Winning the Game on Paper - An Episode on the Capital Campaign Preparation Phase

Welcome back for part 2 of our 4-part series on all things capital campaigns!  Last week, Andrew and Rhen explored feasibility studies.  This week, they're tackling the critical preparation phase—that crucial period between your feasibility study and your first campaign ask. 

Show Notes:

As Andrew emphasizes throughout this episode, the preparation phase is about winning the game on paper.  This is when your organization strategizes, prepares, and researches.  Andrew and Rhen walk through every strategic and administrative thing that needs to happen before you make your first public campaign ask.

Skip this phase, and you risk missing critical details, approaching donors unprepared, or worse! Like the feasibility study, this phase is an investment in your long-term success. Don't shortcut it—your campaign depends on getting this right.

To access Petrus's campaign preparation guide that Rhen mentions in the episode, please click HERE.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

00:59.66 Host Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Development Show. I'm Rhen Hoehn from Petrus. Joining me today, Andrew Robison. How's it going, Andrew?

01:07.22 AROB It's going great.

01:09.81 Host Excellent. Well, we're in the middle of our four-part series on capital campaigns, so we're going to dive into it. Last episode, number 180, we talked about the feasibility study, the importance of that, why you need one, what it does, how it prepares you and your constituency for a campaign. Today, let's talk about the pre-campaign planning preparation phase.

01:29.36 AROB Okay.

01:30.36 Host Let's just dive right in. What all needs to happen? So you've done a feasibility study. We've kind of got the green light that we're going to go ahead with a campaign of some sort. Before you go out and start making asks for the campaign, what needs to happen in the preparation phase?

01:45.27 AROB Yeah, so the preparation phase, to some extent, is either called or in your mind kind of blends right into the silent phase of the capital campaign, right? So what are you doing in the preparation silent phase?

02:00.07 AROB A lot of coaches, for example, college coaches will say, or any coach, we want to win the game on paper. Right. So this is the time that you are making your plan. You're strategizing around how are we going to be successful?

02:15.57 AROB You're making your timeline. You're developing your list of top prospects. You're making your gift chart. You're aligning your messaging with the results of the feasibility study.

02:27.02 AROB All of that is the preparation work so that you can win the campaign on paper. So it's important not to rush through this preparation phase and try to get as quickly as you can into sitting down and asking people for money.

02:45.56 AROB Because if you haven't prepared properly, either your donors are going to have questions that you're not ready to answer, and that's going to hurt your chances of securing gifts, or you're going to kind of run through people that you're asking for gifts and then stall out because you don't have a fully developed plan for where you're going in sequential order. So the preparation phase is critical for success.

03:15.88 AROB Just like the feasibility study was an investment in a successful campaign, I would say this preparation silent phase is also an investment ultimately in a successful campaign.

03:26.36 Host So what are some of the boxes that need to be checked during this phase or things that need to be put into place?

03:31.91 AROB So, number one, you want to make sure that your case for support is rock solid, right? So the feasibility study, we did a case for support, but we call that a preliminary case for support because some things based on feedback, based on your dollar goal, are going to fall out or they're going to change.

03:48.81 AROB And so before we start going out and asking for money, again, during this preparation phase is when we're making those adjustments or edits to our case for support. So case for support, sort of finalization or editing, is the first thing. What are we asking money for? Again, going back to those four questions.

04:10.65 AROB What's our problem? What's our proposed solution? What's the impact of that solution? And what's the cost of it? Sometimes during the feasibility study, people will be confused and we can't answer it readily with the documents or the materials that we have.

04:24.35 AROB So this is your chance to remove confusion, right? These are the things that people stumbled on. We need to figure out a different way to message that. So getting your message, meaning your case for support, done is one thing.

04:38.20 AROB That includes your campaign objectives, right? There's a phrase and I never remember it. I wish I could. Maybe you can help me out here. But it's when the ideas pass through your brain, leave your brain, pass through your mouth, and go to your pen and get written down on paper, that's when they're finalized, right? There actually is a quote somewhere along those lines. But the point of it is until you've written it down on paper, you've set your objectives, then your plans, your goals can all be a little bit flexible.

