Many fundraisers say getting impressive gifts early in a campaign can spur further donations and build momentum. And who better to tap at the outset than those closest to your organization?
That’s how fundraisers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation started the quiet phase of their $100 million drive for a new outpatient care facility, raising more than $20 million from hospital executives, board members, and some key donors before soliciting other employees and the broader public. As they moved from one group of contributors to the next — from executives to board members, for example — they touted gifts from the previous donors as a sign the campaign was going strong.
The tactic helped secure the campaign’s signature donation: a $50 million naming gift from the family of Alan and Constance Buerger, who founded Philadelphia-area life-settlement company Coventry First, which buys seniors’ life insurance policies.
“I was able to demonstrate to that family that we’ve got significant momentum,” said Stuart Sullivan, chief development officer for the hospital, which is a roughly $1.8 billion giant with thousands of employees who provide patient services and conduct research.
Children’s Hospital launched the public phase of the drive a few months after the Buerger pledge was announced in mid-2013 and is 96 percent of the way to its goal for the 700,000-square-foot building, now called the Buerger Center for Advanced Pediatric Care. Five floors of the 12-story facility are already open.
The campaign holds lessons for other nonprofits on the importance of getting a fundraising drive off to a quick start and the value of soliciting people with a strong connection to your institution, like staff and board members.
Mr. Sullivan and Ingrid Heim, a consultant brought on to help manage the campaign, spoke about it in interviews with The Chronicle and at the 2016 Association of Fundraising Professionals conference.
Starting With Executives
Many development teams go to board members first to contribute to a capital campaign, but Mr. Sullivan took a different approach, first soliciting 25 of the institution’s executives. He thought the leaders’ gifts could act as a catalyst for trustees, who often have deeper pockets.
Mr. Sullivan was direct with executives, visiting each of their offices to solicit donations.
“I said, ‘The expectation is that you will make a gift to this campaign,’” Mr. Sullivan said. “I kind of bare-knuckled a bit.”
All of the executives were willing to give, he said, and some made five-figure gift pledges. In total, they gave a little more than $1 million.
“That really made a statement,” Mr. Sullivan said. “That enabled me to then go to the trustees and say, ‘Look, we’ve already cobbled together a million or so dollars just from the executive leadership. Now we need you to step up.’”
Board Gives Big
Mr. Sullivan approached all of the hospital’s roughly 30 trustees personally. Some made seven-figure pledges, including the chairman, who encouraged the development chief to tell other trustees about his contribution.
The hospital also solicited some of its larger donors, focusing on those who might personally benefit from the project — like people who had children — or who had a strong connection to the hospital in another way.
In total, executives, board members, and donors gave roughly $20 million during the silent phase, with trustees pledging the most.
“Getting the board and executive-level buy-in was really critical for us to frame this as a No. 1 institutional priority,” said Ms. Heim, the consultant who advised on the campaign.
An Employee Cabinet
While fundraisers were soliciting gifts from the leadership and board, the hospital was also working on a drive targeting employees, including doctors, nurses, administrators, and information-technology staff. At the time, the work-force giving rate was only about 3 percent annually, and the average employee gift was around $275. The development staff was determined to get higher participation for the capital campaign.
One of the first steps was starting an “employee campaign cabinet” of roughly 30 people who volunteered to help promote the campaign to their colleagues. To get the group started, development staff recruited employees they already had relationships with, then asked department heads to identify people they thought might want to participate. Ms. Heim said she wanted volunteers to be the public face of the employee drive, with fundraisers and administrators taking a back seat.
“It really was about getting that buy-in and having those folks really be our ambassadors for this campaign from the outset, so it wasn’t just people like me and Stuart,” Ms. Heim said.
Mr. Sullivan said department heads and managers had tried to solicit gifts from staff in previous campaigns. “We wanted to approach it from exactly the opposite perspective and for this to be very much a volunteer-driven campaign,” he said.
The cabinet developed a slogan for the campaign — “Let’s Raise the Roof” — and approved T-shirts and other marketing materials. Cabinet members also led presentations about the campaign at staff meetings.
Holding Launch Event
The hospital held an all-day launch event to signal the start of the employee campaign in April 2013, most of it in the atrium of the main hospital building and the cafeteria. The cabinet members and other volunteers took questions about the building project and staffed information tables. Others provided entertainment. A Beatles cover band made up entirely of doctors played a set in the cafeteria, while laboratory technicians held a “fashion show” in which they modeled outfits made from materials in their lab.
The week of the event, development staff sent mailings to employees promoting the campaign.
Ease of Giving, Incentives
To make giving easy, employees could have both big and small contributions deducted from their paychecks. Fundraisers tried to emphasize how even large gifts could be made manageable through deductions over time. “We really broke down the math,” said Ms. Heim.
The hospital also offered incentives. For instance, employees’ names were placed permanently on an “employee giving wall” when they made a gift of any size, Ms. Heim said. Those on staff who made larger gifts could get their names on rooms and other parts of the building.
Raising the Bar
Seven percent of employees gave to the campaign, raising $1.4 million from employees in 2013, more than double the average annual staff giving rate. The in-house tactics gave the campaign an additional jolt before the launch of the public phase, Ms. Heim said. Another benefit: The campaign got employees in the habit of giving to the hospital and helped fundraisers learn strategies to solicit staff that they will continue to use.
“We raised the bar,” Ms. Heim said. “People thought about giving $1,000 to their work for the first time ever.”
