Podcast: How Engaging Meetings Drive Capital Campaign Success

Season 4, Episode 29

In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt break down how to plan and run meetings that keep campaign volunteers engaged, energized, and eager to contribute. Discover practical strategies for structuring meetings, creating effective agendas, and ensuring that every participant feels heard and valued.

If you’re interested in learning more about creating compelling meetings or want to explore Capital Campaign Pro’s services, tune in and find out how successful campaigns are fueled by thoughtful planning and enthusiastic participation.

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Amy Eisenstein:
Campaigns are one meeting after another after another, and if you want to have a successful campaign, you better get good at running meetings.

Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague and co-founder, Andrea Kihlstedt, and today we are going to talk about the important topic of running good meetings. Andrea, why are running good meetings so important, especially when it comes to capital campaigns?

Engaging Meetings Drive Capital Campaign Success

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Amy, meetings, we so seldom think about, well, what does it take to have a good meeting? But when meetings aren’t good, people stop showing up.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, yes.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
You can’t have a capital campaign where nobody participates, where people don’t show up, where they’re not excited, where they’re not wanting to be part of the process. And if understanding how to run a good meeting will help you get people so that they show up at meetings and they’re excited to be there, it’s going to make a huge difference in how your campaign moves forward.

Amy, recently, I had a reminder of that. In this final campaign that I personally worked on and did, the campaign was tremendously successful financially, and one of the reasons that I knew all the way along the line, it was a long campaign and we worked on it for five, six years, one of the reasons I knew chances were good it was going to be a success is that nobody wanted to stop being on the [campaign] committees. Nobody wanted the committees to end. I would say:

“Well, this committee has served its purpose. We’re going to close it up now. Thank you very much. We’re going to start another committee to do something.”

Everybody was, “No, no, no. No, no, no. We don’t want to end this committee.” And everybody stayed involved in this campaign from the beginning to the end. And I thought to myself, that’s a sign that a campaign is going to be successful.

Amy Eisenstein:
That’s totally remarkable.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Totally remarkable.

Amy Eisenstein:
Honestly, I don’t even know that I’ve ever heard anything like it. Who wants to go to more meetings and to continue to be at more meetings? So that really is a testament to how successful and how engaging and thought-provoking and meaningful those meetings were to have volunteers want to continue. That is a sign of a great volunteer engagement activity, right?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’s right.

Amy Eisenstein:
All right, and I don’t even think we need to describe boring and bad meetings. Everybody’s been a part of them, and nobody wants to go. And so if you experience that at your organization or other organizations, really taking the time to think about how to create better, engaging, more thoughtful, more meaningful meetings so that your volunteers want to show up is such an important topic.

Setting Up a Capital Campaign Meeting Agenda

So let’s start with, I think, the most obvious thing, but of course, we’ll go on from there, is a meeting agenda, really giving some thought to what is the content of the meeting?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, and that really starts with what is the purpose of the meeting? So often, we have meetings just because we’re supposed to have meetings.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right. Every six weeks, we meet.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Every six weeks, we meet, right? Now, all right, that’s okay, but you better have a purpose for the meeting, you better have something that you want the meeting to accomplish. If you’re just going to come together and say, “Well, we came together. Goodbye,” people aren’t going to come back to very many meetings.

But if at this meeting, here’s what we want to accomplish, and everybody understands and knows that, and you actually accomplish it, then it’s going to feel like people’s time was well spent. So start with what’s the purpose of the meeting and then develop the agenda.

What’s the Purpose of the Meeting?

Amy Eisenstein:
So let’s be a little more specific about what the purpose could be. There’s a decision that needs to be made. There are action items that need to be discussed or planned. There needs to be important brainstorming to be done. So what’s a good specific purpose of a campaign meeting? And I know that it changes from the beginning of the campaign to the end of the campaign. The purpose certainly is not going to be the same at each meeting, but let’s see if we can brainstorm a few examples of a good purposeful campaign meeting.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Starting early on in the campaign process, one of the purposes is going to be to wrestle with the case for support or the donor discussion guide so everybody has a chance to look at it, to think about it, to discuss it, to participate in making it better. And everybody knows that they’re going to be called on to do that, and they may have homework to look at it in between times. And then you bring it back at the next meeting to say, “Well, everybody participated. Here’s the next iteration. Please take a look at that.”

So to finalize that, that may take one meeting, two meetings, three meetings, but everybody knows that’s what you’re going to be working on. That’s a common thing to do in the beginning of the campaign.

And the great reason to do that in a committee meeting is that by working on that case for support, everybody in that committee gets to know what the case for support is, gets to understand what the campaign’s really about, and gets to put their spin on how to articulate it. So you end up with the people in those committees being very conversant with the case because they helped to develop it.

