Discipline, Focus, Communication and Teamwork
Spell Success in Your Major Gifts Effort

By Norm Fishman, Executive Vice President
Los Angeles

“Success is in the preparation, not in the implementation.”

There are always unexpected challenges to any special effort even after you have done the due diligence necessary to launch a capital campaign or a special project.

In Minneapolis, I professionally led an estimated $12 million effort of a $35 million total project to build a home for the aged. This was the first capital campaign the home had conducted in more than 45 years. All of the demographics studies were indicating that there were insufficient beds, and that this entire campus including a HUD housing building and a market-priced high rise would be fully utilized.

The volunteer leadership of the community was on board, and we launched our campaign.

This campaign required a rigid discipline in order to succeed. We had developed a plan that had two relatively short windows of six months each to complete the campaign. These two activity windows were separated by another six-month period to conduct the organization’s annual campaign.

While everyone agreed to this discipline, very few really believed that there could be complete separation of the efforts. To the credit of the leadership, we were able to prove the skeptics wrong.

We started with lead and advance gifts. We were fortunate to have three seven-figure gifts and four high-six-figure gifts that generated $6 million early in the campaign. Continued effort increased the campaign production to $9 million.

At that point, the home informed our leadership that the total required was now $14 million.

A strong communication system allowed us to properly share this change and we moved forward with the campaign. We arrived at the $14 million without going to the general community and with no gift less than $10,000-plus.

Numerous people approached us to open up participation to smaller contributions. We launched one more effort, and the community responded with an additional $500,000 of contributions between $1,000 and $10,000.

All of this occurred within the prescribed time frame and allowed us to have a grand opening of the senior’s campus on a day that had tremendous rain storms. Still, more than 2,500 people attended.

The key ingredients in this successful effort?

Discipline, focus, communication, and teamwork.

The volunteers showed discipline in keeping to the agreed-upon time frames and by following the time-tested methods of seeking the largest gifts first and proceeding with the campaign in an orderly fashion, approaching prospects for gifts in descending order.

Everyone in the campaign effort remained focused on the overall goal, the potential results, and the need to stay on track and complete their tasks on time – and even early.

Communication was critical, in sharing progress as gifts came in and in properly communicating the increased goal and the reasons for it.

For this successful effort, staff and volunteers worked in a true spirit of teamwork, joining forces to help tell the story, communicate the need and provide the important support to help instill donor confidence and “close the gift.”