Podcast: When Leadership Changes Mid-Campaign: How to Stay Steady and Keep Your Capital Campaign on Track

Season 5, Episode 10

In this episode, Andrea Kihlstedt is joined by senior advisor Jeff Hensley to discuss what to do when leadership shifts in the middle of a capital campaign. From sudden retirements and staff departures to unexpected crises, they share practical ways to keep your campaign moving forward while maintaining confidence among staff, donors, and your board.

Whether your organization is facing a sudden departure, hiring a new leader, or simply preparing for the unexpected, this episode offers practical, experience-based advice for staying steady, maintaining donor confidence, and turning disruption into opportunity.

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Andrea Kihlstedt:
Oh no. What to do when the leadership goes topsy-turvy in the middle of your capital campaign.

I’m Andrea Kihlstedt and I’m a co-founder of Capital Campaign Pro. I’m usually here with my friend Amy Eisenstein. Amy’s off today. So, Jeff is with me instead. Jeff Hensley, who is a Senior Advisor for Capital Campaign Pro. If I had to describe Jeff besides talking about his wonderful wisdom and his deep experience in the capital campaign world, which is so deep, what I would say about Jeff is that he is calm. He is the calm in a storm. Even when things go awry, Jeff is a steady and reassuring, so he’s the guy you want to talk to about today’s unsettling subject.

Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Hensley:
Thank you. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. I wonder if my wife would agree, but we’ll leave that to another day.

When Staffing Transitions During a Capital Campaign

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Jeff, why don’t we start with some examples of the kinds of things that go awry with staffing during a campaign?

Jeff Hensley:
Well, thank you for the invitation. It’s an important topic. I think that staffing transitions, leadership transitions happen more often than we anticipate in campaigns, and if a campaign goes three, four years, we should anticipate that. It’s not something unusual. People do change and sometimes it’s not a crisis. Sometimes someone just has a different opportunity to pursue, maybe their spouse or partner gets a job elsewhere and they have to relocate. Sometimes people retire, they decide that they’ve done this enough and they’re ready for a new challenge.

Other times though, it is a moment of crisis, a leadership transition, maybe someone is fired or terminated for cause. So, it can create a crisis. But I think the first thing to say is we just want to take a step back, breathe a deep breath, and say:

“This isn’t uncommon. Other organizations have navigated these waters in the past. Maybe your organization has [too]; we can do this again. Let’s just regroup and move forward.”

Some examples of recent transitions that I’ve been a part of in serving as council for campaign include the retirement, unexpected retirement of a senior official, maybe the leader of the organization, and that was because his spouse needed additional medical care and he didn’t feel that he could continue his job as he was caring for his spouse. And that in his mind was his higher calling. That’s completely understandable, but it wasn’t in the plan. He was supposed to work another two years in the organization and lead the campaign to its conclusion. So, we’ve had to pivot at that point and figure out something new.

Another situation, someone was let go for cause and that created some conflict both amongst the staff as well as amongst the donor base. And so we’ve had to navigate those challenges. So, I think there’s a gamut, Andrea, of circumstances from crisis to natural transition that all organizations have to navigate.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, those are two interesting examples, Jeff. One is when you talk about the leader of an institution departing in the middle of a campaign, that to me has special consequences because it’s usually the leader of the institution that sets the direction and it’s usually the direction that is the basis for what the capital campaign is about.

Hiring a New Executive Director Who Might Change Direction

So, if the organization is then going to hire a new executive director, a new head, a new leader who might have a somewhat different direction, that raises some questions for the campaign, how have you seen that play out?

Jeff Hensley:
I think one of two ways in my experience. One is if the mission of the organization’s very clear and the board does not believe there’s going to be a radical change or even nuance of that mission and vision, then the campaign typically continues. And the idea is that we’ll try to find a new leader as soon as possible, appropriately so, and while that vision will, they’ll start to own that vision. There’ll be subtle adjustments, but basically the focus and the push of the campaign will remain the same. I think that’s typically the case in organizations where the campaign has been going along very successfully. People are excited about it.

There’s really no reason to make any kind of major shift or adjustment. In other situations though, I found maybe the campaign is a little stalled or there’s not a real clear certainty from the board’s perspective that the vision and mission of the organization will remain consistent, then it might be appropriate to take a pause and say, especially communicate that to your owner base and say:

“Look, we are taking this transition moment as an opportunity to reassess and reevaluate our priorities in this campaign. We want to make sure that the new leader, whomever that person is, will want that to be his or her or their vision for the campaign. So, we want to take a moment to reassess.”