Amy Eisenstein:
It doesn’t need wordsmithing. It means thinking of the ideas and how to communicate the ideas and the impact that you want to have.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That’s right, that’s right.

Amy Eisenstein:
I can’t imagine anything worse than writing by committee, but we’re talking about concepts, how to think about the big picture, how to articulate that.

Making Sure Everyone Has a Chance to Speak

Andrea Kihlstedt:
So let’s actually take that point and break it down. Let’s imagine we’re in a meeting, and we want people to be looking at the case for support and giving their ideas. You will have to be very clear upfront that while you will be happy to accept people’s word changes offline, that you really want to be discussing the bigger concepts of this. Is it compelling? What in this document did you find compelling? What put you to sleep? So you will have to be very, very specific in what it is you’re looking for from the committee.

Then when the committee gets together, and Sally Wordsmith, as she inevitably will, says, “Oh, I don’t like this word here.” You can say, “Sally, that’s terrific. Why don’t you send me an email about that? Now, let’s keep the conversation broad and let’s go around with everybody giving one suggestion about what’s exciting in this document and one suggestion about what might be stronger.”

Now, think about that as a strategy, to actually, instead of just waiting and seeing who the loudmouth is going to be, which again often happens, you will have a loudmouth. You will have some very smart people who never say anything unless they are invited to say something, right? So you have to facilitate a meeting in a way that gives everyone air time.

In this committee, this group I was telling you about earlier, where nobody wanted to leave, there was one gentleman who served on this committee. He had been the board chair of the organization in years past. He was a Quaker. In fact, he had headed up a Quaker school. Now, Quakers are very good at being quiet, they are schooled in being quiet, and it always made me laugh because I knew he had good ideas. He was a very experienced, very smart guy, but unless I called him out or one of us called him out …

Amy Eisenstein:
He wouldn’t say anything.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
… he wouldn’t say anything. So it became kind of a joke in the meeting, right? “Well, now, let’s hear what George has to say.”

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes. So you do want a mechanism, a reminder to go around. You want to have the facilitator call on everybody and let them know in advance, “We want to hear from everybody.” And that will ensure that the loudmouths, they get their turn, but they don’t dominate because they know in advance that you’re going to go around, that you’re going to call on everybody. I really like to think about having everybody at any meeting talk three times if possible, once at the beginning, once in the middle, and once in the end.

Introductions and a Mechanism to Get People Talking

So the beginning, whether you’re actually doing introductions or inviting people to share or bring things back from the last meeting, it can be sort of more get to know you or more content-focused. So depending on the structure and people know each other well already, you can have a different opening comment or introduction activity, but that actually gets people’s voices into the room. And so by not doing that, the people that are more hesitant to speak are less likely to speak up later because they haven’t had their voice in the room yet.

So an introduction. Then, at some point in the meeting, there should be a discussion or a feedback requested or something asked of people so that everybody can contribute to the meeting in some way. And as you’re designing the agenda, you do this with that in mind, that you will make space and time and it’s important. If your meeting agenda is just, “This one reports out, and that one reports out, and that one reports out,” and everybody goes home, that’s a terrible, boring meeting because most people haven’t participated, and honestly, it didn’t even matter that they were there. And that’s when people stop showing up.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
As you might imagine, as you know, I have done literally hundreds of meetings in the course of my career, I mean hundreds of them. And still, when there’s a meeting on the books and I have to work with a client to plan it, there’s a piece of me that starts out:

“Oh, my. What are we going to do? What are we going to do with this? I don’t know what the goal is. I don’t know.”

I still start out with a bunch of negative stuff, and I have to convince myself to get through that to say:

“All right. We have an opportunity here with this group of people. How can we use them effectively?”

And if the answer is that there is no way to use them effectively and that we can’t find a reason for them to be coming together, then we should cancel the meeting.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes. Let me echo that and give you permission, listener, to cancel the meeting. If your donors, if your campaign volunteers are going to be bored, if you’re wasting their time, cancel the meeting. Be respectful of their time. Don’t bring them together to listen to a bunch of reports. They don’t need to be there, and that’s not going to make them think more favorably of you or inclined to show up the next time. Yes.

More on the Purpose of the Campaign Meeting

So let’s think of another purpose for a meeting, let’s go a little bit further into the campaign in the quiet phase, and we’re bringing people together. What is the purpose of that meeting?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, one of the things that we often do in the quiet phase of the campaign is to review and talk about prospective donors, about the top-level donors, to actually look at lists and to say, “Here are the people that are on the top of our list. Let’s go through and find out who knows whom, who has suggestions about how to approach this person, who might be able to approach this person. Let’s actually have a conversation about our top five donors.” Or maybe more, maybe you go through a list of 30 donors quickly to find out who knows whom. That would be okay, too. So donor review and strategizing is a perfectly effective and good way to think about that.

