Podcast: The Volunteer Playbook: Activating Your Team for Campaign Success

Season 4, Episode 31

Volunteers are the backbone of a successful capital campaign—but how do you truly engage, activate, and motivate them to take action? In this episode, fundraising experts Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt explore the key strategies to transform passive supporters into passionate advocates.

Tune in to discover how to build a motivated, energized team that drives your campaign forward.

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Andrea Kihlstedt:
Imagine if your campaign volunteers were fired up and ready to go and actually worked hard on your campaign. Wouldn’t that be a game changer?

Amy Eisenstein:
Hi, I am Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague and co-founder, Andrea Kihlstedt. Today we’ve got a really interesting topic, and that is about engaging, and activating, and motivating your campaign volunteers.

I love this topic, Andrea. It came up at one of our regular group conversations that we invite clients to. I’m so glad it came up. It’s such an important topic.

The Volunteer Playbook: Why Engaging Volunteers Matters

As you always do so well, let’s set the stage about activating your campaign volunteers and maybe even talk about why it’s important, why it matters. Let’s start there.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Oh, yeah. That’s a great place to start, Amy, because you and I both know that if one person is driving and doing all the work of a campaign, it’s not likely to succeed. These campaigns are big endeavors and they take a team, they take a village, they take a community to make them work.

So no matter how well-intentioned you are, no matter how much you’re willing to work your fingers to the bone, if you can’t get other people working alongside of you and being helpful, you’re not going to optimize your success. Let’s talk about how we go about doing that.

Amy and I, as you might imagine, we talk to a lot of people who are in campaign mode. It always makes our hearts drop when we hear from people, “Well, my board isn’t doing very much,” or, “I wish I could get my volunteers to do something. They’re just not doing much.” That, to us, is like, oh, yes, this person would like to do something, but they don’t understand what it takes to get volunteers active and involved. It takes a certain amount of knowledge. We want to set out for you the simple structural things that you need to put in place if you want to motivate your volunteers, your board, your staff to be effective volunteers on the campaign.

Amy Eisenstein:
We know this is easier said than done, so let’s just acknowledge that first, but there are simple steps that you can take and we want to give you some ideas, seed those ideas to motivate you to try something new with your volunteers and committee members and not just throw up your hands in disgust. It’s not easy.

The reason that people talk about it as herding cats is not for naught. Sometimes it’s a challenge, but I think there are serious concrete and simple steps that you can take, and we want to share those with you so that you can get sort of back in the driver’s seat and back in control of motivating, and activating, and engaging your committee members, which is critical for your campaign success. Your campaign will be significantly more successful if there are multiple people working and advocating and soliciting.

Have Clear Expectations for Your Campaign Volunteers

Okay. Andrea, step number one, we want to talk about making sure that you’re clear in your mind about what you want them to do. Let’s sort of talk through that a little bit.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
What you want your volunteers to do may change, will change over the period of the campaign, right? This is not one thing. Early on, you may want volunteers to be laying the groundwork with key donors.

You may want volunteers to be talking to people they know, or talking to people in the community to identify people who should be on the donor list, if they’re not already on the donor list. It may be that you want people to be having conversations about the case for support to see how it resonates with people. I mean, those are three things that, at various times in a campaign, you might want your campaign volunteers to be doing, or your board members to be doing.

The point is that if you want to motivate your volunteers or board members to do something, you need to be very clear about what it is you want them to do. You can’t just say, “Oh. Go help with the campaign.” That’s not going to do it. It needs to be, “For the next two months, here’s what I’d like you to be working on, to be helping with. I’d like each one of you to be making calls, to do such and such, over this period of time.”

Once you have identified what you want your volunteers to do, then you can set up structures. Then you can start saying, well, how many of these actions do you want people to do? Over what timetable do you want them to do those actions? How are you going to report whether they have done those actions over time? I mean, that’s a simple structure that you can use for motivating any group of people to do anything. Be clear about what it is you want them to do, set goals and work with them to set goals of how many times, how much you want them to do it, over what period of time, and how you’re going to be reporting out to everybody what the success is, what people actually have done. I like that structuring.

Amy Eisenstein:

Yeah. I agree with everything you said.

Should All Campaign Volunteers Solicit Gifts?

Let’s just back up a little bit and talk about what you want them to do, because the truth is that I think a lot of development directors, maybe executive directors who are in a campaign for the first time, or haven’t done one in a while, they may not be so … I mean, yes, we can say, “Oh, we want volunteers to ask for gifts,” but we need to break it down.

Not every one of your volunteers is going to be eager or willing or, quite frankly, able, capable of going out and soliciting gifts. Let’s give some examples. I think it’s important for us to give examples, but also if you’re working with a campaign consultant, which we advocate, we think it’s a smart idea to be working with an experienced campaign consultant to help you wrestle with what are reasonable expectations, what are steps volunteers can take, and even engaging your volunteers to help you come up with what steps that they can take so they’re more likely to do it.

