service area or one that could be assigned, really has to take ownership of that effort. It allows them professional growth. They learn how to do a campaign at a much lower dollar level, lower threshold, but learn the skills of how a campaign sets up almost perfectly.

So, by doing a mini-campaign, energizing leadership is leveraging your volunteers, leveraging your donors in specific areas. It's about getting the community, internally the organization on board with the right smaller group. You get approvals more quickly and give your foundation development office advancement, office personnel, more responsibility to grow, to prove themselves all positive. So, that was energized. 

Number two is focus on a positive, shorter timeframe. Faster results – so, if you're running three or four different campaigns and you start showing success in one or two, that result can be articulated out to the community much more effectively and more quickly. It also allows for this idea and the challenge that we sometimes have in comprehensive campaigns of bringing all the goals, the needs together. Shorter timeframes for a mini campaign would allow us to only concentrate on the goals that are partitioned as a part of that piece of the organization or that specific effort. That means it can be set up faster. It can be more effective. We are constantly challenged in the nonprofit world with bigger ideas and that leaders sometimes can’t articulate them and then lay them out in a way that allows us to go fundraise. Well, if you lessen the dollar figure and make it more specific, which we're going to talk about in specific objectives here in a second, makes it much more conducive to be able to articulate case because it's a smaller perspective. If I need scholarships for law school students, because it's got too expensive, that's easily articulated. If I need a specific piece of equipment to better the care that we have, that's easily articulated. If I want to improve one exhibit in my museum or in the zoo, that's easily articulated. Versus I need scholarships in general. How many? Well, we got to figure that out. It takes too long. We need a mass number of pieces of equipment – so long list, which ones are most important? How do we articulate those? The zoo needs to be completely redone or the museum, well, where and how? If we begin to narrow -- running multiple mini-campaigns, what we get is more effective and shorter timeframe in terms of results and in terms of standing up a mini campaign. 

One way to look at this might be is you may only need about 8 or 12 weeks to set up a campaign, depending on the dollar figure and its approval process. But if you need $250,000-$500,000 or $3 million or $5 million, you can figure out what the money is to be used for. You can get the quote on the price to make sure that it meets and can get organizational approval. You can do that in fairly short order. You can do your mini campaign plan. So, a gift chart very quickly and you can begin to put names on it, and then you can prepare material, which I'm going to talk about here in a second, the series of one-page documents, that are necessary rather than a 50- page book that needs to be approved by 91 people. By week four or week five you can begin asking for money, just kind of a silent, quiet phase of a mini campaign. You can see the speed at which things can happen and that's a real positive. 

Number three is the specific objective and the advantage many campaigns provide there, is again, number one, we really struggle sometimes with need. If you have a mini campaign, it's very directed need is much easier identified by internal leaders who are responsible for the use of that particular project whether it's physicians, faculty, deans, or executive directors. It's easier for them to envision what's a little bit lower level, in terms of dollar figures, but importance in terms of organizational growth. Improvement, whatever that might be. The other thing is mini campaigns give us an advantage when we talk about objectives. Speed is a problem.

I think about healthcare. I spent a lot of time with clients there and the needs that they have are instantaneous. Something comes out that changes the way neurosurgery is done. You can't wait for the comprehensive campaign. That physician is saying, I need this piece of equipment. It should be vetted to make sure that it's appropriate, but I need that piece of equipment now, so I can do more procedures. Well, what says we can't build a mini campaign around that particular item? Grateful patients and other donors in neurosurgery, neuroscience could be your platform or your gift chart, names that go into it. You have an advocate which we'll talk about in a second. Why would you wait? Why can’t we do that now? 

If the community needs it, then why isn't that an important factor? Obviously the bigger, the dollar figures, the more that's invested the longer it's going to take. The other thing is that coming out of the pandemic, I think organizations are struggling to figure out what they need and as they realize them in sequential order, they don't come all at once. So, from a speed of change perspective, what we have in a mini campaign is the ability to be nimble and flexible. Stand something up, get it done, move on to the next, as the organization is adjusting. Education is a great example. I have no idea what education is going to look like coming out of COVID. I think the idea of learning from home and online is going to take a monumental leap. I'm not smart enough to know what those needs are, but if I have to wait for a comprehensive campaign, three years down the road, I'm going to miss opportunity to make changes in our technology and our delivery in the way in which we train faculty to do this. All kinds of things that are going to be critically important for service and outcome.