And I’ve got one client that’s doing exactly that. It was a presidential transition and it was deemed appropriate to take about a year long pause to regroup to shore up donor relations, make sure that everyone is still on board with the organization, that their commitments were to the organization and not to the head of the organization and now the new leader’s in place and his vision is similar but not identical to the past president and we’re adjusting the priorities of the campaign accordingly.

So, I think it’s going to be very organization specific, but the transition could be seamless and continuing on in the campaign or there could be a moment of pause. I think as long as the communication is very clear to the donor base of why the pause is taking place, then there should be no problem to pick back up the momentum of the campaign after that necessary time of realignment.

Avoiding the “Sinking Ship” Analogy

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right. Sometimes, Jeff, when someone departs, particularly if it’s sudden, right? I mean every once in a while, I like to say this, every once in a while someone dies, so a board chair dies or an executive director dies. I mean sometimes these things are quite precipitous. It’s like from one day to the next and that leaves a vacuum in terms of whose job is it to figure out what to do with the campaign, right? Is it the campaign director, is it the development director? Is it the — who slides into that and what are the opportunities around figuring that out?

Jeff Hensley:
Right, exactly. It’s a great observation because it’s often the case that if a transition isn’t handled well, other staff start to pardon them and they get the impression, is this a sinking ship? Do I need to bail while I can? Is this an opportunity for me to make a transition?

So, one of the first things I typically recommend an organization to do if there’s been a sudden transition as you described, is to get the staff together and just have a moment of kind of recollecting, are we all okay with this? There could be a cathartic moment where they grieve, especially if a colleague has passed away. There needs to be that moment of celebrating his or her life of celebrating what they’ve done for the organization.

And then recollecting, are we all in the right seats on the bus of this campaign? Are we doing the right things? Do we need to adjust now that our colleague is no longer here and do we need to really shore up any weaknesses that we have? It’s also an opportunity to reassess, I think. And there might have been things that weren’t going as ideally as we had hoped. And so a transition is often a moment to step back and say:

“In filling this void, maybe there are different ways of filling it. Maybe new people can step up. Is this an opportunity for a more junior employee to kind of live into the potential that they have to do more and to take on an enhanced leadership role in this campaign?”

So, it can be an opportunity for others within the organization to do some deep professional growth and development.

And so I think if the communication is very transparent within the organization, if everyone is felt like they’re heard and valued and brought to the table around the common mission and then encouraged to think creatively about new roles and possibilities, then there’s a real high probability of continuing continuity and staff retention through the campaign and a real opportunity to enhance ultimately the organization by bringing in new skill sets and new opportunities for the employees that you have.

The Critical Importance of Transparency When Communicating

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Jeff, you said a word that I thought was super important in these situations, and that’s transparency. When something untoward happens, whatever it is, if there is no communication with the staff, and we’ll talk about donors in a minute, but if there’s no communication with the staff about what the plan is and who’s in charge and who’s making the decisions, then what happens is that you get people around the water cooler or in individual calls or conversations saying:

“Well, what’s going on? I don’t know. Right? Who’s doing what? Who’s calling the shots? Is my job secure? Is my job not secure? Is the campaign going to go ahead? Is the campaign not going to go ahead?”

If no one takes seriously the importance of communicating with the other key staff members early on, even as decisions are being made even before it is all clear, it makes a huge difference in how secure people feel as opposed to silence.

Jeff Hensley:
Exactly. And obviously that transparency has to be guarded with respect to what’s appropriate legally to share. Sometimes a transition doesn’t allow you to go into all the details of why someone was fired or why someone left, but to the extent that you can share information, I think it’s really important to fill that void with correct information and to calm nerves and anxieties. If it’s the top person that leaves the organization, that’s when the board needs to step up and really fill that role.

The board chair needs to really articulate that the mission of the organization has not changed. The good work that is being done day in and day out by the organization hasn’t changed. It’s just the leadership is changing and here are the reasons why that’s happening, and here’s our plan for how we’re going to address it moving forward. If it’s an executive team transition or a donor relations person transition, then I would say the executive director or president of the organization needs to fill that role and articulate that to their staff.

The board needs to obviously be involved as well, but that’s probably more of appropriate role for the executive director. But that’s really key to addressing what I was mentioning earlier about staff retention. You don’t want this to become a slippery slope of one staff person leaving and then three more following. Just because there was no real clear direction and no communication in the void of what was happening.

