Stalled capital campaigns eventually hit every non-profit, no matter their size. As veteran campaigners know, it only takes a little creativity and persistence to have a breakthrough on even the toughest capital campaign pushes.
We’ve compiled some of the most effective methods to jumpstart stalled capital campaigns to help your organization make a bigger impact through fundraising efforts, from staff burnout to ambiguous goal-setting, it’s always worth it for non-profits to optimize their campaigns and reach their goals.
Winning with wealth data
Ultimately, it’s hard to make good decisions for a campaign when you are flying blind. Understanding how your donors think, finding new donors, and tiering your donors according to priority are essential best practices when the time comes to revitalize a stalled campaign.
Tools like WealthEngine give organizations the insights to make the right decisions and the tools to find your next donor.
Finding donors is usually one of the most challenging elements of the fundraising process. Using wealth data platforms like WealthEngine can supercharge the prospecting process with data insights like:
- Wealth analysis, including asset allocation and capacity to give
- Planned Giving prospect identification
- Look-a-Like audience modeling
Using wealth data turns generic shortlists into something with legitimate ROI. Plus, WealthEngine doesn’t just find prospects; it also provides valuable data insights on them.
Without the resources that WealthEngine provides us, it would be very difficult to gather the information we need to engage donors
Case Western University
When it’s time to take a hard look at a stalled campaign, analyzing your donors can provide actionable intelligence and, ultimately, help you prioritize your best next steps.
Common campaign challenges
The first step in re-energizing a stalled capital campaign is to identify the problem. Surveys, intuition, and analytics can help.
It’s important to remember that your decision-making is only as good as your data. Diagnosing the wrong problem can be solved through data intelligence and platforms like WealthEngine can help organizations correctly identify clear, actionable paths forward, backed-up by people intelligence .
Challenge 1: Straying from campaign basics
Sequential solicitation (the practice of asking donors from the top down and from the inside to the outside) is one of the foundational practices for any campaign. But, even the largest and most successful non-profits can forget the basics now and again.
Nobody is above an “essentials” checklist. Remind yourself of the basics and how effective the solicitation process is. One of the best methods is to use tools that increase this effectiveness and overall donor support.
WealthEngine offers proprietary ratings and scores to help identify priority donors according to their giving capacity and likelihood. The WE platform also highlights potential underperformers who may need to be shifted to other campaign efforts. Regarding sequential solicitation, this can help you correctly organize your donors and get back to foundational campaign basics.
Challenge 2: Donor fatigue & diminishing prospect pools
After major milestones have been reached, it’s easy to feel a lull during the last stretch. This is quite a broad issue that likely has some underlying root causes, however, there are still some overarching strategies that can help keep up the pace.
One of the best ways to get things flowing again is to express urgency, usually through goal setting or excitement. Crafting messages that emphasize proximity to the goal, a ticking clock, and the idea that we need you can breathe life back into the campaign.
Once you’ve done your best to optimize your active donors, it’s time to look for more high-value prospects. You can take a lot of the legwork out of finding and researching these prospects through tools like WealthEngine Analyze. Some of the best ways to use these tools are to:
- Identify which lapsed donors to reengage
- Locate new constituents to approach according to current donor base similarities
- Model prospect shortlists according to unique giving criteria
Challenge 3: Time crunch
Few things are as paralyzing as a time crunch. Trying to sort through a database of 150,000 people in order to come up with a $10 million dollar injection isn’t something that you can manually do with any sort of speed.
Besides just pouring manpower into a project that is under time pressure, using tools like WealthEngine can help sort through databases and specifically deliver the perfect candidates to initiate contact with. On top of that, it can also help list the best prospects in the order they should be prioritized, which is essential when you are getting down to the last days of a campaign. Spending too much time on the wrong people is a great way to get stuck in the mud.
These tools use P2G (propensity to give) scoring, which takes into account giving capacity, wealth indicators, RFM (recency, frequency and monetary) scores, and some other variables, organizing the list and making action easy. When actionable steps are clear and prioritized, time crunches become manageable.
Challenge 4: Staff burnout
Burnout creeps up and rarely makes itself loud, although it can have a drastic impact on performance and morale. Great leaders always work on having a good read on how the staff is feeling, especially the higher up the chain you are. Have a dedicated “thermometer” that can be honest about how the staff is feeling.
If team-wide enthusiasm drops and the people making the “ask” don’t seem excited about it, it may be time to address burnout. First, see if you can reinvigorate your team with a new portfolio of prospects. Clearing out the noise and scoring some wins that move your team closer to the end goal is some of the best motivation around. Tools like WealthEngine can help you segment properly and focus on the right constituents. As those wins do happen, further motivate your team with rewards and recognition.
Additionally, help keep the energy high by rotating people through different tasks. Remember, capital campaigns are hard work and can distract staff from other essential duties. Check-in and re-assign tasks as needed to keep your staff on track while also keeping communication channels open.
Revitalizing your campaign
All organizations have experienced a campaign stall before. When the inevitable occurs, remember to:
- Hit the basics (sequential solicitation) hard
- Realign your messaging to the right individuals
- Reduce stress under a time crunch
- Leverage solutions for complete campaign success
Insight-driven strategy is the foundation of fundraising success. WealthEngine can help.
Want to learn more about how WealthEngine can give your campaign essential insights for fundraising success?
Katerina Lauer is the Senior Director and head of SMB Advocacy & Education for Altrata. She has over 15 years of experience in both the Non-profit space and with WealthEngine specifically. She loves working with Non-Profits, helping them succeed in all their fundraising and development goals and is excited for the innovation Altrata is bringing to the industry.