My guest, Amy Eisenstein, a fundraising consultant, author, and speaker, shares her expertise on why you SHOULD consider a capital campaign during uncertain times.
Amy explains that a capital campaign is a focused fundraising effort to raise a significant amount of money for a specific project or initiative, and it’s crucial for nonprofits to achieve their long-term goals and expand their impact. She then goes on to explain that launching a capital campaign during economic uncertainty, like the current pandemic, may seem counterintuitive, but it can actually be a strategic move. Amy explains how nonprofits can use this time to build stronger relationships with donors and demonstrate their resilience.
To learn more about capital campaigns and how to launch one for your nonprofit, visit the Capital Campaign Pro website: https://capitalcampaignpro.com/
“When there’s a will, there’s a way.” – Amy
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:07
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners! Rhea Wong is with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today, I am so excited because we were talking to my friend and guest Amy Eisenstein about whether should you do a capital campaign in a down economy. I have so many questions.
RHEA WONG 00:25
But before we jump in, for those of you who don’t know, Amy. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Capital Campaign Pro. She is a co-host of All About Capital Campaigns podcast. She is a keynote speaker, author, and podcast guest, as you can see, and also a prolific YouTuber, which is how I first found out about her. So welcome to the show, Amy,
AMY EISENSTEIN 00:46
Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here.
RHEA WONG 00:50
So before we jump into everything about capital campaigns because I personally have so many questions, can you give us a little tour of life of Amy? How did you get started in nonprofits and become the guru that you are today? Because you’re, for sure, one of the go-to folks that people talk about all the time.
AMY EISENSTEIN 01:05
Thank you. You are too kind. I started my nonprofit journey, I think the same as everybody else. I fell into fundraising. And I spent the first half of my career as a development director first at a domestic violence shelter. And then at a small organization, again, at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. And I learned so much during my time as a front-line fundraiser, as we all do, doing a little bit of everything.
AMY EISENSTEIN 01:36
And then ultimately, I decided that it was in my best interest to put my hat in the consulting ring. And so for the second half of my career, I’ve been working with a wide variety of organizations, which has been such a blessing for me, just helping so many organizations, learning about them, and meeting so many interesting people along the way. And now, I’m five years into Capital Campaign Pro. I’m super excited to be here.
RHEA WONG 02:02
Thanks so much. And I love that you like all of us are accidental fundraisers and we all fall into this work. So for those of us who are very new to the space, can you give us a definition of the distinction between a capital campaign versus another fundraising that you might say it annual appeal or your general operating?
AMY EISENSTEIN 02:24
Sure! Absolutely. Capital Campaigns are once-in-a-while campaigns, and they are employed when you really want to take your organization to the next level of program or service. And so often there is a building involved, but certainly not always. But capital campaigns should probably have been named capacity-building campaigns because they really build the capacity of an organization, and they are multi-year efforts. So they’re different from your annual fundraising because they focus on long-term projects, and they give your organization a boost.
RHEA WONG 03:06
So aside from buildings, which I know is a typical capital campaign project, what other kinds of things might people raise capital campaigns for?
AMY EISENSTEIN 03:16
Yeah! So often, as a component, there is a startup pro component. There might be a teacher recruitment and retention and training fund. There’s getting a program off the ground. So there are new co-program components, and there might be a technology component. So you might be rewiring for the 21st century. There is sometimes organizations go through rebranding, and that’s a kind of capital campaign. They’re preparing for the next iteration of themselves. There are all sorts of things, endowments are often components, of course, they should be one of many components, of equipment, there are lots of things you can raise money for during a capital campaign.
RHEA WONG 04L03
Got it. So I’m just putting myself in the shoes of the nonprofit executive and thinking, Amy, that sounds great. But if I’m already challenged with raising way annual funding, how can I even think about a capital campaign and not cannibalize my existing donors?
AMY EISENSTEIN 04:21
Yeah! That is a great question. Generally, a capital campaign is born out in a couple of ways. One is a strategic planning process where the organization makes a decision that they really want to grow significantly in the next couple of years and serve their community in a more robust and significant way. And that’s one way. Another way often is that you have outgrown your space or you have a long waiting list or there’s a new type of program or service that you can provide to get to your mission more effectively, more efficiently. And so what happens is organizations have a huge vision.
