Podcast: Does Everyone in Your Organization Know about Your Capital Campaign?

Season 3, Episode 7

In this episode, campaign experts Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt share some stories about what happens when the program staff hasn’t been informed about the capital campaign. This episode will get you thinking about how and when to best inform your entire staff about the campaign.

Listen Now:

Amy Eisenstein:
Imagine what might happen if your program staff is in the dark about your campaign. Stay tuned. We have a great story for you.

Hi, I am Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my co-founder, Andrea Kihlstedt, and we have some great stories for you today specifically about how to engage your program staff and your campaign, and honestly why it’s important.

Andrea, get us started.

The Importance of Informing Your Staff About the Campaign

Andrea Kihlstedt:
I do have a story to start us off, Amy. Years ago I did a campaign for, gee, I think it was a YWCA in a down community. They were renovating an old YWCA building in this community, and I was working with them on a campaign, and a woman, we were in the middle of the campaign and a woman walked into the front door and up to the desk and said, “I’d like to make a gift to your capital campaign,” to the woman sitting at the desk.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And you can imagine what might have happened, which is that the woman who was sitting at the desk said, “What?”

Amy Eisenstein:
“What capital campaign?”

Andrea Kihlstedt:
“What capital campaign?” And the person who walked up to the desk said, “Well, I understand that your organization is in a campaign to renovate this whole building.” And the woman at the desk said, “I haven’t heard anything about it.”

Amy Eisenstein:
Oh my gosh.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And the woman who walked in said, “Well, is there anyone I can talk to about it?” And the woman said, “Well, I don’t know.”

Amy Eisenstein:
Oh, and they were both embarrassed, right?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And they were both embarrassed.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
What a disaster. Well, here’s the backstory to that is this, the Executive Director had talked to her mom who lived in the community and have said, “I’m not sure that our staff knows very much about this campaign. I want you to go in and tell them that you want to be a big donor to the campaign and see what happens.”

Amy Eisenstein:
It was a test?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
It actually was a set up.

Amy Eisenstein:
Oh no.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
It was a set up. But boy did it ever make everybody realize that the staff needed to be informed, not just casually, but that the staff really needed to understand what the campaign was for, how it was going to change their lives, everyone. That it got us thinking that the program staff is really the front line of your organization.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
If you’re an animal shelter, for example, the people who are the intake people for the pets are dealing with donors. They’re not just dealing with dog owners or cat owners, they’re dealing with donors. They need to be informed about what’s going on. And that’s true up and down your organization.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. And you can absolutely imagine that for any scenario where somebody walks into a hospital, walks into a YMCA, walks into an animal shelter, or honestly anybody calling your organization. It doesn’t have to be a physical walk-in either. Whoever’s answering the phone picks up and somebody says, “I’d like to make a donation to the campaign,” and the person answering the phone says, “What campaign?” It’s not a good scenario.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Not a good scenario, exactly. So it turns out to be more important. We get so busy with raising the money for the campaign that we often forget that we in development are not the only people out there talking to donors, that our donors almost always have multiple points of contact with our organization. And we better be sure that the people in those points of contact know what’s going on.

Now, there’s another part of this story, which is that sometimes when program staff find that the organization they work for is raising a ton of money to do X, Y, and Z, and the program staff feel as though they are operating under lousy work conditions.

• They feel like they’re not paid enough.
• They feel like their work is not well appreciated.
• They feel like the quarters in which they are working are not up-to-date.

Unless you can explain to them how all of this money that’s being raised is going to help them, is going to make a difference in the way they function, they may bear some resentment to the fact that you can be raising this ton of money that’s taking a lot of energy and a lot of effort, and isn’t doing anything for their working conditions.

