Silent to Public: Your Roadmap for Campaign Execution - A Petrus Development Show Episode

03:35.88 Host Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Development Show. I am Rhen Hoehn from Petrus Development, and again with me today is Andrew Robison. How's it going, Andrew?

03:44.15 AROB Hey, it's going all right, Rhen. How about yourself?

03:46.38 Host Excellent. We are on part three of our four-part series, breaking down each segment or each section of a capital campaign. So a couple episodes ago, we talked about feasibility studies, how to do them, why to do them, how they kind of affect the campaign going forward.

03:54.09 AROB Right on.

04:01.40 Host Last episode, we talked about the campaign preparation phase, getting all the things ready to go, getting all the people ready to go for a campaign, kind of all the things up to the first ask, more or less. Today, we're going to talk about the execution of the campaign itself. And then in the next episode, we'll talk about kind of the wrap-up and transition back to the annual fund.

04:20.35 Host But today, let's talk about basically from the first ask up until the goal is met, what happens during a capital campaign.

04:28.75 AROB Great. Good question. And so I will preface this by saying campaigns do look differently depending on the organization.

04:38.40 Host Yeah. Yeah.

04:38.59 AROB So a parish campaign is similar to a high school campaign, but different. A high school campaign is similar to a campus ministry campaign, but different.

04:45.54 Host Yeah.

04:49.92 AROB So there are a lot of variables within each campaign. A lot of it depends on whether all of your donors are involved and present, like in a parish every Sunday, presumably, versus a campus ministry or a university where you're dealing with alumni that are far away, parents that are only partially involved, engaged.

05:13.43 AROB So there are similarities, but there are unique differences, right? So that's just sort of the disclaimer about what are the standard phases of a capital campaign.

05:17.98 Host Yeah.

05:23.51 AROB Is that fair to say?

05:23.66 Host And a diocesan campaign is even kind of more different, right? We're not really going to tackle that beast today.

05:28.03 AROB Totally.

05:30.91 Host We're going to kind of focus on a more like a single organization.

05:31.64 AROB Right.

05:35.78 Host Yeah, it's a little bit simpler to explain, I guess, at this stage.

05:36.51 AROB Yep.

05:39.45 AROB Yeah, great. And that's what most people listening are going to be dealing with, right?

05:42.25 Host Yeah.

05:42.30 AROB Is, hey, my school, my university, my organization needs to do a capital campaign. What do I need to know? So, campaigns, once you have done the study, the research, the data collection, you've got your prep work done, your policies are there, your gift charts are built out.

05:59.46 AROB What are the actual, I'm asking for money for this project, how does that work? Okay. Typically there are two phases to a capital campaign during the execution phase. There's the silent phase, which we did kind of talk about a little bit yesterday with that prep phase, but the silent phase and the public phase.

06:16.86 AROB The silent phase is really about, you know, if you sort of think about number of gifts and size of gifts and all of that, the silent phase is more focused on quality.

06:34.82 AROB And I don't mean that in a sort of negative sense about other gifts are not quality gifts, but quality meaning fewer gifts, higher amounts, and more precision when it comes to the ask or the invitation to give.

06:48.04 AROB So in a silent phase, you may be asking 20, 25 people, let's say $5 million goal, 20 or 25 people to give a total that may add up to

06:48.11 Host Right. Right.

06:57.28 AROB 20 or 25 people to give a total that may add up to 50% of your total goal, your total target, right? But you're asking all those people because they are close to the organization, they are committed, they have moved along the donor continuum, they're closer to ownership, they believe in what you're doing, and they have the capacity

07:05.41 Host Right.

07:17.80 AROB to make a significant difference. So the development director, the executive director, the leadership, the board chair, the campaign chair, whoever that is, is going to sit down with those individuals one-on-one, lay out the case, and ask for a major commitment.

07:34.73 AROB In some cases, the largest gift that these donors have ever made or even considered for this project as leadership during that silent phase. So that's what I mean when I say quality gifts.