AMY EISENSTEIN 05:03
You can’t have a capital campaign without a big vision. And so what you’re talking to donors about is supporting this one-time need that’s going to serve you long-term into the future. And you’re asking them for a special gift over and above their annual support. Because of course, you need to continue and maintain your annual programming, your operating programming, and funds. And so you really do tell each and every donor that you want first, you need their annual fun gift, your operating gift, the regular gift that they give you.
AMY EISENSTEIN 05:40
And you’re asking them for a one-time special gift over and above that. And often capital campaign gifts, especially big ones, don’t come from checkbook giving. People don’t write checks for these types of gifts, which is often the case with annual fun gifts. Capital Campaign gifts often come from assets, so from stock or retirement funds or another type of assets. And so it’s a different way to think about giving. We asked for multi-year gifts. It’s a multi-year campaign.
RHEA WONG 06:16
And so what a capital campaign gift be different than what some people might call a major gift, or is it the same thing?
AMY EISENSTEIN 06:24
It is the same thing. For a capital campaign, you are soliciting essentially major gifts. So major gifts can either be directed towards capital fund or capital campaign type needs or annual needs. So you can use the major gift term as a funny thing. In capital campaigns, we talk about leadership-level gifts, as the biggest gifts. We talk about major gifts as the mid-level campaign gifts, and then the base of support as the bottom-of-pyramid gifts.
AMY EISENSTEIN 07:01
I like to look at the term major gift and say whose perspective are we looking at this from? Is it major for the organization? Is it major from the perspective of the donor? Because those could be two very different size gifts. Everybody in your capital campaign should be giving a major gift for them for their own personal budget. Where it falls in your campaign pyramid is another story.
RHEA WONG 07:24
That’s so interesting. Okay, let’s jump into the juice of it. Right now, it is early March 2023. And I think people are nervous about the economy. There are some jitters. There’s a lot of static in the air about a recession. The stock market has been a little bit volatile, to say nothing of the crypto market and other things. And yet, you have said that this is actually a great time to plan a capital campaign. So tell me more, Amy.
AMY EISENSTEIN 08:00
Yes! There are a couple of reasons that I think now is a great time to start planning a capital campaign. One is, as I said, campaigns are multi-year efforts. And they span to three or four or sometimes more years. And in the history of this country, I think in the last 50 years, only one recession has lasted longer than 12 months. In most recessions, consecutive months of a down economy are shorter than a year. And so the reality is that the economy goes up and the economy goes down.
AMY EISENSTEIN 08:39
And today, if you read the headlines, the people out there would say that the job market is strong. This indicates a good economy. This indicates we’re rebounding and other things. I read the other half of the headlines, and gloom and doom. And so truthfully, the economy will go up and down during the course of your campaign. And the quiet phase, which is where you’re raising the bulk of your dollars often lasts from one to two years. And so there will be good times and bad times likely during the course of that fundraising.
AMY EISENSTEIN 09:18
And so there are plenty of strategies that we have to talk to donors when they’re worried about the economy or/and when they’re not. And the reality is that your need, as an organization, does not go away simply because the economy is in a downturn. In fact, for many organizations, social service organizations, and others, the need actually increases. So it’s a great time to do a campaign because everybody gets that you need the funds and you need to provide the services.
AMY EISENSTEIN 09:51
The reality is that there’s never a perfect time to do a campaign and it’s always a good time to do a campaign. At the beginning of the pandemic, so many organizations decided to hit the brakes and not do their campaign. The ones that were brave enough to move ahead at the beginning of the pandemic, they’re finished with their campaigns. The ones that hit the brakes are just getting started. And now they’re worried about the economy. There’s always some reason to slow down. There’s a war or a political election or something going on. But if you have a vision, and you have a plan, go for it.
RHEA WONG 10:29
Let’s talk about that. Because I actually think that’s such an interesting perspective from an internal point of view. So I was an ED during the 2008-2009 downturn, which was so fun. But it was really very loud voices on my board that was opposed to being, we weren’t doing a capital campaign, but they were advising a whole back, cut the budget and all the things. And so I’m wondering what kind of work might ED or DOD have to do internally to get the board on board?
AMY EISENSTEIN 11:02
Yeah! I think there are a lot of things. And it is important to get your board on board, right? If they’re not on board, if they’re resistant, if they’re whispering in the community, this is a bad time or a bad idea, it is going to be problematic for the organization. So you need the board members to buy in. So I think reminding them, first of all, that the need has not gone away, that the vision and the mission are stronger than ever, and maybe the need has even increased depending on what your organization does.