The other kinds of things that come up for campaigns throughout are issues of strategy. Should we raise the campaign goal? We’ve done better on our lead gifts than we thought we were going to do, or we’ve done worse on our lead gifts than we thought we were going to do. Is it time to recommend to the board that we make a change in our campaign goal? Let’s talk about the pros and the cons of doing that, and let’s go around and get people’s suggestions. Is it too soon to make a decision of that sort or not? What do we think? And you get everyone weighing in. This is a judgment issue. There is not a right or a wrong, it’s a judgment issue, and all of the people on your committee, they have been with the process, they know what’s going on, they will have suggestions and ideas.

And you can at the end wrap it up saying, “What I’ve heard is that most of you think it’s time for us to go to the board and talk about raising the goal.” Or, “Most of you don’t think that the time is right yet, so shall we revisit this in the next month?” So you can actually have a meeting where everyone has a chance to participate. You can then summarize where the group has come and figure out what you’re going to do going forward as a result of that conversation.

Amy Eisenstein:
I love that. I think that is such a good concrete, tangible example. Let me go back, though, to this idea of reviewing prospect lists and talking about donors.

So I know that I’ve been in too many meetings where you bring people together with that intent, and everybody says, “I don’t know anybody on the list,” and then it’s crickets. So you want to avoid that. So really thinking about, in advance, finding donors that people on your committee do know or are connected with on LinkedIn and so that there is a starter for the conversation.

You might also have somewhat of a quasi-working meeting, and so you may share the names of three donors, and say, “Please look on your LinkedIn and your Facebook and see who’s connected to this donor that you know that is in your circle.” Maybe even let people Google that person. What can we learn about this donor in 15 minutes just from doing an internet search?

People will come up with different terms and different things and look for different things, and then you can start to have a conversation. But you do want to avoid this, “Here’s a list of 30 donors,” and nobody in the room knows anybody on it, and then you’re stuck. So plan ahead for that, right?

Have a Working Zoom Meeting

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah. I think that’s a fantastic idea. Working meetings, I think, are a great idea. Many, many meetings these days are Zoom meetings, and you can have a working Zoom meeting, where on one hand, people are looking things up and participating. On the other hand, we’re all on virtually.

Let’s talk for a minute, Amy, about the process of facilitating a meeting, particularly facilitating a Zoom meeting, but really facilitating any meeting, and there are a variety of ways to do that. Sometimes, we just go around the circle and let everybody, sort of one person follows on another person on another person. Sometimes, we just sit and see who has something to say. We sit quietly until somebody offers their suggestion, and then somebody else will offer their suggestion.

Sometimes, the facilitator will call on people, and you have to decide how you’re going to facilitate a particular meeting. They all have different purposes. Letting people choose their own timing for when they’re going to participate takes much more time. There’s always a dead time while people think about whether they want to step up or not step up, and that drives some people crazy. That drives you crazy, Amy, I know it does.

Amy Eisenstein:
A little bit, a little bit. I’ve gotten better at it.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right. But it takes some practice to get good at it. There is value.

Amy Eisenstein:
There’s value in it in certain times, and if you do have the time, and it takes patience, of course.

Decide How to Facilitate Your Meeting in Advance

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Now, how you decide to facilitate a meeting you should decide in advance, and you should tell everybody how you’re going to do it. “I’m going to call on everybody starting in the upper right corner of my screen by where you are on my screen,” or, “I’m going to call on you going around the table,” or, “If you have a suggestion, please raise your hand. Let me know, and I will call on you.” Or you can have people call on the next person, so John can then call on Tim, and Tim would call-

Amy Eisenstein:
That’s my least favorite model, just so you know. It doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just my least favorite.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right, right. The problem with it is people then forget who has been called on and who hasn’t been called on, and then it becomes like being invited to join a team in grade school.

Amy Eisenstein:
You’re last picked, you’re picked last. I don’t like it that much.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
You’re picked last, that’s right.

Amy Eisenstein:
Anyways.

An Example Using Our Own Firm

Andrea Kihlstedt:
But the point really is that there are many ways to facilitate a meeting, and you can always do one, you can switch it up, but whatever it is you’re going to do, you should let everybody know what the plan is. Because it will make everyone feel more comfortable that they will be heard because you have planned for that.

And at Capital Campaign Pro, we have regular Wednesday calls for our clients, and we’ve now done this for years. In the beginning, we really weren’t sure whether it was going to work or how to do it, but we have developed a process for these meetings that really works like magic, I think. The meetings just flow, and it’s quite simple really.

The meetings are led by two Capital Campaign advisors, and we typically have between, I don’t know, 8 and 15 people participate. It’s like drop-in hours. These are optional. We call them Group Coaching and Peer Support.