05:11.78 AROB We want to move past that point to where it's clear. We have clarity around what our goals are so that we can explain them appropriately.

05:18.01 Host And you're usually building out a pretty long, professional document moving into a campaign specifically.

05:23.45 AROB Correct.

05:26.32 Host Sometimes it's a little bit more, I don't know, homespun when you're in the feasibility study phase. But when you get to the campaign, it's usually like, I usually see like a 16-page full-color document outlining all these different pieces.

05:31.90 AROB Mm-hmm.

05:40.69 AROB Correct. What are you raising money for? What's your timeline? Who are your top prospects? What are some of the events that you're going to do? What's your budget? All of that gets developed into a campaign plan.

05:52.80 AROB So you're also starting to look at your data, right? So if you realize during the study, our database, our data is out of date, or we don't have enough records, then this is a time that you can really put some time and energy into reinforcing or augmenting your data before you start sending a lot more mailings, sending a lot more emails.

06:16.41 AROB And so cleaning up your data, cleaning up your database is a really helpful piece of this step as well.

06:23.96 Host Great. So you've got a campaign plan. You've got a case for support. You've got a clean database. What about personnel, staff, volunteers, council? Who are all the people involved when it comes to this phase?

06:35.78 AROB Yeah. So in a way, a campaign is like a road trip on a bus, right? And as Jim Collins used to say, you want to get the right people on the bus. So who are those right people? You want to have staff.

06:47.27 AROB Who's your point person? Who's your leader of this initiative? Who's the champion? And that kind of falls into two areas, I would say. Who's the face of the campaign?

07:00.06 AROB Oftentimes it's the director, whether that's the chaplain, the principal, the organization's executive director. But your face, and then you want to have the leader in terms of leading the plan.

07:13.31 AROB Usually that's a development director, a full-time fundraiser, who's your implementer, right? So you have your visionary and your implementer. So that's on the staff side.

07:25.06 AROB And then also, if you're going to need to recruit more solicitors, if you're going to recruit somebody to do your data, this is a good time to start looking at that. On the volunteer side, the people on the bus that we want are our campaign committee.

07:38.79 AROB So campaign committee are committed volunteers who are going to advocate for this. They're going to work on this. Not everybody on the campaign committee is going to be soliciting gifts because they're just not comfortable with that. They can't get around that, but there are other ways that they can help. So maybe they're helping with strategy. Maybe they're helping with research, but you want them involved on that committee. On the committee, you also do want people that are comfortable soliciting because that maximizes your major gift work team workforce, but it also, there are going to be people that we want to ask for gifts that are going to be much more motivated if that invitation to give comes from a peer or comes from a volunteer. And so we want to have people on that committee that are comfortable asking for gifts.

08:27.14 AROB Right people on the bus, staff in the right positions and volunteers, especially your capital campaign committee. Also, if you're doing a big building project, now's your time to, a lot of organizations we work with will also recruit a building committee, right? So the building committee might be three, maybe four individuals that have expertise in this area. They can help to guide the priest or the principal in making decisions about what they're building, interfacing with the contractors and all of that. But sometimes you don't want that to have to go through your campaign committee every time.

09:02.61 AROB So you will recruit a smaller building committee. So personnel, it's about staff and volunteers and having the right people in the right seats on the bus.

09:10.03 Host Got it. What is campaign counsel and does every campaign need it?

09:15.35 AROB Yeah. So campaign counsel would be hiring a professional fundraising firm to help guide your campaign efforts and to help give strategy, direction, and professional solicitors to your effort.

09:34.25 AROB So Petrus is a campaign firm or is a consulting firm. We do capital campaigns. And so if you hire campaign counsel and you hire Petrus, that's what we would come along and do. We'd help to develop that campaign plan that we talked about in the beginning.

09:48.37 AROB We'd help to identify through prospect research, through data research. We'd look at who are our top prospects, where do they fit on the gift calendar or the gift chart. We'd look at the results of the feasibility study and we'd create as much of a campaign plan as possible. And then as we start executing on that, then your campaign counsel is there to help to address problems as they come up or redirect the strategy if what we find is not working.