AMY EISENSTEIN 11:38
And that not every donor during a downturn is impacted by that downturn. In fact, when we saw all the downturns or the panic from the pandemic, anybody who sold medical supplies was doing really well, or cleaning supplies, right? Their portfolios were going through the roof. And so truthfully, in any downturn, some people are doing well and others are not. And then it ebbs and flows. And so I think it’s a matter of talking to your donors. And if they are not able to make a big commitment at that moment, ask, can we come back in six months? We’ll still be raising money, or what can you do now?
AMY EISENSTEIN 12:24
And can we come back and revisit the topic when the stock market’s stronger? Or when you’re feeling a little better about them? There are tons of strategies. And I think if the board cannot get on board, then we have to ask them if this is the right board for you at this moment. Because this is the direction that the organization is moving. Now, if you can’t get any of your board members on board, then you have to wonder if maybe you’re not going in the right direction. But if the needs are strong enough, the board members will come along because when there’s a will, there’s a way.
RHEA WONG 12:56
So let’s take a step back here and talk about what the process looks like. Because for those of us who are not familiar with capital campaigns, we might be a little confused about them. What happens first, second, and third, as we’re thinking about a capital campaign?
AMY EISENSTEIN 13:09
First is figuring out what are the campaign objectives. Right? What do you need to raise the money for? Do you need a new building? Are you doing startup programs? Do you need more scholarships? Or what kind of funds do you need? What are you building literally or figuratively? And what is the vision? The next step would be putting a price tag on those. What is it cost to accomplish our big vision? And that’s your initial working goal for the campaign. And then really, it’s about drafting a case for support. And that does not mean a final case for support or a fancy brochure. That’s not what I’m talking about.
AMY EISENSTEIN 13:54
I’m talking about fleshing out the ideas in a word document. So I don’t want to mislead anybody or have anybody jumping the gun saying, Amy said, we need a fancy brochure to start our campaign. That is definitely not the case. So start by getting your ideas organized. And then it’s time for a feasibility study. That really is the next step in planning a successful and well-laid-out campaign because a good feasibility study tests your plan, your specific plan, and your initial goal. We call it a working with your key donors and supporters and building engagement and involvement and buy-in upfront before you ever ask for a gift. And really it sets up your campaign for success.
RHEA WONG 14:39
And then, after this feasibility study, you mentioned one or two years of the quiet period so what does that look like and what percentage of our goals should we raise in the quiet phase before it goes public?
AMY EISENSTEIN 14:56
Yeah! We say that you should raise approximately at least 75% of your goal in the quiet phase. But it depends, if you are an organization that has a very small donor base, like an independent school with only 100 families, you probably need to raise more than that in your quiet phase because you don’t have a huge base of support to go out to If on the other hand, you are a well-known animal shelter in your area, and you have lots and lots of donors, you might be able to get away with going public at 70%. I would never say 50%. But you want to raise the bulk of the money, at least 75% in most cases in the quiet phase. Now, in the quiet phase, you’re raising money from three groups of people. Number one, your board, every board member should be making their pledge and their gift commitment in the quiet phase.
AMY EISENSTEIN 15:53
Number two is your leadership-level gifts. So the donors at the top of your gift pyramid, honestly, 20 of them should get you to 50% of your goal. And the third group is any campaign volunteers that are not included in those first two groups. So they might not be a board member. And they’re not giving the biggest gifts to the campaign. But they are campaign volunteers. So that’s who you’re raising money from in the quiet phase. So those three groups should get you to 75% of your goal, your board, your leadership-level donors, and your campaign volunteers.
RHEA WONG 16:31
That’s really helpful. I’m going to ask the doom and gloom question, which is, what happens if you raise 70% In the quiet phase and you go public, and you don’t reach? Is it about expanding the time horizon? What happens?
AMY EISENSTEIN 16:48
So that is an excellent question. And at the end of your quiet phase, one of the reasons that the quiet phase is called the quiet phase is that you have not publicly announced a goal. Of course, you’ve shared it with the people that you’ve asked for gifts so far. And you may have shared your pay, we’re getting ready to do this big exciting thing. But you haven’t put $1 goal on your campaign publicly, there’s been no press release. There’s been no formal brochure. It just says coming soon.