07:45.98 AROB It may be a very small handful of gifts make up a very large portion of the dollar amount.

07:52.85 Host Yeah, and this phase isn't necessarily secret per se, right? That's kind of the first impression that I got when I was learning about these early on in my fundraising days. A lot of your constituents have been part of the feasibility study. They kind of know a campaign's coming, but this just is the section where you're not kind of pushing it out to the public broadly. You're just kind of focusing on individual asks at this point in the campaign.

08:16.22 AROB Correct. So the campaign is not, the goal is not on your website. You may be filming or recording the video, but that's not out on your social media. You do have your documents already, your case for support, your pledge forms.

08:30.32 AROB Those are produced, but it's more of a, you're talking with your insiders. There's a rule that the silent phase typically goes on until you hit 50, 60, or even 70% of your goal.

08:44.93 AROB And the reason for that is that psychologically, once you start talking with everybody, you want them to know, hey, this is going to happen.

08:45.19 Host Okay. Yeah.

08:53.02 AROB We're already over halfway to our goal. So there's kind of a finality of, well, then, yeah, I want to get involved and just get us across the finish line, right?

09:02.04 Host Yeah.

09:02.06 AROB So that's kind of the rule, 50%. Ideally, that's your kind of starting point to when you go public, but 60%, even 70%. And I was having a conversation with Matt Bond, one of our campaign consultants, and Matt led a very successful capital campaign. And now he's a consultant for Petrus and he's helping other organizations. And I was talking to Matt.

09:25.68 AROB I said, what's your number when you, your percentage when you say, hey it's time to go public? Is it 50%? Is it 70%? 60%? Where is it?

09:35.85 AROB And he said, you know, honestly, from my experience, the longer we can, the more time we can spend in that silent phase, the more successful and the better chance we have of even going over goal. So he was like, I tend to take a slower approach unless there are factors that we need to accelerate. But you know, 60%, even 70% of goal is like, I'm fine with that being the silent phase.

09:59.32 AROB But he said, even more so than the percentage, he said, I want to, I don't want to go public until everybody that I think can make a leadership or a transformational gift to this campaign has been asked individually, personally, by myself or the leadership of the organization.

10:19.44 AROB And I thought,

10:19.50 Host Mm.

10:20.45 AROB that's actually like a really good way of thinking about it. And why is that?

10:23.23 Host Yeah.

10:25.33 AROB What's going to happen if one of your lead donors, the, you know, sort of somebody who's been along with your organization supporting for a long time, could write a big check and make a transformational difference, finds out that you're doing a capital campaign on Facebook?

10:40.51 AROB Right? Like that's, how likely are they going to say, oh yeah, I want to make the largest gift ever to this project. Right?

10:47.75 Host Right.

10:47.78 AROB So using the silent phase to invite your insiders who can make leadership level gifts is really the primary goal of that silent phase.

10:59.61 AROB And that's why I say quality gifts, because it's a small number that are going to make up a large percentage of the goal.

11:06.64 Host A few questions on the silent phase before we talk about the public phase.

11:08.50 AROB Yeah.

11:10.66 Host What, where's the rough timeframe that you're going to see on average for this? Is this months? Is it years? Where are we at here?

11:20.25 AROB Good question. And so this is what we go back to the original point that I was making, that every organization is a little bit different, right? A parish campaign can typically be done in six months.

11:31.25 AROB Maybe if there's a school, you know you might go nine months or even a year if you have extenuating circumstances. But six months is kind of a, that's a reasonable average length for a capital campaign for a parish.

11:43.68 Host And that's the, that's the full thing, not just the silent phase.

11:43.71 AROB That's full, that's silent phase, public phase, that's all of your fundraising time. And the reason for that is because you think about it, everybody who is going to make a gift to that campaign is there with you on Sundays, almost every week of that full six months.

12:02.52 AROB And so you're not hunting people down.

12:02.57 Host Gotcha.

