March 1994
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 15
Food
Continued from page 14
Bank’s $950,000 annual operating
budget comes from a per-pound han
dling fee that the agencies contribute
for the free food they receive.
Because of the territory the Food
Bank serves, its current home in
leased quarters just off Interstate 40
near the State Fairgrounds is
“absolutely ideal,” says Greg Kirk
patrick, who has been the organiza
tion’s executive director since 1985.
“We don’t want to leave here.”
But there’s a catch. The Food
Bank needs much bigger refrigera
tion and freezer imits.
“We are at a point where we’re
having occasionally to turn down
refrigerated and frozen products,”
Kirkpatrick says.
Because the lease on its current
building is due to expire in the
autumn of 1995, the Food Bank
doesn’t want to incur the heavy cost
of buying and installing new units
that either would have to be aban
doned or moved again — at a signifi
cant cost — when the lease expires.
And the building is not for sale.
In anticipation of the lease dead
line, the Food Bank has been
wrestling with the question of
whether to launch a capital cam
paign to pay for new eqnipment or a
move to a new site.
The organization has created a
committee to identify possible sites,
and to stndy the possibility of obtain
ing a gift either of land or a building,
or both.
'The Food Bank estimates that it
will need $1.2 million to $2 million for
purchase or lease of a new building.
To help determine whether that is a
realistic fundraising goal, the board
in December hired Capital Consor
Designing a strategy
Capital campaign requires planning
A I 0 two capital campaigns
j\j are alike. But most
/ V share a common strate
gic approach.
Capital Consortium, a for-profit
fundraising consultant that is
advising the Food Bank of North
Carolina, says a campaign lives or
dies by its planning and prepara
tion.
Given the proper groundwork,
executing the campaign will be rel
atively easy, subject of course to
hard work and unforeseen circum
stances.
A typical campaign, says Carol
Siebert, a senior counsel at Capital
Consortium, has six stages — plan
ning and preparation; leadership
recruitment; securing leadership
gifts; the public campaign; comple
tion and follow-through; and con
version of campaign donors into
the nonprofit’s annual giving pro
gram and volunteer corps.
A campaign will require at least
six months for planning, six to
eight weeks more to secure leader
ship gifts, and then up to three
years or more for the public cam
paign.
Here’s how a typical campaign
mi^t unfold;
• Planning and preparation.
This includes writing a “case state
ment” that defines the nonprofit’s
mission, explains the need for the
campaign, and lays out fundraising
goals and how the money will be
spent. This document also helps
the nonprofit take a look at itself
and recruit campaign leaders and
donors.
Planning also includes assess
ing the readiness - both internal
and external - for the campaign. Is
the nonprofit staff prepared? Are
computers and software in place?
What are public attitudes about the
nonprofit and a possible campaign?
What shape are the national and
local economies in? Who are poten
tial leaders and prospective major
donors?
Planning also includes holding
confidential focus groups and one-
on-one interview;s with prospective
leaders and donors.
• Leadership recruitment.
Leaders are recruited, assigned
tasks and asked to identify, rate
and solicit prospective donors.
Before making soUeitations, lead
ers are asked to make gifts them
selves.
• Leadership gifts. In a typical
campaign, the 10 biggest gifts
account for rou^y one-third of the
goal, with the next 100 gifts
accounting for another third. In
fact, 80 percent of gifts typically
come from 20 percent of the
donors, with the biggest gift
accounting for almost 40 percent of
the total goal and the next three
gifts accounting for 20 percent.
These so-called “nucleus fund”
gifts are solicited by peers of the
prospective donors.
• Public campaign. The final
third of a campaign goal is solicited
from the public. These are the
smallest gifts, and take the longest
time to solicit. Before kicking off
this stage, the leadership gifts
should be accounted for to give
credibility to the campaign. This is
particnlarly so in the face of the
increasing number of campaigns
seeking money from the pubUc. The
public portion begins with a public
announcement of campaign goals
and the amount raised to date.
• Completion. This includes the
collection of pledges and solicita
tion of additional gifts.
• Cultivation for the long term.
This includes converting donors
into annual givers and volunteers.
Todd Cohen
tium.
The firm is helping the Food Bank
decide whether to go ahead with a
campaign. And in keeping with the
principle that fundraising is an end
less process of cultivating prospects
and leaders. Capital Consortium also
is advising the organization on its
annual campaign and on leadership
development.
“We have an extremely commit
ted, excellent working board of direc
tors,” says Duane Lawrence, presi
dent of the Food Bank’s board.
“They’re very committed to feeding
the hungry and doing the work we
need to do to make the organization
run.”