So it’s not always the same people that show up, but often, the core client base that comes every single week is the same, but people come in and come out, so it’s a slightly different group every week. Okay, keep going.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Thank you. And every meeting is run the same way. So we have a lead advisor and a secondary advisor, and the lead advisor says, “I’m going to go around and call on each person. I’d like you to introduce yourself, and in a sentence or two, tell us what your campaign is about and where you are in your campaign. And if you brought a question to the meeting today, tell us the question, we’ll keep track of it, and at the end, we will organize the questions and discuss them all.”

So we go through one person after another, and we call on them, the lead advisor calls on them. So everyone knows they’re going to be heard, everybody knows they’re going to be invited. Everybody gives a very brief introduction, but you know who is in that room. Let’s say we’ve had 12 people there, and we have six or seven questions, and nobody has to bring a question, but we have six or seven questions. Then the advisors organize the questions and say, “Well, let’s start with this question.” And then we have a robust discussion of that question. It’s not just the advisors who give advice. We open it up to the group, “Here’s what the question is about. Who has experience with this?” And there’s a general conversation about that, and then we move from question to question.

When we’re about five minutes before the end of the session, they are 60-minute sessions, then we do what we call a lightning round. And again, we call on everybody, the advisor calls on everybody, and says, “In just a word or two, tell us what’s one thing from this meeting that you want to take home, you want to remember that really stood out for you as something that can be helpful?” And we go around, and everybody participates in that way. Those meetings are magical. Everybody comes to understand that their voice will be heard. People have a chance to think about, “Well, what did I learn?” They have a chance to share their experience about the questions that are asked. You can use that format in almost any meeting, you could adapt it slightly, but it really works.

Amy Eisenstein:
And I just want to point out that all the things we’ve talked about can be applied, whether you’re meeting in person or on Zoom, and it’s equally important to call on or have everybody participate in both settings. You can have a deadly board meeting or a deadly committee meeting on Zoom, and you can have a deadly boring committee meeting in person, and you can have robust, interesting, engaging meetings in both settings as well.

And of course, we’re using Zoom for whatever format, whatever video meeting you’re having, so we’re just using that as the generic term for online meetings. But really making sure that people are engaged, participating, know that you expect them to comment.

Keep Everyone Participating

One of my favorite lines when somebody is dominating the conversation or somebody is being especially quiet, I like to say:

“Let’s hear from someone we haven’t heard from yet.”

And so if you haven’t established that you’re actually literally going around the room and you’re waiting for people to volunteer, you can encourage participation by saying, “Now, let’s hear from someone who we haven’t heard from yet,” and that’ll quiet down the loud ones and encourage people who haven’t shared yet to pipe in.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
One of the other things that we do in our Wednesday calls is that we give people warning that we’re going to be calling on them. So we will say, “Amy, would you share with us something or other? Susan, you’re going to be next.” So we’re always telling people who’s going to come next so they can start thinking about what it is they want to say. And that’s a simple strategy that works really well, that sets up the expectation. Then when we turn to Susan, and we say, “Susan, it’s your turn. David, you’re going to be up next,” there’s something that makes people feel less like a deer in the headlights, because they’ve had a little opportunity to put their ideas together before you come to them.

Final Thoughts

So I think what this really is a reminder of is that there is a lot to think about beyond the meeting content, about how to run the meeting so that everybody feels seen, feels heard, feels happy that they were there and that they participated. And that a sure evaluation of whether you’re doing that or not is whether people are happy to show up at your meetings.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes. I think that’s such an important point. Really, there’s so much evidence that points to if you engage people well, they will give more to your campaign, and your campaign is more likely to be successful. So while it may seem onerous and painful to really plan out thoughtful meetings, everybody’s going to be delighted when you cancel a meeting.

If you don’t have a good reason to have a meeting, and you drag people, they miss dinner, they miss bedtime, they miss whatever else they could be doing, and then you have a boring meeting, and they didn’t really need to be there because someone just read a report, they’re going to be unhappy with you.

So occasionally, it is a good practice to cancel a meeting, but in advance of every meeting, you want to be thoughtful and planful and then have your volunteers never want to quit. Isn’t that the best, the best outcome, the best outcome?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That is the best outcome, really.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. So if you’ve been listening to this and you want to learn more about facilitating great meetings and planning really thoughtful, planful agendas, this is something that our campaign team works with our clients on so that they can be successful. Also, if you’re intrigued by our weekly client calls, we call them Group Coaching and Peer Support, we have all sorts of levels of service that you can join at.

Whether you want to work with one of our advisors, one-on-one, or not, you’re doing more of a do-it-yourself campaign, we invite you to join us for those. So visit the Capital Campaign Pro website and check out our services and what we have to offer. We’d love to talk to you about how we could support you through your campaign. Thanks for joining us. Great talk today, Andrea.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Thanks, Amy. Always fun.

Amy Eisenstein:
We’ll see you next time. Bye.