12:04.61 AROB You're not making calls. You're not traveling to other cities. You can work through your kind of processes with a parish campaign. So the silent phase of a parish campaign may be three months, maybe two months.

12:18.41 AROB So it's a short time. It's, you know, here are the 20 top donors that we want to talk with, or our committee members want to talk with. We need to schedule those with Father. We're going to get those done.

12:29.79 AROB On the other side, a campus ministry or a university or an organization that is going out to find alumni, to find parents, to uncover, use the campaign to discover new donors and cultivate new donors.

12:45.86 AROB That silent phase could be, the total campaign could be 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, just kind of depending on the size of the goal and where they are fundraising-wise. So that silent phase could be six months, could be a year, just depends on kind of where they're starting from.

13:00.70 AROB The feasibility study will actually help in setting that timeline because you can see, all right, based on everybody that we've interviewed during the feasibility study, everybody we've recommended, we think that we're getting to 50% or 60% of our goal with the people that were involved in the study should be fairly

13:18.61 AROB easy. Again, it's not your money. So at the end of the day, it's the donor's money and they have to agree to make the gift, right? But you can sort of see a plan. So you might say, hey, we can get to 50 or 60% of our goal in a couple of months. Our silent phase will be pretty short.

13:35.14 AROB And it may be, hey, our feasibility study says we can get there, says we have potential. But I don't think the people that are leadership level donors are cultivated well, it's going to take a couple of meetings to get them to that point. So I'm going to say we're looking at at least a six or a 12-month silent phase to the campaign.

13:51.83 Host Okay.

13:52.63 AROB Does that help?

13:52.94 Host Let's, yeah, that's great. What happens in the situation that, okay, we think we're going to get 60 to 70% of the goal from these major gifts, but we kind of go through all of our asks and we're way short. So we're only at 20% or we go through all of our major, our leadership asks and we're already past our campaign goal. What's happening if things come in differently than expected?

14:15.91 AROB Yeah, so those are good questions. On the first situation, if you make your asks of people that you think are at high levels or invitations to give, and maybe they're saying, I don't know, I'll need to get back with you. Or maybe they're saying, gosh, I really want to support, but I can't at that level, right? You asked me for $200,000, at best, I can give you $20,000 the next three years, right?

14:43.25 AROB Like those are real situations. So at that time, that is a situation, you know, if I'm working with a client, right. And, you know, going back to your campaign experience, we kind of had a little bit of that when you were running a campaign at your organization.

15:00.60 AROB A lot of people that we identified during the feasibility study, whenever we reached out for like the campaign, they either said, well, I'll get back with you and took a while to get back.

15:00.66 Host Yeah.

15:11.11 AROB Or they said, yeah, we can do well below that number. And so we kind of had to reassess. And this is the situation. This is why you, this is why having a firm...

15:24.09 AROB that you bring in to help you with this is actually really helpful in situations like this. You kind of say, you know, if you don't have help, you've never done a campaign, you're like, I am really bad at this.

15:35.19 AROB I don't even know if we should have done a campaign. We're just going to call it off, send everybody their money back. Like, let's be done. We'll deal with the situation, right? But having somebody who's done this before says, nope, this happens.

15:46.97 AROB It's not ideal, but let's figure out a proper solution. And so in some cases you have to pivot. Maybe that means that the silent phase goes on longer. Maybe that means, look, we don't have any more people that we think we can ask during the silent phase. We need to go public and the public phase is going to go longer so we can use that excitement of the campaign to uncover, discover, cultivate our donors that we can ask for campaign gifts. I was doing a campaign when I first started at St. Mary's at Texas A&M, and it was a $6.5 million goal.

16:19.13 AROB The largest gift that we got was a $350,000 gift that was the last gift of the campaign to put us over goal. That is not the way that I would advise anybody to do a capital campaign right now.