10:23.02 AROB And so that's where a professional who has done this before can bring a lot of value to it. A lot of priests, if they're running a campaign at their campus ministry or their parish, they're like, I've never done this before.

10:37.26 AROB I know how to get us started. And then they get started and then something happens, right? There's a new emergency that comes up that's like, right, how do we fit this in there? Or you have a donor that says, I'm not helping, who you expected to be your lead gift.

10:51.18 AROB So that's a prime opportunity to get really flustered and frustrated and say, ah, clearly we weren't meant to do this. We're shutting the whole thing down. If you have campaign counsel, then they can say, Father, this happens, right?

11:06.46 AROB Every project is going to have a wrinkle. It's like Muhammad Ali, right? Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth. Now we just have to reorient the plan or adjust our strategy. And so that's where campaign counsel can be really helpful.

11:20.54 AROB And then just as an extension of your staff, asking for gifts, sitting down with donors, cultivating them for gifts, helping on the stewardship side. There's a lot of value that comes through having campaign counsel.

11:34.51 Host We spent another moment there a few episodes back. We talked about this in a little bit of depth, but there's a difference between done-for-you campaigns and done-with-you. You want to break down what those are and what the pros and cons are of each?

11:51.47 AROB Yeah, totally. So fundraising firms that do capital campaigns typically fall into two different areas that you said. Done-for-you is we're going to hire this firm, they're going to come in, and they're going to take over all of it, and they're going to do this effort for us.

12:07.03 AROB They might call Father in for a couple of asks, might use the parish secretary to send letters, might ask the person that does donor research to help to identify and to do some database work, but other than that they're kind of doing it for you. This is best for organizations that are either very small and don't have staff that can help or for organizations that just don't want to get involved in the fundraising at all. Now, the risk of that is that sometimes your donors, especially your key personnel, your key supporters, they won't have relationships with the campaign counsel that they're willing to say yes to a gift if asked just from them.

12:53.16 AROB Or they're going to develop those relationships, then your fundraising firm is going to leave and you're not going to have those relationships with those donors long-term.

13:04.24 AROB So that's the risk, but that's the done-for-you. The done-with-you is, I would say, the camp that Petrus falls into. Again, we're a teach-to-fish organization. We want you, your staff, your volunteers to know more about this project afterwards than, or know more about how to do a project like this after than you did before.

13:22.99 AROB You know, I had a friend, Ryan. And Ryan did a capital campaign. He's a good fundraiser, but he'd never done a campaign before. And they brought in a firm. And I asked Ryan, how did it go? And he said, well, you know, it went okay. And I said, well, what does that mean?

13:36.22 Host Yeah.

13:37.98 AROB He said, well, you know, our goal is $3.5 million. They came in, they did the campaign. We raised $3.5 million. So, you know, I guess I'm happy about that. And I said, well, then why are you not more happy? And he said, Andrew,

13:49.48 AROB I, you know, this was a six or nine or 12 month project. I don't know anything about capital campaigns that I didn't know when we started. He said, my job was to sit over there and get coffee, send pledge reminders. And I didn't really get involved in it at all. And that was, you know, kind of a big disappointment for me.

14:07.39 AROB So a teach or a fundraise-with-you, a work-with-you approach means that we get everybody involved. We teach them. We help the relationships with the staff live with the donors.

14:22.10 AROB We help to train them and we sort of are partners in this versus we'll do it, you go sit over there.

14:31.92 Host Excellent. And we broke that down in a lot more detail back in episode 172. So if you want to hear more about the differences and styles there, and what the options are, go back and listen to that episode.

14:43.21 Host One thing I kind of jumped over, so we talked about the campaign plan, case for support, database, staffing, counsel. I jumped over a little bit, something that takes some time in this process, and that's developing all the internal documents.

14:58.15 AROB Okay.

14:58.21 Host And it's part of the campaign plan, right? But what all is needed, what needs to be thought through and developed and put into writing basically for campaign success.

15:06.63 AROB Yep. Yep. Great reminder.

15:08.31 Host Yeah.

15:08.63 AROB So policies and procedures are an important thing to start off, or to create on the front end of a campaign versus when you need them. So policies and procedures might be your gift acceptance policies, right? Are we doing three-year pledges? Are we doing five-year pledges?