Okay. What do you want to add?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, what I want to add is this, you rightly pointed out, Amy, that not every volunteer is going to be good at soliciting gifts, that you don’t want everyone to be going out to solicit gifts, but if you begin by thinking about the cycle of fundraising, what are the various aspects of fundraising? Then you say, well, there are many roles volunteers can play in that cycle. What is the cycle of fundraising? Quite simply:

• It’s identifying prospective donors.
• It is researching prospective donors, finding out about them.
• It is cultivating prospective donors, having touches with them so that they begin to know about your project and begin to feel close.
• Only then it’s soliciting gifts.
• Finally, the fifth, is thanking them and appreciating them and stewarding them.

The cycle of fundraising is a wonderful structure that will help you figure out, well, what kinds of things do we want to motivate our volunteers to do? You can pick things in each of those pieces of the cycle of fundraising and help volunteers develop goals in whichever of those is good for them.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. I think that’s really important is getting your volunteers’ buy-in in what they’re willing and able and excited to do, and agreeing on setting goals so that if everybody says, “Okay. As a committee, we all agree to reach out to three people to invite them to a coffee meeting with the CEO,” and that by getting agreement in advance from your committee, and you not just coming in and telling them what to do, I think you’re going to be a lot more successful.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Now we’ve talked about getting clear about what it is you want people to do, is the first step to motivating them to becoming active. Okay. Finding and identifying and developing specific things that you want people to do so that they are accountable actually, so that you can really point to them.

Establish Specific Goals for Each of Your Campaign Volunteers

The next thing is establishing goals for each of your volunteers. You can do that in concert with each of those people. You can find out how much time they have, what they’re interested in, what they’re willing to do, and develop goals. Again, to the extent that you can develop numeric goals, it’s really handy.

Over the next month, I volunteer Andrea, I’m going to be willing to contact and talk with six prospective donors to tell them about the campaign and to learn about what they might be interested in. I’m going to do it over the next month. Those are very specific goals. You can hold me accountable to those, you can count them. I can report to you on them. Knowing that is going to motivate me to actually get going and make those happen, because I know that you are watching to see if I hold up my end of the bargain.

1. First, figure out what you want them to do.
2. Second, work with them to have very specific goals around those specific things.
3. Third is make sure that everyone knows what the time frames are, and what is going to be counted.
4. Fourth, make sure everyone knows that there will be periodic meetings where people come back and they will be reporting on what it is they’ve accomplished.

Well, there’s nothing like knowing you’re coming to a meeting next Tuesday and you’re going to have to report on the fact that you agreed to go talk to five donors over the period of the month. The month is about done, and I’m going to have to be there with it with six other people on the committee and tell everybody what it is I’ve done. Guess what? I’m going to get on the horn tomorrow or today so that I can come back to that meeting and say:

“Well, I made five phone calls. I only reached three people, but I made five phone calls.”

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. I mean, I think that that is an important part of the process, is creating an accountability system, really is what we’re doing, and making people accountable for what they said they would do. As a committee this month we want to reach out to 20 people. If everybody takes two to three people, then we can reach out to those people effectively and try and get meetings. We want to invite them to events, or activities, or for a tour, or whatever the goal is for this particular month.

I think one of the things that we want to talk about is making it fun and enjoyable for people so that it doesn’t turn into a slog or that people don’t show up for the meeting when they haven’t done it. To me, it’s making sure that you’re recognizing great work and demonstrating that it’s not hard or scary, and all rolled into not shaming people as they learn and grow into this.

Some examples that we were talking about before we hit the record button is celebrating when somebody makes their first fundraising call. If you have a volunteer in the room, how are you going to make it fun? How are you going to make people shine and feel good about what they’re doing? If you have a committee that comes together and somebody’s been hesitant and they made one phone call, celebrate that. Point out, “Susan made her first fundraising call. She got somebody on the phone and they agreed to come for a tour. Round of applause for Susan.” Or ring a bell. So that’s super exciting.

Also, recognizing the most appointments scheduled. If you have a star volunteer, how are we going to point that out? How are we going to celebrate that? We want to celebrate what we want to see more of. That’s another great example. Not at every meeting, recognizing everybody, because then it’s not special, but asking people to report out and then really celebrating. Something concrete, something tangible.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
You don’t need to recognize everybody in a special way at every meeting, but if you pick out a couple of people at every meeting to call out for something great that happened, then people are going to be working towards that. They’re going to be telling you:

“I think I contacted more people over the last month than anybody else did.”