16:32.28 AROB Right? But that was the situation. At the time, we said, well, you know, how is this going to work? And I say we, Greg was really the person running it, my boss. But I learned a lot through that. We said, we're going longer campaign and we're going to focus on more gifts at lower levels. And so that campaign didn't go ideally the way that we wanted it to. It was longer. We had a lot of smaller gifts, but we had 3,500 donors to that campaign, $6.5 million. That was a long, drawn-out process, but it positioned the organization so well moving forward with so many new donors, so many more monthly gifts that the annual fund really took off after that because there were so many new faces that were part of the donor pool after the campaign.

17:19.99 Host Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the campaign I was part of. One of the guys that we thought was a slam dunk to be a lead donor, million-dollar gift ended up saying no for the campaign, which kind of threw us off a little bit. But then he came back later and made the gift five years later.

17:35.63 Host Right. So kind of started the wheels in motion for a big gift down the road, even though it didn't happen right away during the campaign there.

17:39.85 AROB Yep.

17:42.29 AROB Yep. So then, so your other side of the coin, right, is the, really, hey, we're already at goal and we haven't even gone public with this. Like that's a really good position to be in.

17:53.38 AROB And so what we do in situations like that is then we look at, okay, we still think that the reasons when we started a campaign were to address this need.

18:04.58 AROB But also to use this campaign to grow our annual fund, to get more donors, just like that St. Mary's experience I was talking about, to bring in new donors, first-time donors with recurring gifts or with pledges.

18:17.01 AROB And so we still want to go public with a campaign, but we're already at the goal or very near the goal that we had said. Let's revision what is possible and maybe include some things that were future-focused or were longer down the road. Let's include them now into this project and increase our goal. And so I do tell people all the time, like your feasibility study is going to help you set your goal, but even during the silent phase, that's still a period of, because it's quiet, you're talking with people individually but it's not on your website, it's not public, that's still a time that you can adjust that goal one way or the other. And it's just in a situation like that, I would say, hey, you know, we went way over or it looks like we're going to go way over. What other projects do you have? And if they say,

19:04.24 AROB we don't really have any projects, like this is where I then say, okay, well, then what about endowment? What about a reserve for future planning? What about, you know, additional programming needs or staffing needs?

19:18.23 AROB So you kind of look and get creative that way. But again, during the phase, until you've gone public, the goal can be a moving target. Moving target's not the right word, can be adjustable, flexible until you really go. I think I said it last week, last episode or the one before, it's that, you know, the ideas in your head, until they pass your lips and get written down on paper, that's when they're final.

19:41.85 AROB But there is a period of time, especially in the silent phase, that that number can change.

19:47.05 Host Yeah. One more question about the silent phase here. What are the different responsibilities of the people involved in the campaign at this point, the staff, the director, the campaign committee, the council, what are they all doing during the silent phase?

19:59.38 AROB So the director and the fundraising staff is really focused on, and your fundraising consultant as well.

20:12.10 AROB Their focus is really on here are our 20, 25, 30, 50 people that we want to ask for leadership level gifts during this time. We need to come up with an individualized, almost like a kind of a mini campaign, an individualized solicitation plan for these individuals.

20:30.15 AROB If that requires cultivation of some, they're not quite ready, we need a couple of meetings, then that's part of the plan. If they say, nope, we're ready, but I really think that, you know, Sister Joan needs to come along because Sister Joan and he, they got along really well 20 years ago. I think that having her part of the solicitation, invitation to give, would be really valuable.

20:52.91 AROB So it's about creating those individual solicitation plans for those people on your gift chart. The role of the campaign committee is to some extent that role, that place, but also continuing to source new people that maybe weren't on that list, continuing to be advocates for the project, and then a good activity for your committee members, especially the ones that are willing to ask or willing to be public is, can we begin sort of planning some small group events?

21:26.98 AROB So I think we've talked on other episodes about the value or the difference between a large gala and a small hosted gathering. So your big gala is, you know, 300 people, 500 people, you know, sort of your rubber chicken dinner, the speaker, the program, maybe there's an ask, but it's really about, you know, kind of celebrating or getting people excited.