15:24.43 AROB Are we counting gifts of stock? Are we counting planned gifts? You know, somebody has real estate, are we counting that towards the total? Is that 100% towards the total? Is it deferred? All of those things, gift acceptance policies will address on the front end.

15:40.31 AROB So then when those happen, you can respond immediately. Everybody's on the same page. You also want to develop your, you know, as part of that, I talked a lot about designing the case for support, but really you want to design the whole look, feel, everything of your campaign.

15:58.10 AROB So oftentimes this looks like a specific campaign name, campaign logo. It should fit within your brand, you know, meaning colors, fonts, but this is an opportunity for your campaign maybe to introduce, you know, a few new colors or a few new fonts, for example. So it matches with your brand or it just fits right in, it aligns with it. And then once you have that design look, then you can create your pledge forms, you know, the information on your website. And you can then turn that into other solicitation tools, such as your gift chart, your naming opportunities, proposal templates, all of that.

16:38.83 AROB That should all look and feel the same. And it starts with, on the front end, planning out what is the brand of your campaign. And how does that align with your overall organizational brand?

16:52.26 Host Excellent. Good. Anything else you want to say about campaign prep?

16:57.12 AROB Again, this is about winning it on paper, right? So don't rush through this. Don't feel like everybody's ready for me to call and ask them for a gift, so we got to skip over some of these things.

17:08.11 AROB You really want to be intentional about your messaging, your personnel, your plan, your data. All of the things that we talked about are important steps to get in place so that whenever you do start asking for gifts, then you can go full steam ahead into that and not have to break, pause to go back and do some of these other things.

17:32.46 Host Great. To help you with getting, you know, thinking about this campaign prep phase, if you're moving into a campaign for your organization, we do have a free little guide that's the top seven pitfalls to avoid when preparing for a campaign, during this preparation phase.

17:48.51 Host So if you go PetrusDevelopment.com slash 181, because this is episode 181 of the Petrus Development Show, PetrusDevelopment.com slash 181, you're going to be able to download that guide for free. So go and check that out.

18:00.97 Host And before we wrap up, a quick announcement. If you'd like to join us at one of our West Coast RAISE regional one-day workshops in November, you can still register for those. The registration closes on the 12th of November. And then those sessions are the following week. I want to say the dates. I should have looked. I think that's the 17th and 19th in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

18:22.49 Host So go take a look at petrusdevelopment.com slash RAISE.

18:22.75 AROB Yep. All right.

18:27.46 Host With that, we're going to wrap up with a quick game, if that's okay with you, Andrew.

18:31.01 AROB Let's do it.

18:31.97 Host Today is the day before Halloween. Again, I have my pumpkin mug. I feel like they missed a chance to make a tea mug with a little top of the pumpkin on the top, but it is what it is. So today we need to do a blind ranking, of course, of Halloween candies. I'm going to give you five Halloween candies. You need to give me a ranking one through five without knowing what comes next.

18:51.35 AROB Okay.

18:59.15 AROB Okay.

19:00.76 Host And I feel like we've had some easy blind ranks in the last few episodes. I tried to make this one a little bit more difficult, so we'll see.

19:06.94 AROB You think that meant easy? Oh, gosh.

19:08.74 Host Oh boy, yeah, we'll see what happens here. So we're going to move kind of quick, because I think we're kind of limited on time today.

19:11.02 AROB Okay.

19:14.79 Host So let's start with the first one here, which is candy corn. Where would you rank that with one being the best, five being the worst? You don't know what comes next. Candy corn. This could be a divisive one.

19:24.38 AROB Candy corn. Yes, very controversial. I'm going to go candy corn number one.

19:31.40 Host Wow.

19:31.49 AROB I love candy corn. And even the, they have candy corn and then they have, oh gosh, what are they? Like autumn blooms or something like that? They're like a little bit bigger version of candy corns.

19:44.62 Host Huh.

19:45.43 AROB Yeah. Those are, I love them. I think that, I was thinking about, I knew you'd say candy corn. I didn't know if you'd say it first. But there's nothing like other candy.