And so I think transparency is really important. And if we wanted to transition to the donor side of things, it’s extraordinarily important there because you don’t want the donor to think, “Well, do I have confidence in the leadership of this organization anymore?” And that’s why I really stress to my clients having an open door policy after the communication is made more broadly to the donor base to say, “If you have any questions or concerns, here’s the person to contact. We would love to sit down with you and address them as is appropriate and talk about a way moving forward.”

And again, I think in any transition, emphasizing the positives that have been going on, say it’s a retirement or a sudden loss of an employee, we are very grateful for the work that this employee has done and the direction that they have given this organization. We wish them well in their future pursuits and we are moving forward as an organization.

So, celebrating the past but not becoming obsessed with that, but really looking forward and all forward-thinking about what is to come and the opportunities that this transition represents to the organization as we celebrate the good work that’s been done in the past.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah. Jeff, before we go on, I just want to say to those who are listening, if you are in the middle of a crisis or you see a crisis of this sort or a major transition in staff happening and you feel that it would be helpful to talk to an expert on this subject, go to capitalcampaignpro.com. And on the upper right-hand corner of the homepage, you’ll see a golden or yellow button that says, Let’s Talk. Click on that button and fill out the form, and we will be happy to have a free strategy session with you to talk through some of these issues and how they might affect you because the way you take care of this sort of untoward event can make all the difference and how your campaign picks up and moves back into a success mode. So, don’t miss the opportunity to do that if that’s where you find yourself.

Communicating With Donors About a Sudden Change

Jeff, going back to our conversation, let’s talk a little more about donors. The conversation we’re having is about a crisis that happens mid-campaign. Let’s assume that an organization is in the middle of the quiet phase, that it’s solicited 10 or 15 of its largest donors, that it’s gotten some really significant gift in fairly quietly, but importantly, and then all of a sudden some key staff member leaves. What should they do about those donors?

Jeff Hensley:
I like to do a very specialized, customized communication to those donors personally. Before any public announcement is made. Typically, it could be in a few hours you will see a general email hitting your inbox about a staff transition. But because of your unique and special and extremely important relationship with our organization, we wanted to tell you first and see if you had any questions or concerns about it before we mention it to the broader public.

I think that kind of special communication highlights the fact that this donor is not simply your organization’s ATM machine that you go to only when you want money, but rather as a real important partner to the work that you’re doing. And so when there’s a transition, we go to those who are in partnership with us and talk about that. And so having really open lines of communication, hearing their concerns, maybe this was a beloved gift officer that they had worked with for the last 10 years. Maybe it’s a relief to some of them say:

“Well, I’m so glad that your organization finally took that action and got rid of this person because they were really pulling the campaign down.”

So, again, there can be a cathartic moment, I think with a donor too similar to the way I described earlier with the staff where there’s just a real sense of this happened, we’re dealing with it, we’re moving forward. We deeply value your partnership. We’d love for you to speak into this. Give us some of your thoughts and ideas about how we can maintain the momentum of this campaign and know that we are making these decisions and next steps with thought and intentionality, and we want you there along the way. And I think, I mean donors that are very savvy understand that these transitions happen. They’re probably successful in the business world, and this is very common in their world as well.

I think if they understand that you have a good handle on it and that you are moving forward with intentionality and purpose, then they are willing to walk with you. Sometimes there’s going to be hard feelings. This was my favorite person on your staff. Why did you let them go? You need to give them that opportunity to advance and to express their concerns and then say:

“We hear you. This was a tough decision for us. It did not necessarily work the way out that ideally we would like, but we don’t live in the ideal world. We live in the real world, and this is how we had to deal with it. And we appreciate your understanding and we’re here to continue this conversation with you.”

I think as long as you keep the lines of communication open doesn’t necessarily always mean that the donor is going to agree with what happened, but as long as those lines of communication are open, I think there’s at least the baseline of respect between the donor and the organization that is maintained. Will the donor continue to give at the levels that they gave in the past? That will be up to them in the end, but you’re going to do everything possible to assure them that the mission that they supported, not necessarily the person they supported, but the mission they supported remains as true today as it was a week ago before this transition happened and will continue to remain true.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
It’s so interesting. So much of the time when campaigns run into snags or trouble, the answer is to refocus on the mission that that’s at least the beginning point of finding where figuring out where to go is to stop thinking about the money, to stop thinking about the trauma, to stop thinking about what’s wrong, and think about what good the campaign is going to do to the people you serve.

Jeff Hensley:
That’s right.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And that always leads you in the right direction.

