In this Issue:

• My Heart is in the Work Part One
• Developing the Development Staff
• Meet Your Match! Spur Annual Fund Growth with a Matching Challenge
• Campaign SOS: An Interview with Anne Berry, Part Two
• Development Job Opportunities
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Development Job Opportunities

Through William Spelman Executive Search, the following development positions are available:

• Catholic University of America, Washington DC; Director Annual Fund
• Dean College, Franklin, MA; Vice President for Institutional Advancement

For more information, please visit the William Spelman Executive Search website.

Staff Development on a Smaller Scale

Dartmouth’s program (see article at right) is organized to meet the needs of more than 150 staff working on a $2.3 billion campaign, but staff development programs have a place in programs of every size. Use the following tips to design a staff development strategy that fits your circumstances.

Make it a multi-departmental effort. Convene a planning group with representatives from different departments.

Conduct an assessment. A quick and simple survey of staff will tell you what topics will be most valued.

Check with Your Human Resources Office. Your HR department may be able to provide some basic sessions on organizational development, management, and other broad-based skill building topics.

Look for internal experts. Identify the strong suits of senior leaders and other staff members and invite them to conduct workshops. For colleges and universities, faculty may be tapped to present on particular topics.

Pack a lunch. Provide drinks, dessert, and a speaker and invite participants to bring brown bags to lunchtime sessions.

Farm it out. Bring in outside speakers and workshop facilitators when needed. Especially when several staff members have similar professional development needs, outsourcing the creation of a customized program at your site can be a cost-effective and timesaving alternative to sending the employees to external workshops.

Band together. Collaborate with a consortium of similar organizations to share expenses and create a larger audience for special programs with hired presenters.

For more information on staff development assessments or customized workshops, contact The Woolbright Group at info@woolbrightgroup.com or 585.787.0325.

My Heart is in the Work (so said Andrew Carnegie)

Part One: Creating the Environment for Developing Trustees as Solicitors

By Mary Kay Poppenberg, Principal

How does a chief development officer convey the message to Trustees that fundraising is an important role that they play in the financial and relationship life of a nonprofit institution? The message, in reality, is in the process, and convincing Trustees to buy into their roles as solicitors starts very early in a fundraising timeline. Before talking about timing, let’s go back to basics.

Why are Trustees among the best solicitors for your institution? First and most importantly, they are the closest constituency to your university, social service agency, or cultural organization. Your Trustees understand your organization’s mission and priorities; have a passion for the place; and ideally, are committed financially, philosophically, and emotionally. In fact, when your president asks the Trustees if your institution is their #1 priority, especially when entering campaign mode, the response needs to be emphatically, “yes.”

How do you develop the environment for educating Trustees about their role in fundraising solicitations? Here’s where that timeline kicks in. Let’s assume you are preparing for a campaign or fundraising for a special project. Or perhaps you need to step back further and jump start a lagging or paralyzed annual fund. You can select from a variety of strategies; just choose the one that best suits your institution and your timeline.

If you have a little breathing room, handpick (at the invitation of your president or development committee chair) a few Trustees who match the criteria above. Be certain that they will be among the first major donors to your project. Ask them to form a small task group to begin developing a fundraising strategy. You will meticulously staff them.

Why take this intermediary step? The task group can help you sell the strategy and the ensuing solicitation involvement to a larger group of Trustees, starting with the Development or Campaign Committee. The task group can also do an initial review of your draft case statement --and be among the first Trustees or potential donors interviewed during a feasibility study. With early involvement, it is likely that they will vocally support your fundraising project and make the first major gifts.

In the next issue, we’ll discuss developing and executing a solicitation-training program for your Trustees and major donors.

Developing the Development Staff

By Katharine Fisher Britton, Associate Director, Professional Development, Dartmouth College Development Office

Staff development programs should address the needs of the organization. When Dartmouth College’s Development and Alumni Relations office began to think about launching a campaign several years ago, leadership determined that for the two divisions to work most effectively together, they needed to identify shared values. A consultant worked with the two divisions, and from a series of departmental meetings and large, “town meeting” type gatherings that she led, our core values program emerged. We currently have three core values: Teamwork, Results Orientation, and Donor Focus, and nine defining principles (visit www.dartmouth.edu/~rpd for complete list). We offer workshops on many of these topics during which participants have the opportunity to define the values and to discuss how they can operationalize them. Workshop participants also get anonymous feedback reports from co-workers on their performance as it relates to the core value being discussed.

As the campaign began to take shape and additional staff was hired, we began to offer classes on fund raising Dartmouth-style. Our Vice President, Associate Vice President, and department directors taught sessions on how to plan a visit, make a visit, and answer those questions on a visit that make field officers break into a cold sweat.

Now that we’ve entered the public phase, our training sessions tend to focus on how to communicate effectively about our campaign priorities. Deans and directors from across the institution discuss how the priorities will add value, and answer questions about case, need, and outcome. We run week-long, mini-conferences four times per year, when our field staff stays off the road and our regional staff comes to Hanover; for these weeks, our staff immerses itself in the content of the Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience.

Successful solicitations and stewardship require good writing skills, so we have organized a writing curriculum. In the past few months we have offered classes in letter writing, editing and being edited, choosing the right medium for your message and audience, and proposal writing.

There is always more to be done than time in which to do it, so we strive to ensure that we make the best use of the time our staff does spend in training sessions and that the training meets the needs of the organization.