But the board has not concentrat
ed its energies on “communicating
our passion to others with financial
resources,” says Lawrence, a senior
sales representative for B. Braun
Medical Inc. in Bethlehem, Pa. “We
needed somebody to come in” and
show the members how to do that.
After talking to several national
and local fundraising firms, the Food
Bank board asked three firms to
make presentations to its fundrais
ing committee.
Capital Consortium has been
hired for seven months: If the Food
Bank decides to undertake a cam
paign, it could sign a new contract
with the firm to provide counsel dur
ing the campaign. Lawrence esti
mates that, based on the Food
Bank’s discussions with a number of
consultants, the total cost coidd be 5
percent to 10 percent of the goal - or
as much as $200,000.
“All we’re doing with them right
now is assessing whether or not
we’re going to be able to run a snc-
cessful campaign, assessing whether
we need to run a campaign and, if we
do, whether we can be successful,”
Lawrence says.
The professionals at Capital
Consortium know that can be a
daunting task.
“A lot of people hate to go out and
ask people for money,” says Siebert,
the senior counsel, “because they see
it from a selling point of view rather
than a marketing point of view,
which is assessing the market and
what people are interested in, and
matching it with your product, which
is the mission of a nonprofit and its
financial needs.
“After all, fundraising is people
raising.”
Capital
Continued from page 1
Jones has seen a gradual lessening
of the role of corporations in capitd
campaigns.
“A number of North Carolina cor
porations have gone through lever
aged buyouts or takeovers from out
side companies and are therefore
paying back a lot of debt,” says
Jones, who runs Whitney Jones Inc.
in Winston-Salem, which has han
dled campaigns for a number of area
universities and nonprofits.
“The largesse that was there in
the 1970’s and 80’s is no longer
there. In the corporate world, they
now have to pay more attention to
the bottom line.”
Tar Heel foundations — which
have benefited from the rapid cre
ation of wealth in the 1980s - have
made up some of the difference.
“Individuals have also stepped
forward but there aren’t that many
million-doUar donors in North Caro
lina,” Jones says. “So capital cam
paigns have increasingly searched
for more diversified funds."
The proliferation of nonprofit
fundraising efforts has made cam
paigning more competitive.
“We’ve seen a marked increase in
fundraising for service-oriented
groups like hospices and health
agencies and organizations that
serve the aging population,” says
Niles Sorensen, senior vice president
of Ketchum Inc. in Charlotte.
“Leadership has probably become a
more precious commodity these days
because so many organizations are
campaigning,”
Mhou^ the general fundraising
atmosphere is important, some
experts beiieve internal structure is
the real key to a campaign’s success
or failure.
“Frankly, more important than
the economy is what is done by the
nonprofit,” says John Bennett, presi
dent of Capital Consortium Inc. in
Ralei^, which recently took over the
leadership of a $20 million fund drive
for the North Carolina Museum of
Art.
“Nonprofits can
determine the cli
mate by creating
the necessary
leadership, the
prospect base and
cultivating the
prospects to create
support.”
Fundraising
experts recom
mend involving key
donors in the ini
tial planning sta
ges of a campaign
and conducting
feasibility studies
or focus-group ses
sions to determine
reasonable goals
before a fund drive
goes public.
While some use mathematical for
mulas to arrive at campaign goals -
one expert sets goals at twice the
level of the top 10 gifts pledged in the
planning stage - others peg them to
what studies show are likely giving
opportunities.
For his part, David Winslow, head
of Winslow and Associates - a
Winston-Salem based firm that is
onprofits
can determine the cli
mate by creating the
necessary leadership,
the prospect base and
cultivating the
prospects to create
support.
JOHN BENNETT
President
Capital Consortium
heading a campaign for the
new Children’s Museum
About the World - believes
goals should be driven by
the “real needs” of nonprof
its.
“If people strongly
believe in their hearts that
this is what the organization
needs, they will usually suc
ceed with that attitude
sometimes in spite of what
the feasibihty study says.”
The most common pitfall
cited by North Carolina
fundraising experts is fail
ure to do adequate planning.
Many recommended as
much as a year or more of
preparation for any capital
campaign.
“I tell folks over and over
again that a fundraiser always needs
to work in a mode that has them
planting seeds,” says William
Amidon, principal counsel for
Amidon and Associates in
Greensboro.
“If you’ve had folks before you
that have had that kind of philosophy
toward the job, you are going to ben
efit. If you haven’t had that kind of
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Professional fundraisers say non
profits should avoid being driven by
artificial timetables and should
muster the kind of volunteer leader
ship that can stick with a campaign
over the long haid.
“A lot of people are willing to go
out and ask for a gift but if the answer
is ‘no’ or ‘maybe,’ they don’t do the
kind of followup that’s needed,” says
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