3 Ways to Get the Very Best Capital Campaign Leadership

Imagine this experience…

You learn that an organization in your town is planning a capital campaign. You ask the organization’s director who is going to chair the campaign. She tells you who has agreed to serve as honorary chair and who will be the two working chairs. They are names you know. And without a doubt, you know that her campaign is going to be successful!

How do you know her campaign will succeed?

Because you know that when these folks sign on for something, it happens. Period! No question about it.

That’s the kind of campaign leadership you want for your campaign — leadership that makes your success inevitable.

How to Recruit the Best Leadership for Your Campaign

On a recent weekly peers call for Capital Campaign Pro, we had a juicy discussion about what you want in your campaign leadership and how to get it.

We boiled it down to three things…

1. Build a Leadership Team

These days it’s very hard to find THE perfect campaign chair. The kind of people you are looking for travel more and are less inclined to spend all of their time volunteering. So rather than looking for all of the characteristics you need in one person, think about putting together a leadership team.

Consider one or two or even three Honorary Chairs and two or three Working Chairs.

2-3 Honorary Chairs: Roles and Responsibilities

Honorary chairs should be deserving of honor. Perhaps they played an outsized role in building your organization. Perhaps they are heroes in your community. Perhaps they are generous philanthropists whose gifts to many organizations have helped shape the community.

While you will ask the honorary chairs to be publicly associated with your campaign, you can shape the job description for each person to fit his or her availability and willingness. As my colleague said on our group call, “People who are honorary chairs are willing do to many things as long as it doesn’t involve going to a meeting!”

Here are two critical things you want from all honorary chairs:

1. You want them to lend their names to the campaign.
2. You want them to make a campaign gift.

Here are some other things they might do:

• They might talk with some of their contacts about the campaign.
• Perhaps they will host a campaign event or two at their homes.
• They might agree to be honored at a public campaign event.
• They might even solicit a gift or two.

2-3 Working Chairs: Roles and Responsibilities

From working chairs you want something more. The ideal working chairs actually help you get the work done. They do attend campaign meetings. They help identify and cultivate donors. They help solicit gifts. They play an active role in moving the campaign forward.

Your Working Chairs should have strong reputations in the community. But the sine qua non of any working chair is that they are responsible and do what they say they will do. You want to be able to rely on them. You won’t have the time or energy to have to chase after them and nag them to do what they promised to do.

So when you’re selecting Working Chairs, if you have a choice between someone committed to your project who follows through and someone who has better name recognition but doesn’t follow through, chose the former!

Once again, as with honorary Chairs, you can divvy up the job among two or three people. For example, you might have an overall Chair, a Steering Committee Chair, an overall chair and a Lead Gift chair.

2. Identify the Best People for the Campaign Leadership Jobs

As you make your lists of possible people for your leadership team, don’t be afraid to try to recruit the perfect people even if you are afraid they might turn you down. Look around your community. Ask other people in the community who would lend that air of inevitability to your campaign.

You can use the search for the perfect campaign leadership team to build support. You’ll gather a list of names of people you can then consider for other campaign committees even if they’re not willing or able to chair your campaign.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Ask

Once you’ve made a robust list, put it in priority order.

At the top of the list, put the person who has a strong relationship to your organization AND a powerful reputation in the community. Go visit them. Tell them why you think their leadership is important. Discuss the role or roles they might be willing to play.

Once you’ve tied that person down, you’ll be ready to go farther afield. Having one great person who has agreed to serve will make others more likely to say yes.

Don’t be afraid of asking someone you think might turn you down. Even if they do, they will have learned about your campaign and may well offer to help in some other way. They might suggest other good candidates. They might even be willing to serve on a campaign committee.

The Right Campaign Leaders Will Make All the Difference

Getting the right leaders for your campaign will have a profound impact on its success. Take the time and effort to find the right people to chair your campaign. It will make everything a good bit easier.

Remember — this won’t happen overnight. Finding the perfect campaign leadership team will take some time and attention. But once you get a powerful leadership team on board, the success of your campaign might seem inevitable!