21:46.62 AROB Your small hosted events are about, you know, Steve and Mary from the campaign committee. They're going to host a small gathering at their house with, you know, five, six, eight couples.

21:57.27 AROB And we're going to bring Father, we're going to bring some of our, you know, participants. And we're going to talk about kind of where we are with this campaign and bring people in as insiders. So those are kind of the roles of everybody during the silent phase.

22:11.65 Host Excellent. So let's say we've gone through the silent phase. We hit the goal or aimed for 50, 60, 70% of the total goal.

22:17.20 AROB Yep.

22:18.52 Host Now it's time to go public. What happens and what, and maybe as that kind of gets announced publicly and then what happens during that whole public phase?

22:26.24 AROB Yep. So the public phase, it happens in phases, right? So the first threshold to cross when you go into that public phase is some sort of a kickoff, some sort of a launch.

22:37.74 AROB This can be a small event. This can be, you know, putting it on your website and sending the email, the video out by email and social media. There's something that says, hey, we are in this capital campaign.

22:52.30 AROB Ideally that launch, part of the messaging is we are now doing this capital campaign to benefit the organization, to benefit you, to benefit, you know, future generations. And we're already at 60% of our goal.

23:05.09 AROB Please help us cross the finish line and complete this campaign. So you start with a launch. Then the rest of the time is a lot more, if the silent phase was about quality gifts, the public phase is about quantity gifts.

23:18.89 AROB I tell people all the time, you want everybody that has any awareness of your organization, any participation, any inkling that they might want to give now or in the future. Like we want to make a path for them to make a gift to this project.

23:31.21 AROB They could be multi-year pledges, they could be one-time gifts, they could be, you know, recurring gifts like we did at St. Mary's, you know, where somebody signs up for a monthly gift. So the sort of type of gift,

23:46.73 AROB the size to some extent, you know, with the masses, the size is not as important as it really is. We want to focus on quantity because we want as many people giving to this project as possible because everybody that gives to the project, especially if it's a first-time gift or if it's, you know, they haven't given in a long time, that's an introduction or a reintroduction to your organization.

24:07.86 AROB People that can be stewarded and cultivated for long-term operating or annual support. So the public phase is more event heavy. It's more mailing heavy, right? There's usually a direct mail component.

24:21.20 AROB You're doing online and digital fundraising. If it's a parish, they're going to do, you know, a commitment weekend. So the public phase is about kind of, you know, using your bullhorn, standing on the corner of your church saying, hey, we're doing this project.

24:38.95 AROB Please come help us make this successful.

24:41.27 Host Got it. And what are the different kind of staff members, director, development staff and volunteers and council doing during this phase?

24:47.73 AROB Yeah. So your committee can be very helpful during this phase, not just because they are being advocates for it, but also this is a chance where, you know, if you have committee members that are really excited and are willing to sit down with people and ask, this is a great way to, hey, I've got 10 people, 10 couples in the parish or alumni. Can you schedule and go and ask them? We'll give you all the materials you need.

25:11.45 AROB We'll go with you a couple of times to make sure you're comfortable, but then sort of unleash them. So you kind of, the committee can be very involved with that. They don't want to do individual solicitations. They can do more hosted gatherings, more events, or attend other events and be advocates for this project.

25:28.00 AROB Your staff, meaning your development team, your director, they are continuing to ask people. Again, that St. Mary's example, that last $350,000 that finished the campaign was from a donor who was nowhere on the radar when we started the project.

25:48.11 AROB So through the campaign, through conversations, through discovery, you're going to meet new people who can make gifts to the project. And so it's still the role of the development team and the director to be making a lot of face-to-face visits, a lot of cultivation, discovery, solicitation, still asking, but also kind of layered on that, planning the campaign, managing the projects.

26:11.74 AROB The fundraising consultant then is, they've always been, ideally, always been operating as kind of project manager for this. And that role continues. It's, you know, hey, you know, we said that you were going to go visit these people. How did those meetings go?