So you need to look carefully at that when you think about a capital campaign and how you communicate that with your staff. They need to understand why you’re doing it, what it’s for, how it will benefit the organization, if and how it will benefit what their role in the organization is. It’s just so important and it’s so easy to overlook that, just not simply not to think about it.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. So I think it’s so important to think about how you’re going to communicate with staff, when you’re going to communicate with them, and if there’s any opportunity for them to be involved not necessarily in the decision making process, but almost like a feasibility study where you’re getting the buy-in and the engagement of your donors prior to a campaign, you may want to take some kind of similar approach with your staff and let them weigh in early on in the conversations and just provide their feedback, a process for providing feedback so that they felt heard, they felt seen, they feel part of the campaign, and that they are aware of what’s going on, even from early discussion phases.

And I recognize that the bigger your organization is, maybe the more complicated that is to do. However, if you are going to have a donor walk in and say something about the campaign, you don’t want your staff to be caught by surprise.

Having a Campaign for Your Staff

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, and the other way around also. [When] the staff is excited about the campaign. You want the staff to be saying:

“We are raising all this money to renovate this clinic. When you come here next year, it’s going to look quite different because we’re raising all this money. Do you know about the campaign?”

I have a good story about how somebody did this well. It was an Executive Director for an organization I worked for that decided early on that this was important. And a couple of times before and during the campaign, here’s what she did. As you suggested Amy, she planned to have three staff meetings. Now, a staff member could go to one of these three meetings, and she did it over food.

Amy Eisenstein:
Of course.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
I think there was a lunch meeting in the cafeteria that you could go to a supper meeting or a breakfast and you could choose which of these staff meetings you wanted to go to. And at those staff meetings, she had the development person and the program people. And she was there, of course, and they talked about what the plans were and why they were raising this money and what the consequences would be, and they got people’s suggestions. And they did that again in the middle of the campaign, which was an update information.

And in the middle of one, when the campaign was already rolling, they actually announced their staff campaign, and they did have a staff campaign. And the idea behind that was that every staff member should have an opportunity to make a personal contribution to the campaign, but should not feel pressured to do so. She put that right out there. She said:

“So far our campaign has raised X percent of the goal. We want to be sure that those of you who want to make a contribution can do so. We’re setting up payroll deductions if you wish to do that. You will be able to get forms here and there. We would appreciate it if you would make a contribution, but none of you should feel under any obligation to do so.”

Amy Eisenstein:
I think it’s a tricky line, right? Of a fine line. If the boss is saying, “You’re invited to make donations and it comes out of payroll,” every organization has to do it the way that works with the culture of their organization and be highly sensitive to the fact that not every staff member will want to give.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’s right.

Amy Eisenstein:
And they should absolutely not feel pressured to give. One great example, and I don’t even remember where this came from, but there was a great story of somebody on the custodial staff making this enormous gift and sharing that they were the one to sort of kick off the staff campaign and say:

“Look, if I can do it, if you want to do it too, this organization has been my whole career and my whole life, and I believe in it.”

And it was motivating and inspiring and it wasn’t the boss asking for contributions. So I think it’s important to think about how, when you invite staff members to contribute truly without pressure or consequences for not giving.

Summing Up

Andrea Kihlstedt:
So I think what we’re saying, Amy, is that this has at least two pieces to it.

1. The first piece is to be sure that every staff member is informed about what you’re doing, understands the plans, understands what you’re raising money for, may even have input into a discussion of what those plans should be. Right? That’s super important. You don’t want any staff member working in your organization not being at aware of the fact that there is a campaign in the works.
2. And the second is you need to address and have addressed the question of staff participation in the campaign in a way that is sensitive, in a way that gives staff members opportunity without putting pressure on them to do that, and that that does vary organization to organization. And when it is done sensitively and well, I think everybody comes out feeling fine about the campaign. And when people feel like they’ve been squeezed to give, that does not come out feeling so good about the campaign.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. Excellent. So anything you can do to get your staff on board, literally, figuratively, to get them to be advocates and excited and ambassadors and wonderful greeters, whatever role they play, so that they can excitedly talk about the campaign, that is what you should do, yes.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
And then once you think you’ve done that, get your mother to go up to the desk and pretend to be a big donor and see what happens.

Amy Eisenstein:
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I hope this was informative and maybe even a little entertaining. And we’ll see you next time.