Be sure to read our companion article: Staff Development on a Smaller Scale

Meet Your Match! Spur Annual Fund Growth with a Matching Challenge

Facing a $2 million Annual Fund goal for FY 2005 – an increase of 11% from the prior year – the Museum of Science in Boston needed to expand enrollment in its gift society, the Discoverers, and attract new patron level donors. To help meet the goal, three board members offered to contribute $50,000 each to match new and increased patron level gifts. The outcome? The Museum earned more than $300,000 in new revenue, 17% of Discoverers increased their contributions by one or more gift society levels, and 36 new donors joined the Discoverers!

As the Museum’s example illustrates, a matching challenge can be a catalyst for new revenue and supporters. Challenges not only motivate donors and volunteers, but also rally and unify staff in support of an ambitious goal.

Follow these steps to create your own success story:

Define your objective. Do you want to attract new donors? Do you want to encourage increased contributions? Do you want to focus on a particular group like your board, volunteers, or staff? Take into account where you will get the greatest impact and what audience will be most receptive to a challenge. Once you have a target area identified, quantify it. What specific, measurable outcome are you seeking?

Create the rules. How will the challenge be earned? You could establish a dollar for dollar match, a ratio match (e.g. a $2 match for every $1 contributed), or a flat match (e.g. $500 for each new gift society member). Will the challenge be built around individual giving (e.g. matching increased gifts) or collective action (e.g. a match earned when 100% of board members contribute).

Secure your challenger(s). With your goal and structure in place, you are ready to solicit your prospective challengers. Look for major donors, often board members, who would be willing to increase their support significantly in order to achieve even greater growth in annual giving for your organization.

Tell the world! Market the challenge in a high profile way. Give it a name and identity. The Museum of Science printed specialized reply forms for the “New Heights Challenge” described above and carried the message through all of its appeals in print, by email, on the phone, and in person with donors.

Highlight momentum and celebrate success. It is human nature to want to be a part of a winning effort. Report regularly on your progress to build a growing sense of likely success. And, when success comes, announce it! Recognize and thank your challengers and challenges (respecting any requests for anonymity, of course.)

Make it a multi-year effort. To avoid one-year ‘blips’ in the Annual Fund, line up challenges for three or more consecutive years. Layer your challenge strategy over time to make sure the growth you attain can be sustained.

Need help with your Annual Fund? Contact The Woolbright Group at info@woolbrightgroup.com or 585.787.0325.

Campaign SOS: An Interview with Anne Berry

Part Two

Anne Berry has more than 25 years of experience in development including positions at Saint Michael’s College, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Hospital, Tulane University, and Franklin and Marshall College. She is currently the Vice President for Advancement at Lebanon Valley College and Principal in The Woolbright Group.

In February, The Woolbright Group spoke with Anne about the key ingredients for campaign success and how to identify and salvage a floundering campaign. Here is the conclusion of our interview with Anne:

WG: How important is retention of the CEO during a campaign?

AB: Losing a CEO during a campaign is not always catastrophic. It’s all a matter of why and how the CEO leaves, and how the board and potential donors view that departure. Even the departure of a beloved CEO has a bright side: the arrival of a new leader is a terrific opportunity to get in front of donors and prospective donors again for a personal introduction. A campaign often appears to quiet down during times of transition; that quiet period can be a good chance for the staff to catch their breath, prepare a transition plan, and then re-introduce the organization to potential donors as the new CEO is introduced. It’s important to remember that donors and potential donors have a relationship with the organization, and that relationship usually transcends any one CEO.

WG: What organizational structure works best for a campaign?

AB: The campaign structure should support the campaign goals. That means that there is a volunteer team working on each of the critical goal segments, coordinated then by the staff and the top campaign volunteers.

For example, if an organization has regional priorities or programs, it may make sense to have regional campaigns, with volunteers from each of the regions. At a college with strong class identity, volunteers may be grouped by class decade. Other campaigns organize around specific groups of prospective donors based on their gift capacity.

Usually a small top group of volunteers is engaged to work with the prospective donors with the greatest financial capacity. That group is especially busy at the very beginning of a campaign, when it is important to solicit the largest gifts to help set the goal and demonstrate significant support for the campaign. Oftentimes this group disbands about mid-way through the campaign, as the next level of volunteers takes over to work with the next level of prospective donors.

Some organizations may have the staff capacity to manage multiple levels of volunteers. Others may need to sequence the campaign because of limited staffing.

WG: How do you know when your campaign structure needs a change?

AB: You know your structure is a problem when volunteers don’t do their work or complain that they’re not being well supported.

WG: What other factors contribute to a floundering campaign?

AB: Staff support is key, and at times, campaigns don’t work because staff isn’t managing the campaign well. High turnover or long-term vacancies in key staff positions, lack of a coherent campaign plan, and complaints by volunteers or the CEO can be signs that the staff leadership is in question. In that case, it can take an outside evaluator, a campaign consultant, to see clearly through all of the issues and help put the campaign back on track.

WG: What should an organization do to set the staff leadership up for success?

AB: Finding and keeping key staff members requires competitive compensation, a supportive CEO and board, a clear set of organizational priorities, and budget resources to run a campaign. Obviously, the person who directs the campaign is the top priority, so that position should be filled first. Then, that person needs to be able to amass the staff, budget and CEO/board assistance to advance the campaign.

Need help with your campaign? Contact The Woolbright Group at info@woolbrightgroup.com or 585.787.0325.