AMY EISENSTEIN 17:21
And so at the end of your quiet phase, you do an assessment of the rest of your donor base to see what you think you can actually raise. And it’s an opportunity to adjust your goal up or down. Now I’ve seen it go both ways. If your quiet phase is very successful, and you get most of the gifts you’ve asked for, sometimes you get to your campaign goal right in the quiet phase. And so before you go public, you raise the goal, and you invite the community to participate.
AMY EISENSTEIN 17:52
Sometimes the opposite happens. And your quiet phase wasn’t as successful as you hoped. You didn’t get maybe some of the largest gifts you needed. And it’s an opportunity to scale back your project and your plans and reduce the goal. But in any case, you do an analysis of your community and your donor base and you set that goal so that you are successful. You’re right. You don’t want to come up short, but you do have an opportunity to adjust the goal. And we always aim big at the beginning and leave room to scale back. You should be asking and planning for your dream project. And then if you don’t make it or quite make it, you still have raised a ton of money and can do amazing things.
RHEA WONG 18:41
I love that. But if I’m sitting here listening to you and Amy, this sounds like a great idea. But what kind of infrastructure or staffing or even donor base might I need to even consider a capital campaign?
AMY EISENSTEIN 18:56
It’s different for every organization, of course. But we do encourage every organization to staff up for a campaign. Now sometimes that means at a very small organization, an administrative assistant to help keep things organized, to help schedule things, to help with the database, to help generate letters, to help plan meetings, and take some of the pressure off the executive director who’s doing the vast majority of the work. Sometimes, it’s a major gift officer too, but honestly, more often it means administrative help.
AMY EISENSTEIN 19:32
And it might mean an assistant director of some type. So really, I was just talking to an organization this morning and we were talking about what kind of staffing, do they need and she kept talking about an individual, a major gift officer, and they don’t have a major gift program. And so I said, no, the major gift officer is going to come in here and magically raise major gifts from no donor base.
AMY EISENSTEIN 19:59
So you have a dynamic Executive Director, let’s get her out in front of the donors and get her some more support and take some things off her plate so that she can be the face of the campaign. So every organization needs something different in terms of getting ready for a campaign and infrastructure, what’s an opportunity to look at your database and your systems to see if you can use the ones you have a campaign for? As I said, it’s for capacity building. And so let’s use the opportunity to improve the capacity of the organization, whether it’s through staff or systems or consulting, usually all of the above.
RHEA WONG 20:10
So to go to the example that you just cited about the organization that doesn’t have a donor base or a major gift program. Is that the right time to think about a capital campaign? Because I presume that the leadership gifts are going to come from your existing donor base?
AMY EISENSTEIN 20:59
Yes, you’re right. If there’s no existing donor base, you’re not going to be ready for a campaign. You have to have some organizations come and say we don’t have much of a donor base. But it turns out that they do. So it’s all relative. Many organizations do not have what they would consider a major gift program.
AMY EISENSTEIN 21:19
And while it’s lovely to start a campaign from a place where you do have a robust annual major gift program, I think that’s the exception, not the rule. So most organizations use a campaign to build the capacity of their major gifts program. So they may have donors giving $1,000 a year, or maybe a few giving $5000 or $10,000 a year, but a campaign is really an opportunity to grow that in a significant and serious way.
RHEA WONG 21:52
I love that. That’s such an interesting idea. And then just a backup, I think we might have assumed that folks know the details, but most likely, and correct me if I’m wrong, the gifts that you’re getting in a capital campaign or from individuals and maybe sometimes foundations, but not our corporate potential.
AMY EISENSTEIN 22:14
And yeah, absolutely! Foundations, depending on the organization, foundations, and corporations play a bigger or smaller role. In a campaign, many organizations that we work with do have very significant leadership-level gifts coming in from foundations. And so don’t discount that, of course, we like to see a lot of gifts from individuals too. But it just depends on the organization’s history with foundations and individuals, and what their donor makeup is.
RHEA WONG 22:47
Got it. That’s helpful. So talk to me a little bit about what the role of a campaign consultant might be in this. Because I think a lot of us think immediately of we need to hire a consultant if we’re gonna work on this campaign. Is it true and what do capital consultants do?
AMY EISENSTEIN 23:05
Excellent question! Capital campaign consultants come in all stripes and varieties, right? All the way from there are a few capital campaign consultants that will actually embed a staff member in your organization. That’s hugely expensive. And sometimes it’s effective, and the right direction, sort of at the other end of the spec, they’re giving advice and everything in between, right?