Mini campaigns for specific objectives also elevate ownership, particularly with internal leaders. So, deans, faculty, doctors, department heads, if they can articulate I need this, and we can set up a mini campaign around this. Then they, in some ways have to gain ownership of their efforts to raise the money for this. That's a wonderful alignment improvement. I am aligning philanthropy with where they want to go instead of me having to make it up. And normally deans, doctors, faculty, departments, service line leaders, the department chairs can articulate their area much more effectively at times than they can wider circles.

The last thing about specific objective that's really important is if you lower the dollar figure, there's real authenticity in the thought of raising mid-level donor opportunities. If I'm trying to raise $500,000 or a million dollars for something, that's much different to a $25,000- $50,000 donor, meaning impact. They can see the value of their gift then that $25,000 donor in a $100 million dollar campaign, because from their perspective, they may say, well, my $25,000 is not going to make or break a hundred million, but $25,000 or $50,000 could be the difference in a million dollar campaign for that piece of equipment. Instead of concentrating, as we've talked about, kind of on the increases in the Pareto principle, the 80 20 being no more effective, 80% of our dollars come from 20% of our people. It's really 95, 5. 5% give 95% of the dollars that puts all the pressure on the top of a gift pyramid. A mini campaign can lower that threshold down to mid-level donors that never have probably had that much engagement. What a wonderful opportunity to build a mid-level donor program towards principal gift opportunities by doing a series of mini campaigns, because they can feel that importance right along with you. 

The last part of the mini campaign that I find valuable is it bridges time gaps? We always have something to be raising money for. That is a huge advantage. If you're in education, you could have one mini campaign going for the law school that's just starting and you could have something almost completed with the school of music you could be in the middle of the major gift, public phase of the school of arts and sciences and you can do that with healthcare or whatever else. One thing that we struggle with is do we have enough things to be raising money for? And this always allows for multiple items or needs to be addressed at any one time. It also creates flexibility for the organization to stand up things more quickly as we've talked about speed. It also puts pressure down on getting things approved more quickly, which we've talked about. Think of donors who are very vested with one specific thing, or one specific area of your organization and they have to wait constantly for their part of the organization to become a priority, but somebody else always has more power. Mini campaigns remove that. For me as a graduate of a law school that I adore, think about the law school, always having a campaign beginning, middle, and end, and then the next ones coming right after that. So, the things that I believe in which is the law school, my connection are at the top end of my philanthropic priorities. I'm not waiting when they call and say, well, you know, we've got great things going on with the music school. That's great. That's not my area of interest. Grateful patients give to the area of care. Alumni give to their area where they probably attended, or they have an interest. Maybe you're a larger organization and you're doing something with kids versus infrastructure.

You can lay this out in different ways and elevate the emotional connection donors have, by always having something going in the area in which they're interested in. 

Mini-campaigns give us an immense amount of flexibility, in addressing things like leadership and energizing, both donors, as well as internal players. It focuses on shorter timeframes. I always think about what my mom taught me is if your goal is too big, it's tough to see the intermediate steps. Well, mini-campaigns are the intermediate steps. Those are more easily defined. It gives specific objectives, builds out case more easily, creates internal ownership and finally bridges gaps in time for donors, for internal leadership, for planning that can all be accomplished by looking at campaigns and fundraising a little bit differently. So just a different view of how we can fundraise and use campaigns to our advantage, given increased focus to something important and always give us something to be building relationships for and with the community, for the betterment of our nonprofit.

Next time, we're going to talk about a different way of looking at campaign council that we at Hallett Philanthropy are endorsing that reduces cost and provides a much better ROI for the client, which is at the end of the day, all that counts. As always, I want to remind you to check out the blogs on hallettphilanthropy.com, or if you want to send me an email that's reeks@hallettphilanthropy.com if you disagree with me on something, or if you have some subject, you'd like me to cover that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. 

I conclude this week, as I do every podcast, with an old Gaelic saying, “Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened.” In a nonprofit work, where people who make things happen, we work with people who are just like us, who make things happen through our organizations, for people who are wondering what happened. I don't know a better way to spend a career. I don't know how I could be more happy, pleased or content knowing that the clients that I'm blessed to work with are really changing lives. And I'm glad to be a very, very, very, very, very small part of that endeavor. And I hope you know, that your role is much larger and is more important, but just as effective and hope you feel as good about it as I do.

We'll see you next time on the fourth and final part when it comes to Campaigns here on “Around with Randall” and as always, don't forget, make it a great day.