Podcast: Transforming Challenges into Success: A Comprehensive Look at Capital Campaigns in the Nonprofit Sector

Season 3, Episode 53

In this episode, we dive into an enlightening conversation with Esther Landau, the Senior Director of Advancement at The Arc of San Francisco. Join host Amy Eisenstein as she explores the strategic planning and execution behind successful capital campaigns, focusing on The Arc’s innovative approach to expanding its programs and services.

Esther shares the origins of their campaign, rooted in a strategic planning process with stakeholders, aimed at enhancing program accessibility by addressing staffing and compensation. We delve into the campaign’s journey, highlighting its mid-point status and the critical role of a feasibility study in refining their messaging to resonate more deeply with potential donors.

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Amy Eisenstein:
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Esther Landau, who is the Senior Director of Advancement at The Arc of San Francisco. I’m so excited that she is joining us for today’s show. Hi, Esther.

Esther Landau:
Hi, Amy. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Amy Eisenstein:
Absolutely. Well, of course you’re one of Capital Campaign Pro’s clients, but more importantly, you are doing amazing things with your campaign.

Setting the Stage for a Capital Campaign

So first, let’s set the stage a little bit. Why don’t you talk about what prompted you to start a campaign and where you’re at right now?

Esther Landau:
Sure. Well, we decided to launch a campaign. A few years ago, we did a strategic planning process with all of our key stakeholders, and we created a three-year plan that focused a lot on making our programs more accessible by cutting our wait list.

In order to cut our wait list, we have to hire more staff. In order to hire more staff, we need to pay them more. So that was sort of the genesis of the campaign. The campaign also includes an effort to expand our programs so that we can serve more people in the three counties that we serve.

Amy Eisenstein:
I love that, because everybody wants to know what can you raise money for in a campaign beyond buildings? And I think you’ve just presented such a beautiful example. And cutting the wait list and adding staff is such an important programmatic aspect and such a good, strong case for support. And everybody’s worried about staff and salaries, so I’m curious how you’ve been talking about that and how it’s going so far.

Esther Landau:
Well, yeah, and we’re still midway through our campaign. It’s going well. We’re still in the quiet phase. But I will say that when we did our feasibility study, that was something that we heard, because initially we led with talking about providing staff not just a living wage, but a thriving wage.

The Issue of Staff Wages

And we found … I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that folks who are parents of Arc participants care a lot about staff wages. Folks who are not directly personally connected to the Arc, they don’t think that should be something that we raise money for. But what was a gut punch to them was hearing that people sometimes waited on the wait list for two years.

Amy Eisenstein:
Interesting.

Esther Landau:
Never mind the fact that those two things are inextricably connected. They didn’t really want to hear about staff pay, but they wanted to hear about how hard it was to wait on the wait list and that it’s just so unjust. So we found a way to just reframe the conversation and reshape our donor discussion guide around wait list.

Amy Eisenstein:
Interesting. I mean, I think that’s such an important lesson. First of all, as nonprofit advocates, you and I want to pay our staff the best wages we can because we want the best talent out there. I mean, the idea that staff is a revolving door at nonprofits because we’re paying them such poor wages is really detrimental to our programs and services in the sector as a whole, and not what we’re trying to do as a sector. But I don’t want to digress too far.

I think it’s so important that you talked about those lessons learned and what you heard in the feasibility study process. It’s actually not a question I was going to ask you, but you did a Guided Feasibility Study with us at Capital Campaign Pro and you were involved in the interviews.

On Doing a Guided Feasibility Study

So why don’t you talk just a little bit about that experience and how important it was for you, the leaders of your nonprofit to be in the room, as opposed to sending a consultant in to do the feasibility study interviews?

Esther Landau:
Yeah, I would say it was a huge benefit. At the time we started this, I was just about one and a half years into my time at the Arc and I came in during the pandemic. I hadn’t gotten to meet most of the big donors or even really talk to them on the phone. So having a real reason to connect with them and to seek their advice and their opinions was fantastic.

And so, I not only got to connect with many of those folks, but I also, I heard their passion for the organization and I’m like, every single feasibility study interview at the end is lik:

“Is there anything else that you want to say?”

Nearly every person said:

“Whatever I can do. Anything I can do. I love the Arc.”

So that was so motivating. It just had so many positive ripple effects for us to do that kind of feasibility study.