Jeff Hensley:
That’s right. That’s right. And I think it reminds donors why they give in the first place, right? Okay. It might’ve been a very dynamic gift officer that encouraged their generosity, but why in the end are you giving to this organization? Because you love what it does, you love the impact that it’s having. You’d like to be a part of that. That’s not going to change. If anything, we’re going to lean into that and grow that in creative ways in the coming months and years. We want you to be along for that journey with us. Will you be a part of that?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Jeff, you always talk about these things so well. I mean, you make me just calm and really you have the language for it. I so admire that.

Opportunities When Campaign Staff Changes

As we sort of begin to wrap up this conversation, it strikes me that even when these untoward things happen, these untoward oh no things happen in our campaigns. Opportunities come with them, right? That sometimes it actually opens the door to strengthening relationships to draw our donors closer, to get the board to begin to function more fully because nobody else is able to function without them. And as we think about how to move forward rather than being paralyzed, we think about the chances we have to actually lean into these problems and to invite key people in our organizations to help us solve them. I think sometimes we come out of these things better and stronger than we were going into them.

Jeff Hensley:
Exactly. Yeah. I have a doctor friend who says, “You know, Jeff, scar tissue is stronger than regular skin.” When you go through kind of a wounding situation, transition might be one such situation, come out of it stronger and better. Your skin is knit tighter and it’s more resilient.

And so like I said earlier, this is an opportunity, for example, for certain staff to step up and fill the void of the loss of this individual or a fellow staff person, and it allows them to stretch and do new things, bring their own flavor to that work and grow in amazing ways.

I’ve got a really good friend who’s a very successful vice president for advancement. She never interviewed for that job. It fell on her desk when her superior, the vice president for advancement was let go, and the organization looked at her and said, “We need you to function in this capacity as an interim. Will you do it?” And she said, “I will, but I am scared.” They said, “That’s okay. We are too, but we’re going to do this together.” And over that six month period of interim, she grew in amazing ways and the staff rallied around her and the organization’s board eventually said, “You’re our person. Will you do this now officially full time and we’ll remove the interim?” And she said, “I can and I will.” She would’ve never done that if-

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, so interesting.

Jeff Hensley:
So, sometimes we have to kind of be pushed off the ledge a little bit and jump, never going to jump, and this is an opportunity to be helped to jump, I think.

Final Thoughts

Andrea Kihlstedt:
So, Jeff, in closing, I always like to close by asking whether there are one or two highly very practical things someone might do if they find they wake up one morning and find that their organization is in this kind of crisis, what would you say to them if they calling you up, Jeff, help?

Jeff Hensley:
I think the first thing is we gather the staff and we have an all-staff meeting, or at least an all-team meeting if it’s a team member. And we just allow that to be a moment of sharing and expressing anxiety and concerns. That cathartic kind of situation that I was describing earlier, and then everyone just says:

“This is going to be okay. Our organization has navigated staff transitions in the past. We’re going to do that again in this situation.”

You can celebrate a little bit of the good work that that person has done, but really, again, focusing on the future. So, I think when you have that moment where everyone’s together, it allows for an organization not to have, as you said, these water cooler conversations perpetuate.

So, that would be the first thing I would do is bring everybody together, make sure everyone’s on the same page, and then make sure everyone knows what to say externally if someone asks so that there’s consistency of messaging across the board. And that’s especially important when you can’t really share everything about a staff transition for human resources purposes, et cetera. I think another thing to do is to find opportunities for you to lean into your relationships with your donors. This could be a wonderful moment of deeper relationship with someone when you come to them and say, “We’re going to be losing our executive director, and I wanted just to come to you and talk about that with you. This isn’t the money conversation. This is a partnership conversation.”

So, having the same kind of clarity and transparency with donors as you did with staff is going to be really important. And then as we’ve been talking about, it’s finally an opportunity to challenge your current staff to say:

• What new things do you want to do now?
• What new opportunities and challenges do you want to pursue as a way of investing both in them and them in the organization?

And I think sitting down and having each staff person kind of do an internal audit of what they’re doing and what they would like to do in the coming year is a great opportunity at this time of transition to get people to start thinking forward rather than backwards.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Jeff, that’s great. If I were in an organization in transition, those are exactly the kinds of things I would want to hear. And thank you so much for being able to articulate them so clearly for me and for our audience.

Jeff Hensley:
More than welcome. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, it’s been terrific talking to you today. You’re such a valued member of our team. And next time I get rattled, I’m just going to kind of imbue your Kong and my psyche. Thanks, Jeff. I’ll see you next time.