When You Are Fundraising,
Put Your “Family” First

The Importance of an “Inner Family” Campaign
With so much in the media about balancing work and family life, you might wonder if we are offering the “magic pill” to personal satisfaction in development work.
This is not a self-help article about managing your priorities. But it is about putting “family” first in a very important sense. It’s about why each successful campaign effort should start internally, with your “Inner Family.”

What Is “The Inner Family”?
Every organization has one. And each organization defines theirs differently. The “Inner Family” is simply that group of people in your organization who are closest to you and the project that is the basis of your campaign. In a major campaign, it may be your board, your executive staff (or all of your staff) and your campaign steering committee. In a hospital campaign, it may include key medical personnel, and a combination of your hospital’s governing board and your foundation board. For a school, it may include the school board, as well as your foundation or alumni and development board. In collaborations, your “Inner Family” may be quite large, to include the leadership of the partner organizations.

Why The Inner Family First?
Because it demonstrates worthiness and internal support. How can we expect an “”outsider” to invest in a project that we and our leaders don’t deem worthy of support?

The Inner Family provides important momentum and a basis for others to join a winning team. It is an important first step in your “quiet phase” of your campaign and is the foundation on which others will build their investment. This is why it is so critical that you plan and prepare for the Inner Family as you would any other phase of your campaign.

And, the Inner Family allows us to “practice” our campaign skills in a friendly and supportive environment. The Inner Family is essentially a “campaign within a campaign.” In many respects, how you conduct your Inner Family is a predictor of how your campaign will proceed. So, as a development professional you should work with your consultant and your planning and steering committees to structure the Inner Family using “best practices” in campaign strategy and solicitation. Staff and volunteers who conduct this first phase of the campaign “by the book” will find success and satisfaction that will propel them to future campaign success down the road.

Setting the Inner Family Goal
Each “Inner Family” campaign should have two goals: A participation goal and a production goal. The production goal will depend on discreet appraisals of the capacity of the individuals who comprise the Inner Family and will vary from project to project. The participation goal is always 100%.

Is there a magic number?
No, Inner Families may be comprised of a handful of donors, or may be made up of several dozen. In defining your Inner Family, you should keep in mind two things:

Capitalizing on the Inner Family Technique
Because the Inner Family should employ best practices and is essentially a “mini-campaign,” how can you successfully use this technique outside of a major gifts campaign? In the next issue of New$ You Can U$e, we’ll explore Inner Family campaigning for your annual campaign.

A key to success in launching your campaign with an Inner Family phase is meeting certain Criteria for Success in campaigning. To learn whether your organization meets those criteria and is ready for a campaign, contact Jeffrey Byrne & Associates at 1-800-222-9233, or visit us on the web at www.jeffreybyrneandassociates.com.