Amy Eisenstein:
Amazing. Amazing.

Overcoming Capital Campaign Concerns and Obstacles

So let’s move on to some of your biggest worries and concerns at the start of the campaign and talk through if any of them have materialized and how you’ve overcome them.

Esther Landau:
Yeah, I think we’re still learning some of those things, but my biggest concern is, will people give what we think they will give? And in some cases, no, they don’t. In a few cases, we’ve had people give more, which has been absolutely delightful. But I think the … And some of the sort of classic worries about cannibalizing our annual fund, that hasn’t seemed to take place yet.

Although, we’re still in the phase where we’re asking some people for bigger gifts, and I don’t know if it will affect their interest in giving to the annual fund. But yeah, I would say overall those worries have not really materialized to the degree that I worried that they would. But to be candid, I’m still worried, I want it to be so successful.

Amy Eisenstein:
I know. You know what? Campaigns are anxiety-producing, and I think that what you’ve done is taken the leap of faith that you need to take and assume for the most part that things are going to be okay. And as challenges arise, you will rise to meet them.

Will the Campaign Cannibalize the Annual Fund?

So say more about this idea of annual fund, because I think everybody’s worried that the campaign is going to ruin their annual fund or impact their annual fund. And you say it hasn’t yet. What are some steps you’re taking or strategies you’re thinking about to make sure that that doesn’t happen?

Esther Landau:
Well, for sure, we want to make sure that when we are having the conversations with donors, that we are acknowledging their long-time annual fund support and how important that is to maintain. And our pledge form actually includes a little optional section at the top where they’re pledging to the campaign, but it also says:

“I also here state my intention of continuing my annual fund support at the amount of blah.”

And you can state a range. So there are some people who have decided to shift to not give to the annual fund during the capital campaign, which is their choice, but at least we’re presenting it, the importance of it to them.

Then the other thing I will say too is that right now it was a challenge at year end to know, who can I reach out to for their regular big annual fund gift? Where are we at in the process of cultivating them? And I don’t want to confuse them. I don’t want them to just say:

“Oh, I’ll just make a slightly bigger annual fund gift.”

And so, there’s sort of the dance of some people … We didn’t ask for an annual fund gift because we’re very close to sitting down with them. So it was a … Zan is our advisor and she gave us wise counsel. We went through the list and decided who would get the usual letter with a personal note and who would not.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, that’s so interesting. I mean, I think the very fact that you are focused on it and worrying about it and thinking about it and strategizing about it, ultimately it will turn out in your favor. And what we see consistently is that annual funds stay the same (or even go up) during and after a campaign because the reality is you’re out talking to so many more donors, you’re more visible in the community, and it is important to acknowledge. And frequently, and sometimes this is easier said than done, but the idea of saying to a donor:

“Look, first and foremost, we need your annual fund gift because that keeps us going. And your capital gift is whatever you can give over and above.”

And thinking about it even from two different pots of money, your annual gift is from cash flow and from your checkbook or your credit card. Your campaign gift, you might think about it from assets, from stock or from retirement funds or something like that. So helping your donors think about two different needs, two different pots of giving. Great. I love that you’re thinking about it and you’re working on it.

Other Unexpected Campaign Challenges

All right. Any other unexpected challenges that have come up that you wanted to share?

Esther Landau:
Yeah, this was a surprise. So we have a pledge form that we use that is a Word doc. So beyond my plugging in the donor’s contact information and what we discussed their gift would be, I want to kind of leave it to them of what time of year they want to give and how they want to do it and what amount. And so, it’s a Word doc that I send to them after we’ve had the meeting where … The solicitation call and they’ve agreed to an amount.

And in most cases, people, if they have questions, “What does this mean? I don’t know how to fill this out,” whatever, they’ll reach out. But this one donor felt offended by the pledge form and they felt that they should be able to … They made their commitment and they were going to take care of it over three years, and why did we need to know when and how it was coming? And it didn’t seem appropriate for me to talk to them about how complex the housekeeping is they should have to care about that.

I tried to kind of de-escalate the situation because they were — yeah, they seemed offended. And I realized later … And Sarah Plimpton, at one of the coaching calls, she had a great guidance in general around the pledges that now, looking back, I could have used with this donor, where after you have the solicitation meeting and the donor agrees to a gift that there then is a phone call, before you send the pledge form to walk through the questions that you have in the pledge form and to make it very personal and human, because otherwise some donors can feel like the pivot from that super focused personal passion-based kind of conversation is suddenly transactional.