26:28.42 AROB Working with the campaign committee, doing a lot of coaching and guiding of them and encouraging of them. And then helping to sort of put the strategy behind the events.

26:39.58 AROB Maybe not necessarily planning the events. In some cases, yes. Maybe attending, maybe not. But certainly the strategy of making sure we're continuing to do things. If you're short of goal or you're above goal or whatever that is, then also sort of making adjustments to the plan accordingly.

26:58.34 Host Kind of the one thing I would add to that is data management.

27:01.17 AROB Okay, yeah.

27:02.02 Host In my experience, there's a lot of data entry, gift entry, pledge entry, pledge reminders. There's just a lot of that happening during this phase.

27:10.42 AROB Yep. Yep.

27:11.22 Host So if you're gearing up for a public phase, if you have extra staff or can hire some part-time workers to help with that, it takes a lot of the load off you to go out and actually meet with people.

27:23.79 Host Definitely. One question that comes up a lot of the time when you're thinking about a campaign is how do I manage my annual fund? What happens? Do I wrap that into the campaign? Is it two separate things happening at the same time? There might be a year or two, right?

27:37.10 Host They're doing this campaign. How do you manage that during the campaign?

27:40.67 AROB Yep. Great. So a couple of the campaigns that I've been part of were comprehensive, meaning we rolled everything into the campaign. Every dollar that came in for that year or two years or whatever the campaign was, was counted as campaign gifts.

27:53.59 AROB So what that meant is the budget, the need to run the ministry, the operational dollars needed to be accounted for as part of the goal. So that's a comprehensive goal.

28:03.23 Host Mm-hmm.

28:04.43 AROB Comprehensive campaign, meaning maybe there's a building component, maybe there's a staffing component, there's an endowment component. There's also an operations component, right? I would say that in my experience, we're seeing, we've already seen a trend moving away from comprehensive campaigns and moving back to or moving more confidently into a campaign is for growth, but your operational, your annual fund fundraising still needs to continue.

28:34.88 AROB And so you're still doing annual fund, unless it's a comprehensive campaign, which, you know, possibly there's a strategy for that. But you're still doing your annual fund just as you did before.

28:47.60 AROB But there's important kind of moments to be aware of, right? If you have a big campaign kickoff, right, then that might align with your fall appeal. Well,

28:58.23 AROB you don't want to send your fall appeal right before the campaign kickoff. Right. So there's kind of being mindful of the calendar and being strategic. But in my experience, you keep that annual fund going.

29:10.39 AROB When you're making campaign asks of major donors, a lot of times that's a good chance to ask for a blended gift or a dual gift, rather.

29:16.38 Host Yeah.

29:18.19 AROB And so if you ask, again, Steve and Mary, right, they have capacity to make a big gift to the campaign, but they've traditionally given $10,000 to the annual fund every year. Well, then what we're going to ask them for is a five-year pledge, $50,000 to the annual fund and $500,000 to the capital campaign.

29:35.62 AROB Right? So it's communicating, it's making them aware that the annual fund funds the operations, the campaign is for growth.

29:43.86 Host Love it.

29:45.08 AROB Yep.

29:46.22 Host We're going to leave kind of the end of the public phase and onward for the next episode. We'll talk about the wrap-up. Anything else you want to talk about kind of during that for the execution of campaigns?

29:55.87 AROB I think that a campaign, and maybe you should save this for the end, but in my experience, a campaign, especially the execution part of it, is going to be

30:08.86 AROB probably the most challenging phase of a fundraiser's career, certainly the first one, and sometimes the second, third, or fourth one, because there's just a lot to manage.

30:14.21 Host Hmm.

30:20.47 AROB There's a lot of activity. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of expectations. There's just a lot going on. So it can be very challenging from that standpoint. On the flip side,

30:33.29 AROB it can also be without question, one of the most rewarding experiences for a fundraiser, for a fundraiser's career as well. And so I think it's important to keep that in mind that when you're in the sort of the depths of, you know, data management, right? Like I cannot add another name to the spreadsheet. I'm going to...