Now Amy talks about not shaming people. I think that’s right, we don’t want to shame people, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t call out people who are doing it well. What happens to the people who are not doing it well? Well, those people, chances are, if they know that every meeting is going to have a reporting session, chances are they’re going to stop coming to meetings. Once they’ve missed a meeting or two, or if they came to the meeting and sort of sat there and said, “Well, I didn’t get anything done,” then that’s an opportunity for you to talk to them outside of the meeting and say:

“Joe, maybe this isn’t the committee for you. I know your intentions are terrific, but it sounds to me like you’ve got too many other things on your plate. Maybe we call it quits for the moment.”

That will help you winnow your committee to the people who are most effective. Then the committee will be more fun for everybody. That’s a great thing to do actually.

You’re not shaming that person publicly, you’re creating an opportunity where either they don’t show up or they’re making excuses, and then you can handle it in a way that encourages them off the committee, which is a win. You don’t want losers on your committee. That saps the energy of the committee.

Amy Eisenstein:
That’s right. If you can fill your committee with people who are going to do things and follow through …

A Good Example

Let me go back to my example of Susan who made her first fundraising call. You might ask her how it felt, how she got the courage to make that first fundraising call, what she did to overcome any fear or hesitation, trepidation that she was feeling, and actually do it. I mean, everybody’s feeling that way, so if you can ask people … The person that did the most calls, why is it important to them? Why are they so committed?

At every meeting, ask somebody to share a story or give an example of a successful call that they made, and it doesn’t have to be the highest dollar amount. Try and think of simple wins that you can give to people so that there is more motivation. We want this to be an upward spiral. Is spiral ever used in an upward sense? I don’t know.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Sure. Absolutely.

This is fueled by energy. It takes energy to move a spiral up. Things naturally go down. If you don’t do anything, the spiral will go down, but you have to fuel the process with energy so that people catch that energy. I think that’s really an important point, to this whole discussion, that you can’t put a committee together and have a boring agenda, and not be clear about what it is you want people to do, and expect people to function effectively. a committee of volunteers needs to put the energy into creating a structure that is going to motivate people to function. If you do that, people will begin to function.

Amy Eisenstein:
I think clarity is such an important point, Andrea, because what we hear over and over from development directors and often executive directors too, is my board doesn’t help with fundraising. Well, what does that mean exactly? What are you asking them to do specifically?

Knowing that they have other priorities and they’re not working on this full time, they have their own careers, they have family priorities. In a best case scenario, this might fall third in terms of their priority, but often it’s further down. The more specific, the more concrete … If they know that here are the talking points and they’re supposed to make two phone calls, or send three emails inviting people … Give them the tools to be successful and specific about what you want them to do and measure that and then celebrate their success. I mean, to me, that’s sort of the sum up of what we’ve been talking about, is giving them the tools, and resources, and the understanding of what success looks like and being specific about that.

If you just say to your committee, “Okay. Help us raise money,” they don’t know what that means. I mean, I barely know what that means. I think pointing back to that fundraising cycle, the first step is identification. Who might be excited about this campaign? Who might care about our mission? Who might want to see this project succeed? So really spending some time and digging deep into, both your donor lists, volunteer and committee people that they know or might have connections to, and then really figuring out what does it mean to cultivate somebody? What do we need to learn about them before we solicit? What do we need to do to engage them before we ask for a gift? Really thinking that through as a committee is probably good for everybody to learn together.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah.

Final Thoughts

I think that the fundraising cycle is always useful to help volunteers and board members understand how fundraising works. Then you can use it as a way of identifying specific tasks that you want people to do in one or another of those elements of that cycle. On one hand, you can ask everybody to help with identifying donors. On the other hand, you can get different people functioning at different parts of that cycle. So it’s a great teaching tool, the cycle of fundraising.

I think for the purposes of this, let me summarize this way. Your volunteers and your board, as well-intended as they are, will not jump onto your campaign and be able to function effectively, unless you help them structure exactly what it is you need from them when. That will change over the period of time. It is your job as a staff member, or as a campaign manager, or as an executive director, to set up systems that help clarify volunteers’ roles, make sure that they know how to do what they’re doing, make sure that what they’re doing is going to be countable and reportable, and then make it fun for them so that they’re working towards a larger aim, so reporting back to a larger group. That’s your job. If you do that job well, of setting that up, your volunteers will respond.

Amy Eisenstein:
Excellent! Listeners, if you want help setting up a system like this, helping to motivate and encourage and really get your volunteers activated, I hope that you will consider working with someone on the Capital Campaign Pro Team. This is what we do with our clients every single day.

Head on over to the Capital Campaign Pro website and sign up to talk to us, to see how we could support you through your capital campaign and motivating and engaging your volunteers.

Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.