Which must feel like, I don’t know, a punch in the gut, if you’re a certain kind of donor and you’re accustomed to a certain kind of treatment. So that was a learning. And certainly with this donor, I was able to — I totally understood where they were coming from. I said, “You may put in whatever you want in there.” And they said, “Can’t I just send in donation payments when I’m ready and then you can just send me an accounting as part of the thank you of what I still owe?” Sure.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right, for that particular donor, yes.

Esther Landau:
Exactly.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah.

Esther Landau:
Exactly.

Amy Eisenstein:
I think there’s always going to be sticky situations. I think you did the best you possibly could in, you never know what’s going to come up. Every donor feels differently about all sorts of things.

So I think it’s interesting that Sarah, and for our listeners who don’t know, Sarah is our Chief Happiness Officer who works with us at Capital Campaign Pro and leads our weekly client group coaching calls. And so, basically, I just want to make sure I understood her recommendation that after the solicitation meeting, you get on the phone with the donor and you as the development person actually fill out the form by asking them the questions so that they’re not sitting there with a form. It doesn’t feel transactional.

Esther Landau:
Exactly.

Amy Eisenstein:
Okay, great. I love that. And of course, the obvious logical answer for someone who’s feeling rational is, we need this for our record keeping so we know how much we’ve raised. We know how much is coming in, that we have a record of it if God forbid, I get run over by a bus, right? The next person’s going to know about our discussion. We’re just recording it for posterity and so that we know when we’ve accomplished our campaign goal. But obviously this one was needed to be treated with kid gloves, right?

So listen, I think there are bumps in the road in every campaign. You’re hitting them, you’re taking them with stride, you’re learning as you go, and you’re raising tons of money. So that’s exciting.

Using Video to Interact with Capital Campaign Donors

Now, one of the things that your Capital Campaign Pro advisor tipped me off on is that you are doing amazing things with video with your donors. So I would love for you to share a little bit about how you’re using video to interact with your donors.

Esther Landau:
Yeah, sure. Early on, we wanted to be sure … Our organization serves adults with developmental disabilities, and they’re so often excluded from activities and they won’t be included in solicitation calls to meet with a donor. They might not even be included in cultivation calls. They would be present at our site if a donor came to visit, they could meet participants, et cetera. It didn’t feel in a way fair to them to engage them in a process that can be frustrating and disappointing. I wouldn’t want them to worry about the Arc survival, say for example.

But we really wanted to include their voices. So one of the things that we decided to do was to include QR codes to some videos on our donor discussion guide. So whether we were able to share a video, a link to a video in the meeting with the donor and watch a video together and then talk about it or whether we could just have it as part of the guide and encourage the person to watch it afterwards. We made a video with a participant and her sister, who is her conservator, about how hard it was for this young woman to wait on the waiting list. She waited for more than a year on the waiting list.

And so, it’s just a Zoom interview. It is not fancy, it is not produced. It’s slightly edited so that it’s short and concise, but you can tell it’s not like a professionally produced video. And donors actually really like it for that reason, I think, because it’s very real. And we do have a produced video that we used for an event about our health advocacy program. We include a link to that too, so people can learn about what that program is because we want to expand that. But that’s been one really big piece. That’s one way we use video.

Another is we have donors who … We mostly want to meet with people in person, or at the very least get on a Zoom with them. But we had one couple who declined to do either. They said, “Can’t you just send us a printed proposal?” And we used to meet with them in person, but there’s been, I think some age related issues that have led to them not. They don’t want to meet in person or real time.

So we created a proposal and then I had my executive director create a Loom video of walking through the donor discussion guide as if she were talking to them. And then a second video in which she makes the ask and the ask is also in print in the proposal. So their proposal included the links about the video, about the wait list, the link about health advocacy, and then we mailed it to them. And then I also sent an email with live links in there just in case they didn’t know how to use the QR codes. And they loved it.

Amy Eisenstein:
I love that.

Esther Landau:
And they agreed. They made our lead gift, which was fantastic.

Amy Eisenstein:
Oh my gosh, a lead gift. That’s amazing. And so, did they say that they watched some or all of the videos?