19:55.54 AROB I do have a sweet tooth. I like any other candy. I can eat candy corns till the cows come home. I mean, anything else I would get tired of. Candy corns, never get tired of.

20:05.89 Host I do enjoy them as well. I don't know if I'd put them number one, but I'd put them on the top half of my list, I would say.

20:10.38 AROB Now, if you have Werther's on there as well, I'm going to be in a real pickle, but...

20:10.65 Host Ooh. Yeah, we're going to see. I like the pumpkins, too. They're kind of bigger versions of candy corn.

20:16.80 AROB Yeah, that's what I mean.

20:17.60 Host Yeah.

20:17.76 AROB Yeah. Pumpkins.

20:18.98 Host All right. Next one up. Number one spot is gone. Snickers.

20:24.87 AROB Snickers. All right. Snickers are solid.

20:25.70 Host Fun size, of course.

20:27.29 AROB Yeah. Fine. How many do we have?

20:29.97 Host Five total.

20:31.13 AROB Five. All right. I'm going to go three with Snickers because I like Snickers.

20:34.62 Host Great.

20:35.39 AROB I feel good about it. I can't eat too many Snickers. So if you're getting a little minis, you know, I'll get tired of those, but I'll go three.

20:43.30 Host Okay, solid, solid. Next up with one and three spots gone, Twix.

20:49.82 AROB Yeesh, Twix is, I like Twix better than Snickers. But if I go two, then I'm going to get stuck with four and five. And I go back and forth.

21:01.62 AROB I like the chocolate, but then I also really like the more fruit side of candy. So like Spree and Runts.

21:10.00 Host Oh.

21:11.33 AROB So I'm going to go Twix.

21:11.53 Host Uh-huh.

21:12.97 AROB Even though I like Twix better than Snickers, I'm going to go four because I want to save that number two spot.

21:18.65 Host Interesting. Interesting. All right. Well, the fourth option here. Good and Plenty.

21:25.55 AROB Good and Plenty. Can we go 99?

21:26.94 Host Right.

21:27.49 AROB It's like worse than medicine.

21:31.64 Host It is. I don't know why they still sell it.

21:33.71 AROB They're so terrible. Sorry, Good and Plenty lovers.

21:36.80 Host It's always disappointing to get those little boxes.

21:37.05 AROB Yeah, I mean, no brainer. Number five. So I'm glad that I did not get, I mean, number five.

21:41.18 Host Five.

21:42.94 AROB I'm glad I did not get stuck with Good and Plenty in the number one spot.

21:46.60 Host That leaves your number two spot left with one option remaining, and that's going to be Circus Peanuts.

21:46.90 AROB Okay.

21:55.34 AROB Circus Peanuts?

21:56.06 Host Oh.

21:56.31 AROB Gross. Yeah, you did make this a little bit trickier this time.

22:01.66 Host Yeah, you know, I feel like the number one on the list is Reese's. And so I left that off the list because that almost felt too easy. So I had to put some landmines in there and see how you navigated it.

22:13.55 AROB Yeah, you did. Circus Peanuts?

22:14.84 Host You did okay, but Circus Peanuts should be number 99 as well.

22:17.79 AROB I don't think, I can't remember the last time I had a Circus Peanut. I guess I'll have to try.

22:21.30 Host You have it once when you're a kid, you're like, never again.

22:23.88 AROB I guess I'll have to try.

22:24.27 Host Why do they keep making these things? Are they like a byproduct of something?

22:26.86 AROB I'm sure. It's

22:30.54 AROB like, oh, the waste. We can smash it into something that looks like a peanut and make it orange. Great. Let's do it.

22:38.56 Host Well, your final list, the definitive guide to Halloween candy rankings. Number one is candy corn. Number two is Circus Peanuts.

22:47.07 AROB Gross.

22:47.19 Host Number three is Snickers. Number four is Twix. Number five is Good and Plenty.

22:50.75 AROB I did not do very well in that based on my own.

22:54.70 Host It was a mixed bag, I would say.

22:56.25 AROB Yeah, exactly.

22:57.49 Host All right. Well, thank you, Andrew. Thank you for playing this game with us again, and we'll see you back in a couple weeks.

23:03.92 AROB Sounds good. Thanks, Rhen.