2004 CASE Campaign Communications Conference May 20-21
Chicago
New Paradigms, New Opportunities
Thursday, May 20

Opening Session—Campaign Communications Overview & Planning
1:45 – 3:45
Kristin V. Rehder's comments

Thank you for setting this time aside to talk about campaign communications with us.

I suspect you are here because you are about to launch a campaign at your institution or you are in one and you are trying to learn how to communicate better in increasingly complex times. We'd like to help you.

I see three things changing in the way we think about campaign communications. You might call these paradigm shifts:

1. Campaigns used to be somewhat interesting in and of themselves; today they are ubiquitous, frequent, and often boring as initiatives. Why? Because the goals, priorities, timelines, and expectations of a campaign are not new—they are just higher, more ambitious. If we make the campaign the message; that is, if we make the fact that we are in a campaign seem most important, we are making a big mistake.
   
   
2. In some operations development and communications still sit on opposite sides of a high fence. There is a long history to the divide between the two. However, the most effective development communications programs bridge the two areas. They acknowledge each other's strengths at dealing with marketing education to a much more complex audience and recognize three demands of the new comprehensive campaign:
   1. reaching potential donors at the top of the pyramid while engaging a broad audience in giving to the institution
   2. conveying a greater sense of the impact of gifts and accountability for how gifts are spent
   So it's much more common now to find a senior development communications person seated at the table with the senior development team as strategic partners. And it is also much more common to find interdisciplinary teams of people strategizing and working hard to fund key priorities.
   
   
3. Let's just tick off some things about our audience that makes our communications environment very different today. Characteristics include:
   1. They don't give out of loyalty; they give to have an impact.
   2. They want to feel connected, to have a greater sense of personal involvement.
   3. They get much of their day-to-day information electronically—especially requests for action.
   4. They don't have much time.
   5. They want the truth. They want accountability. They read right over hype

It used to be much easier to do campaign communications. Seventeen years ago when I went to Williams to do the campaign communications my boss asked me for a five-year budget. I hadn't worked on a campaign so I called a campaign communications consultant and said, What do I do? He told me the following:

• Develop a graphic identity
• Produce a case statement
• Create a campaign video
• Do a volunteer training manual
• Develop a four-times-a-year campaign newsletter
• Print brochures on your key priorities
• Beef up your annual honor roll
• Don't forget to add in a plan for your kickoff
• And all that plus photography and mailing will cost about $750,000 to $1 million over 5-7 years.

Well, that's what I did. I wrote up a plan that focused on producing those things. I was fortunate enough to get my budget. And I started producing. When someone called in the first 6-12 months to ask about help in writing a proposal for a $1 million gift, I said: No, I was working on fulfilling the communications plan.

About halfway through the campaign, I realized that I had been rendered useless. The fundraisers, feeling I was communicating effectively with the masses but not readily with their top prospects, were going around me to produce the one-on-one communications they needed to close on gifts at the higher level. And rightly so.

(Here KVR relays another story here about spending so much time on a quarterly newspaper to the detriment of helping to raise money and another on being called in to produce a brochure for raising money for the fine arts building, rather than being engaged in the earlier strategy.)

Campaign Communications.

If not what I outlined above, then what should you do?

One of the most effective ways I know to do a campaign communications plan is to go by phases. This helps communications track directly and effectively to the fund raising activities, and it allows you to stay flexible over the 5-7 years of the campaign when goals and opportunities can change rapidly.

Getting Started

(This segment included many excellent examples from the audience.)

• Start at message. Develop a three-point message around the following three headings:
  1. Pride. Here you show that the institution is on a roll and mention up to five things that demonstrate how well you are doing currently.
  2. Plan. Here you discuss two or three current initiatives that indicate the strategic vision of the institution and show its momentum moving forward.
  3. Partnership. Here you take your case and turn it toward the individual, answering the question: Why would someone want to partner with us, not, why should someone partner with us.
• Get your staffing configuration right.
• Review all existing institutional communications to see which ones can effectively carry your messages for fund raising so that you don't have to create new vehicles.
• Develop white papers around key priorities. Develop a financial case. Develop proposal language.
• Develop identity. Name. Look. Keep this identity within the existing institutional identity.
• Develop a portfolio as a "wrapper" for important documents like proposals so staff can get out there confidently on visits.
• Develop starter language for calls.
• Train staff, volunteers, and key leaders.
• Take a good look at the effectiveness of existing programs.
  (Annual Fund, Planned Giving, Bequests)
• Get up and running for on-demand publishing of personalized materials.
• Review all stewardship language.
• Wish list: Develop an individualized strategic communications plan for your top100 prospects.
• Wish list: Form an interdisciplinary fund-raising team of communicators and fund raisers around a lead objective and begin to work together to raise money for it as a pilot of how these teams can work.

(Here Kristin discussed some alternatives to the typical central piece in a campaign, the case statement. For further discussion on this go to hot topics and look for 2003 CASE CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE MAY 21-22/NEW ORLEANS/Thursday, May 22/Idea Exchange--Key campaign communications)

Common Problems in Campaign Communications:

1. Starting too late.
2. Not focusing on top prospects and the fund raising and communications realities of soliciting gifts at this high level, which centers on personal communication.
3. Setting up communications committees.
4. Not telling the truth, which is bad, but not knowing the truth (about finances, etc.), which is worse.
5. Aiming for perfection. Don't! Keep things moving.
6. Not having a ready list of excellent vendors who can help get work done.
7. Working with too small a budget.
8. Not testing.

The information contained here may not be reproduced without credit to Kristin V. Rehder and/or permission to copy.
Kristin V. Rehder May 20, 2004.