AMY EISENSTEIN 23:36
So you have to figure out what the needs are of your team, and what you are going to thrive and flourish with. Honestly, I think that everybody doing, the campaign needs outside expertise for a variety of reasons. One is the vast majority of staff and board members have not been through multiple campaigns from start to finish, right? You may have a staff member who’s been around for the beginning of a campaign or the end of the campaign, or maybe they’ve been through one campaign, but the consultant was driving the strategy.
AMY EISENSTEIN 24:14
So they don’t really know how to put together the strategy of a campaign. So unless you have somebody who’s been through multiple campaigns from start to finish, you need expertise in terms of strategy. At Capital Campaign Pro, we provide a support system for a leadership team to get the expertise, advice, guidance, strategy, and accountability, that they need to be successful. And I always recommend that people should interview three campaign consultants. They should interview a really big firm, solopreneur, and us and just see what feels to be the right amount. of support and service for your particular needs.
RHEA WONG 25:04
That’s really helpful. And I agree with you about that. You have to pay for the expertise. So one question that’s occurring to me is, as an executive director going through a capital campaign, what sort of time commitment are we talking about here? Because in addition to regular Executive Director duties, and maybe participating in regular fundraising, it feels like this is a big project that your ED should really be focused on.
AMY EISENSTEIN 25:32
Yeah, absolutely! Campaigns are successful when executive directors are involved. And they need to be involved with the strategy in the planning with the campaign consultants, and they need to be involved with the relationship building and the solicitation of the key donors. And it does take up time. So I do recommend when you’re thinking about adding staff, to think about what duties the executive director is going to be able to outsource whether to others, or delegate to other staff, to actually outsource hiring them and an assistant of whether it’s a programmatic assistant or an administrative assistant, or a development assistant, whatever structure they need to free up some of their time because it’s true.
AMY EISENSTEIN 26:26
Campaigns do take a significant amount of amounts of time and attention. And the way we justify it is if you are going to raise five times, 10 times, to 40 times more than you normally raise on an annual basis, you’re going to have to put some resources and some staff time behind it. It doesn’t magically happen. It’s not that an organization that raises a million annually or half a million annually, is going to magically be able to raise 10 times that just because they go into a capital campaign, There is staffing up that’s involved.
AMY EISENSTEIN 27:03
There’s no development director or Executive Director prior to a campaign that is sitting around twiddling their thumbs. And but the good news is that campaigns actually are the most effective type of fundraising. On average, it could be 10% to raise $1.10 to raise $1 in a capital campaign. And it is one of the most cost-effective types of fundraising even after you’ve staffed up and hired a consultant and paid for systems. And so it really is an opportunity to build your team.
RHEA WONG 27:39
That’s really interesting to think about. Okay, we have a question coming in. Before we get to that last question for me, and you’ve spoken to it, it’d be nice to put a bow on it. What are some of the common misconceptions that people have about capital campaigns?
AMY EISENSTEIN 27:53
Yeah! That is a great question. I think one of the things we see often is that gifts will come in evenly. And so if you want to raise a million dollars, you just need ten $100,000 gifts or $100,000 gifts. And it’s just not the way money comes in. And it’s shockingly hard to raise $110,000 in gifts, It’s harder than you’d think. And there is a math and science to campaigns. And once you know it, they’re surprisingly simple, maybe not easy, but simple to understand.
AMY EISENSTEIN 28:33
But when organizations think we can just do this. Let’s just do it with our team. We can make it up as we go. They’re really how hard can this be. That’s when we see organizations that really do well for about 50% of their goal, and then they get stuck. And so it breaks my heart to see an organization that doesn’t set up a campaign correctly from the beginning, because they make very basic and simple mistakes that are hard to correct after the fact but easy to prevent, at the beginning. Does that make sense?
RHEA WONG 29:08
Yeah! So what I’m hearing is it’s about the planning phase, so you make sure that you avoid some of the mistakes. And I’m just wondering, I’m wondering about the math, Amy. Is it an 80/20 Pareto Principle math equation?
AMY EISENSTEIN 29:22
Part of it, it is. Sometimes people will come to us and say if we raise this many gifts, we want to raise a million dollars. And like I said, we need 1000 gifts of, I don’t know what the math is right? $10,000 or whatever it is. And I’ll say let’s look in your donor database. You don’t have $10,000 donors. You don’t have 1000 donors in your database. So the math doesn’t work. You need 20 to 30 donors at this level and then 100 donors at that level. And then the math works because you have 300 donors in your database or 500 donors and your database.