Esther Landau:
They watched all the videos. They watched all the videos, yeah.

Amy Eisenstein:
How great is that?

Esther Landau:
It’s not the same as having a conversation, because how much you can pick up from how the other person is behaving, but it feels like the next best thing.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. I love that. That is brilliant.

Esther Landau:
Yeah, and I should also say we also made our own little homemade recording of a conversation we had with one of our employment program participants. He’s talking about what it means to him to have the support of our staff as he works on getting a job and everything. And we made this recording for a customized ask and a customized donor discussion guide that we’re creating for a donor who really cares about workforce development for this population, because we knew he would care more about that than the wait list or the other video that we had.

And then finally, I would say I’ve used video internally within our campaign. Things were getting a little stagnant with our steering committee, so there was one day I just decided I’m going to text each of them a personal video of me encouraging them to connect with the people on their cultivation list. And I know … Don’t get discouraged. It’s a long process, but you got this. And every single one of those committee members responded to me.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes, yes. I love that. So are you using any video software or apps or anything that people should know about or it’s just straight Zoom or Loom? Just record a video.

Esther Landau:
Just Zoom. And I even saw there’s something in beta on Zoom I just noticed that’s basically like Loom. So if you have Zoom, it looks like you can create a video for free and just share the link with someone.

Amy Eisenstein:
Amazing. Amazing. That is fantastic. I love that, 100% committee response.

Esther Landau:
I know.

Amy Eisenstein:
I think that in and of itself, and a lead gift. Now, as you said, in person’s better. But when you can’t, a video for sure is the next best thing.

What Made Them Go Capital Campaign Pro?

All right. So let me ask why you decided to go with Capital Campaign Pro as your campaign expertise instead of a more full service or a more traditional consultant? We’re I would say non-traditional with our guided feasibility study and remote virtual coaching. So why’d you pick us?

Esther Landau:
Yeah. Well, Andrea is a mentor of mine, so I trust her implicitly. Anything that she’s doing is going to be great. And I dipped my toe in the water a few summers ago with that $100,000 campaign boot camp kind of program just so I could learn the ropes, the ins and outs of this kind of focused campaign. And my ED joined that too when she could. It really helped us think through how we could do something bigger and to not shy away from it.

And I loved the Guided Feasibility Study model. That was a big draw. And it also, it costs less as a result. I mean, it took more time, but it definitely helps on the budget side of things. And then I think having the peer connection, those coaching calls are fantastic.

There’s always somebody who’s further along in the campaign than we are, where I can sort of be inspired to keep going, and then folks who are just starting out and where I can give some encouragement to them too. So it feels like a whole little microbiome, a whole little environment that is self-sustaining in a way.

Then plus, Xan [Blake] is our Campaign Advisor, and she’s awesome. She pushes us to trust the process, and she gets excited when we try new things. And so, with her, we feel very supported, but also challenged at the same time. We didn’t even really look at other companies because I had this connection and because we tried it out and it just felt really right for us.

Amy Eisenstein:
I love that. Well, thank you for saying that.

Key Capital Campaign Takeaways

All right. So let’s wrap up with some lessons learned. What are your biggest takeaways so far about the campaign process, or what would you recommend to listeners that they definitely do as they’re thinking about or heading into a campaign?

Esther Landau:
Well, one lesson that I learned is that the campaigns aren’t some kind of mystery. It’s not like a black box or something. Or that you need to set a special password for the process that you can follow, which is … But even the process is just a map. It’s not like a rule book and that you can … There’s room for you to improvise. There’s room for you to follow your own wisdom and your own instincts. Also, that it’s a team sport.

I think even if you were to hire a consultant, not Capital Campaign Pro, under no circumstances should you think you’re just handing this off to someone else and you can just go back to your annual fund work. It really takes everybody rowing in the same direction. It makes it more fun too because then when you have a success, it’s really shared.

So yeah, so far those are some of the big lessons I’ve learned.

Amy Eisenstein:
For sure.

Well, thank you Esther for joining me, for sharing some of your campaign journey with us. I really look forward to seeing you through to the end and seeing you celebrate success, whether that’s in a year or 18 months, you are well on your way, and I’m just so proud and honored that you picked us to partner with on your campaign journey. And thank you for sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Esther Landau:
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.