One of the best phone calls a capital campaign consultant can get goes something like this, “Hi Kevin, I have wonderful news to share – we just received a gift that gets us to our campaign goal!” I received one of these calls last week. It came from a client who we have been working with for several years, a private high school that brought us in to help with a $10 million campaign to build a new athletic facility on their campus. 

We started the campaign pre-COVID and quickly raised $5 million. The next $3 million was more challenging but we were moving forward. Then the pandemic hit, and we decided to put active solicitations on hold. Why? Because we did not want to compete for philanthropic donations against human service organizations. Plus, the school had to focus all of its fundraising efforts on strengthening its scholarship fund; school families had lost jobs and needed assistance.

Human Service v. Lifestyle Campaigns

Before continuing with this story, allow us to explain the difference between human service and lifestyle campaigns. Human service campaigns directly impact the health and wellbeing of people – think hospital or food bank. Lifestyle campaigns impact the entertainment and informal education of people – think library and music. Both human service and lifestyle campaigns are important; however, during a worldwide pandemic, human service takes precedence for many donors.

Continued Campaign Communication

Back to our athletics campaign story. Putting the school’s campaign solicitations on hold did not mean going silent. Instead, we worked with our client to explain to donors and donor prospects our “pivot” – moving the fundraising focus from athletics to scholarships. We did this through consistent newsletters mailed and emailed to their constituents. Every month they communicated the school’s plans to keep students in school through scholarship assistance and the progress they were making with the athletic facility – for a variety of reasons our client had to begin construction before completing the campaign.

From March through September, the school communicated its Case for Support for the athletic facility, including a live webcam of its construction. In October, the school president got a call from a donor prospect who had been keeping tabs on the project. We had provided the school with wealth screening information on all its prospective donors, so the president knew that this was a high-capacity prospect. How high? High enough for the president to ask the prospect to complete the campaign, and the prospect said, “Sure!”

Be Sensitive, But Don’t Go Silent in your Campaign

CampaignCounsel.org works with all types of nonprofits throughout the nation. We have over 40-years of accumulative experience helping clients raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately, some of our clients with lifestyle projects had to postpone their capital campaigns during the pandemic. But postponing their efforts to schedule solicitations did not mean going silent. It meant staying engaged with their constituents, continuing to communicate their Case for Support, and making asks when appropriate.

A pivot may mean quieting your campaign for a short amount of time, but never go silent. We’ve seen from donor surveys and from our active campaigns that donors are still out there and may be inclined to give now more than ever. Keep the lines of communication open and continue with the campaign process as much as possible, including learning as much as you can about your donors through wealth screening.

If you’d like to read more about what donors are thinking and feeling, click here. For more on updating your Case for Support during the COVID-19 pandemic, click now.

Kevin Wallace is president of CampaignCounsel.org, specializing in capital campaign planning and management. Reach him by email or visit www.campaigncounsel.org.