AMY EISENSTEIN 30:00
But they’ll come to us and say they’ve done the campaign math wrong. And ultimately, they’ll say we don’t have a million-dollar donor. And so we need a lot more of these smaller gifts. And then we’ll look in their database. And I’ll say, you don’t even have that many donors to give that many gifts. So you can’t raise that amount, if you don’t have a big gift at the top or several big gifts at the top. So there is a method to the madness. And I think that people that try and do it on their own or ignore those principles, get stuck halfway through.
RHEA WONG 30:37
And it also points to one of the common misconceptions that drive me crazy, if we hire someone, if we hire a development director, if we hire Amy, magical money will just fall out of the sky and everything just happens. And I think it’s very unfair, particularly for development people who are hired because there are unrealistic expectations. But I think it’s also infuriating because it outsources what I think it’s a fundamental role of leadership, which is you have to fundraise. And hiring a development director doesn’t mean that you get to not fundraise. In fact, it means that you’re probably fundraising more because if you have someone who’s actually organizing, you have the meetings.
AMY EISENSTEIN 31:20
Yes, I think that’s an excellent point.
RHEA WONG 31:23
And the other misconceptions that we should be aware of?
AMY EISENSTEIN 31:25
I think a very common misconception that we see is that an anniversary is a great time to do a campaign or that a campaign should be structured around an anniversary. So people will come to us and say it’s our 25th anniversary or our 50th anniversary of the organization or the 100th anniversary, so we should do a campaign. And what makes it worse, actually is setting the goal based on that anniversary. So it’s our 25th anniversary, so we want to raise $25 million. It’s our 50th anniversary, so we want to raise 50 million dollars. Two problems with that.
AMY EISENSTEIN 32:00
Number one, campaigns look forward, and anniversaries look backward. So an anniversary is a great opportunity to celebrate and build community recognition, and momentum. But it’s not motivating in terms of donors really digging deep because a campaign is about what are you going to do in the next 20 years. Not what did you do for the past 50 years? So that’s problem number one.
AMY EISENSTEIN 32:26
Number two, setting your dollar goal based on your anniversary year, right? 50th anniversary, $50 million campaign. It has nothing to do with what your needs are. And you have to connect the dollar goal with your needs and your campaign objectives. So the donors understand what they’re giving to support. A random arbitrary goal of $50 million for your 50th anniversary is a myth.
RHEA WONG 32:53
Yeah! That’s really helpful because I have seen that and it does feel arbitrary. I’m like, why 50? What are you going to do with it? Alright, last question. And then I promise we’ll get to Jason’s question. Working with executive directors, I know that people can be very nervous about solicitation, and it feels like the bigger the number, the more nervous. Is a capital campaign consultant help with the actual solicitation process or some coaching? Because, again, having flubbed solicitations myself, I know that nerves can get the better of you for sure.
AMY EISENSTEIN 33:27
So yes, of course, a good capital campaign consultant will help you prepare and practice for solicitations. At Capital Campaign Pro, we believe that you should be practicing those solicitations long before the solicitation. And so we have actually a different model of feasibility study where the leaders of the nonprofit interview their donors during the feasibility study, instead of consultants. And that opportunity to have an authentic strategic conversation with your donors actually tees up the solicitation.
AMY EISENSTEIN 34:08
So you’re actually nervous about the pre-ask conversation. But by the time you get to the actual ask, you’re much more comfortable because you’ve already strengthened the relationship with your donor. So you should be having conversations with donors about the project long before you actually ask them for money. And that takes some of the nervousness away. And of course, you should be trained by your consultant and prepared adequately to go into that ask for sure.
RHEA WONG 34:41
We should have a whole other podcast episode about solicitation and nerves. But Jason, you have a really excellent question. Do you want to jump in here and ask your question?
JASON 34:49
Sure! Thank you so much for sharing all of this incredible information. The question I had was related to your mentioned individual donor foundations as pathways to the capital campaign, and I was wondering if you could also speak to public dollars, whether it’s from a city or state, the best way to go about them how to fold them into the larger capital campaign to breed success?
AMY EISENSTEIN 35:10
Yeah, absolutely! State or federal government money, whether it is states, federal, or local, is often an important component of a capital campaign. So it varies widely from organization to organization. If you have an opportunity to get state, local or federal funding to contribute to your project, then you should absolutely do that. There’s no reason that you wouldn’t do that whether or not you’re counting it towards your philanthropic goal, it is a different question.
