Texas A&M University had a big decision to make: When to announce its $4 billion fundraising drive to help the institution’s scholars and scientists solve “real world” problems.
The campaign, slated to wrap up in 2020, raised nearly half of its goal during the private phase, begun in 2012. As fundraisers prepared to alert the university’s larger community to the drive, “we were debating whether to launch in the spring or the fall,” says Mark Klemm, campaign director.
And then they remembered: Fall means football.
Kyle Field, where the Texas A&M Aggies play, can hold more than 100,000 people; roughly two-thirds of the seats are filled with alumni families.
“There was no place else we’d have 65,000 of our former students in one place at one time,” says Mr. Klemm.
The campaign, Lead by Example, launched November 5. Two days later, as the Aggies battled Auburn University, fans in the stands used stadium cards to spell out the campaign’s slogan, “If not us, then who?” (Unfortunately, all that pep couldn’t solve the real-world problems the Aggies faced that day; they lost to the Tigers, 26 to 10.)
By launching in 2015’ s final quarter, Mr. Klemm and his campaign fundraisers weren’t worried about Lead by Example getting lost in the clutter of year-end appeals, he says: “There’s always a cause on someone’s mind at any time of the year. We looked at it as, how can we get the most bang for our buck in promoting the campaign?”
Trying to Stand Out
Texas A&M is one of a few big organizations launching the public phase of its capital campaigns during the year-end giving season. While such drives rely more on big donors and pledges than annual campaigns, capital-campaign directors do seek ways stand out amid the growing cacophony of appeals.
When a capital campaign is announced publicly these days, “it’s much more about communications than it is solicitations,” says Rand E. Chase, vice president and executive counsel at Pursuant, a national fundraising consultant with headquarters in Dallas.
Today’s campaigns are more data-driven than ever, and very different from those launched only a few years ago. Fundraisers categorize potential supporters into increasingly narrow segments. The announcement can happen on a staggered basis rather than all at once, as appeals are made to each carefully filtered group of possible donors.
“If it fits to announce a campaign around the holidays, it’s got to be for a very good reason,” says Mr. Chase. But, he adds, “the flood in the mailboxes for annual gifts doesn’t really affect a well-run campaign.”
To navigate that flood, he offers a boating analogy: “Stay under power. Don’t cut the engine. Even if you’re not in an active solicitation, stay in communication with your donors. Bring them along. Send them updates.”
But he also cautions fundraisers working on capital campaigns to be realistic about the availability of their volunteers during the holiday season: Scale back expectations and don’t overload the last quarter of the year with events. Volunteers “get into that holiday spirit. They start putting things out. They travel a lot,” he says. “You’ve kind of got to plan for it.”
Ahead of the Crush
The College of William & Mary is seeking to raise $1 billion by 2020 and began the public phase of its effort Oct. 22 with $532 million already in hand.
During its four-year quiet phase, however, it set its sights lower, according to Matthew Lambert, vice president for university advancement. “Initially we were looking at a $600 million campaign, and we did very well in the early phases,” he says.
A new wealth-screening study, which Mr. Lambert championed upon his arrival at the college in 2013 from Georgetown University, found that it had 23,000 prospective supporters capable of giving $100,000 each, which the organization considers major gifts. But its fundraisers had only visited about 4,500 of those prospects.
Some results of the new intelligence: The campaign goal was lifted in the summer of 2014, and through the merger of its alumni association and advancement staffs, plus some new hires, the size of the fundraising team doubled.
Announcing the drive during the college’s homecoming weekend, Mr. Lambert says, at the dawn of the year’s final quarter, has “worked out well for us. It’s raised significant awareness among all our alumni. And it really got out ahead of that crush of end-of-year solicitations.”
The campaign seeks not only to raise money but also alumni participation: The university wants to raise that rate to 40 percent (up from about 27 percent currently), which would put it in the front ranks of higher-education institutions and lay the groundwork with millennial alumni for lifetime support.
“It’s really a message around every gift counts, every donor matters, and getting donors at all levels to give,” says Mr. Lambert. “It’s a message that resonates at this time of year for a lot of people.”
In December, the drive will embark on a “sprint” period, in which it asks its hundreds of volunteers to reach out to about 15 of their classmates and ask them to give. “We’re trying to focus heavily on scholarships,” says Mr. Lambert, which are part of the campaign’s mission. “Donors are much less interested in a plethora of opportunities, much more interested in something specific — particularly at this time of year, when everyone’s focused on how can they help people.”
Getting Emails Opened
William & Mary will use not only Giving Tuesday but also Cyber Monday as a way to prepare its supporters to give. Email open rates are high on the national day of online shopping bargains, Mr. Lambert notes: “Everyone is already sitting at their computer.”
The time to boost giving by smaller donors, he says, is from Thanksgiving into the first couple of weeks of December. “Your donor who is giving for tax reasons is already planning on giving in December. They tend to do that on their own. It’s the smaller-dollar donor who tends to be driven, and you can really influence their behavior more, by doing some focused things over email and social media, as well as your traditional things like direct mail and phone-athons.”
Fundraisers at Texas A&M and William & Mary say their institutions are part of a growing trend of public institutions seeking support in capital campaigns. Their state and federal funding is vulnerable, they say, and competition is fiercer than ever for the best students.
“The margin of excellence, increasingly, is philanthropy,” Mr. Klemm says, adding. “Private philanthropists aren’t going to give money to a losing proposition.”
Tigers and Videos
The Foundation for San Diego Zoo Global, announced the public phase of its push to raise $400 million on November 7. The drive, Roaring Forward, which aims to prevent the extinction of endangered species, raised $284 million during a four-year quiet phase from donors large and small, including schoolchildren. Slated to run through 2017, it’s going so well that the dollar goal may be increased, says Mark Stuart, the foundation’s president.
It’s the foundation’s first capital drive. “I’ve dreamed of this campaign for 10 years,” says Mr. Stuart, who came to the foundation that long ago, after running a $100 million drive at the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school.
He credits the success of the effort to the foundation’s board, whose members have been selected on the basis of their ability and willingness to generate support. “We focus very little on administration, bureaucratic processes, governance, and the like,” says Mr. Stuart. “This is a board that helps us fundraise and friend-raise. And that’s their sole measurement of success.”
The organization has also focused appeals for the campaign tightly around its mission to prevent extinction, and social media has played a big role. Images of a popular Sumatran tiger exhibit in the zoo’s safari park have gone viral. “People are having a relationship with the Sumatran tiger like they can’t have anywhere else,” Mr. Lambert says. “And the social-media responses to have really been something, with people sharing photos of it and saying, ‘We have really got to do something.’ "
A design agency called Thinkwell helped the foundation develop a “tear-inducing, heart-rate pounding video,” as Mr. Stuart calls it, featuring the zoo’s animals. “I had one employee share it on Facebook, and it had more than 8,000 views,” he says. The foundation is now considering having every employee and volunteer at San Diego Global share the video on a particular day — still to be determined — during the holiday season to drive potential supporters to the campaign’s website.
But that day won’t be Giving Tuesday, the fourth annual day designed to spark philanthropy, slated for December 1. Because that day will be so crowded with appeals from other charities, “that’s not a day when we’ll spend significant time pushing out the zoo,” Mr. Stuart says. Instead, he says, “We’re looking at how we can take advantage of a Giving Tuesday-like day in 2016. But we’re probably going to do it around a holiday or a special commemorative day that is more associated with wildlife and saving wild places.”
The date has already been selected, but he guards the secret zealously: “I don’t want others to start to think about significant campaigns on this special day.”
Send an email to Heather Joslyn.