AMY EISENSTEIN 35:41
But it’s a component of your project. And often the philanthropic goal of the campaign does not match the project cost. So those are two separate things. You might see a hospital renovation or a new wing, and the hospital will maybe it’s a $50 million project, but the philanthropic raise is $20 million out of the 50 million. And there’s a combination of government money, of hospital funding, of mortgage, or financing, I should say. So there are a lot of ways to fund a project. And philanthropy is one of them. And that’s what we’ve been mostly talking about.
RHEA WONG 36:22
On the other side of the raise, Amy, could you speak a little bit about what stewardship looks like? Because once we get the money in the door, everyone’s happy. What are some of the ways that you’ve seen really good and creative stewardship after the fact?
AMY EISENSTEIN 36:41
Yeah! I think good stewardship is critical. Stewardship comes in two components. One is ensuring that the donor feels thanked and the second part is understanding what they contributed. And the impact that they had. A simple thank you letter after the fact may not, even though you thank the donor, they may not feel thanked. So what are you going to do to ensure that they understand that the organization appreciates their contribution and their partnership?
AMY EISENSTEIN 37:16
And what are you going to do to ensure that they really understand the difference that they made, because those two things will impact whether or not they give again in the future, and you’re really looking for a lifelong donor? Once your campaign is complete, it’s not like your needs go away. You actually probably have bigger annual fund needs now because you have more programs and services. You have more offerings, and you’re going to have additional needs down the road. This should not be seen as the last and final gift of a donor. It should be seen as the middle one in their journey with you.
RHEA WONG 37:57
And what about things like naming opportunities? Are those effective?
AMY EISENSTEIN 38:01
Yeah! So a lot of things about campaigns, naming opportunities, are effective in some campaigns and not as effective as you might think, in others. Many donors actually don’t care about naming opportunities or actually don’t want to have their name broadcast. And the truth is that naming opportunities in many communities are, I was gonna say, out of style. That’s not the language I was looking for, but our seen is as inappropriate now. As we’re looking to create more equitable communities, people are looking for different ways to recognize people differently for their contributions, financial and otherwise, towards efforts.
AMY EISENSTEIN 38:44
And for many organizations, people are not putting donor names up on walls and up on rooms any longer. They’re thinking more creatively about how to read people for their contributions, big and small, financial and nonfinancial to the campaign. So I think it’s there’s a trend towards creativity, and thinking out of the box, and sometimes it’s appropriate, and sometimes it’s not. So it really just depends on the culture of your organization and your community.
RHEA WONG 39:12
Are there any examples that you can think of that you feel like are have been really creative and effective stewardship projects or opportunities?
AMY EISENSTEIN 39:22
I think not using video and technology is a missed opportunity these days. And so whether you’re having clients think donors on video, or a virtual tour, or something pre-recorded or something live, there are lots of opportunities to engage donors, and even do something very personal on video. There are lots of companies that help you personalize videos in a very fast and effective way. That’s one thing I think every organization should be looking into. I think that’s the way people consume things these days.
AMY EISENSTEIN 39:58
In terms back to room naming for a minute, what I’ve seen is at a performing arts center, you might have a donor that instead of their name going on the wall, pick their favorite musician to highlight, and the musician’s name will go on the wall or same thing at an animal shelter. It’ll be the fluffy room or what’s your dog’s name? Rufus’ room or whatever it is, as opposed to the donor’s name. And there are “naming opportunities,” but it’s in the theme of the organization. And so as opposed to highlighting an actual individual, you’re highlighting something that’s specific to that organization.
RHEA WONG 40:37
That’s really helpful. Alright, Amy, thank you so much for joining us. Where can we find you if we want more information? And folks, you should hire Amy because she’s the best in the biz. So if we want to hire you, where could we find all the information about Amy Eisenstein?
AMY EISENSTEIN 40:51
Thank you. Just head to capitalcampaignpro.com. And you will find all sorts of free resources and goodies, and also an opportunity to learn about our model for supporting organizations and leadership teams through campaigns and a sign-up to talk to us for no obligation.
RHEA WONG 41:13
Awesome! And we will make sure to put all that info in the show notes for folks listening to the podcast. But until then, have a great week, everyone. Amy, thank you so much for joining us.
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