A career fundraising professional, David Carrera knows that clearly defining the steps in your fundraising campaign – including a detailed roadmap from beginning to end – makes the first significant stepping stone toward reaching and exceeding your fundraising goals.
You can achieve this and raise your chances for success by breaking down your campaign into actionable steps, those that help you implement and track your fundraising strategy.
Set Goals and Guidelines for Your Campaign
With the basics of your fundraising campaign outlined, consider holding a feasibility assessment where you ask a few of your top donors how they feel about your fundraising ideas to get a sense of the campaigns that may be most successful going forward.
A well-thought-out fundraising strategy can help you ensure that you’ve covered everything before you launch your campaign, giving you a greater chance of achieving a successful fundraising campaign similar to Carrera’s accomplishments in the leadership and success of a $2B fundraising campaign for the Keck Medicine campaign, the operational direction of a $2.4B fundraising campaign for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the architecture and direction of a $200M fundraising campaign at American University.
Set a Budget and Timeline for the Campaign
Set a reasonable budget and an annual timeline with monthly and weekly tasks to enable you to keep the campaign in the forefront of your donor’s and prospect’s mind and to drive them to invest in your campaign. Examining your past fundraising budgets and revenue outcomes to give you a range as you set your current parameters is a solid way to forecast out to arrive at a campaign goal. It is important to remember that your ultimate campaign goal is a negotiated amount that will lie somewhere between what the institution or organization actually needs and what it believes it can successfully raise. Set dates for particular types of outreach with monthly revenue benchmarks, a precise completion date, and several other benchmarks as checkpoints to help you reach your organization’s fundraising goal. Develop a sophisticated moves management system that allows you to track specific actions with desired outcomes.
Determine Your Core Fundraising Initiatives
Describe your core fundraising needs and the relevant details for each initiative, such as the type of fundraising campaign it will be. Remember, without a robust and aggressive major gifts program, it is difficult to achieve large scale fundraising success. But that does not mean a fundraising campaign cannot be successful. Fundraising campaigns take many forms and are often many sizes. For example, you can establish whether you’ll carry out an auction, gala, day of giving, or any other initiative to raise funds to center your efforts. Consider picking fundraising initiatives that have proven successful, and be bold and implement new initiatives that your audience members and donors may be interested in. But always remember the importance of major gifts as an avenue to your stated goal. It will drive the organization’s success in subsequent campaigns.
David Carrera is an example of a fundraising professional who implements highlighting fundraising initiatives to obtain impressive results from his campaigns and understands the importance of major giving through the process of an entire campaign. Through thoughtful strategic planning and driving the desired outcomes, David orchestrated a $2 billion campaign for USC Keck Medicine as a part of the institution’s $6 billion fundraising effort.
Make Giving Easy
With a Bachelor of Arts in marketing from Loyola University in Maryland and a deep knowledge of finance through his MBA coursework, David Carrera understands that a fundraising strategy should facilitate convenient, simple giving opportunities on an ongoing basis that enable donors to contribute whenever as they feel inspired but who knows that the biggest and most transformational gifts come from those who are asked. Being knowledgeable about sophisticated giving techniques that offer a range of convenient ways for your supporters and donors to contribute is why David Carrera successfully helped to initiate and complete a $2.4 billion fundraising campaign at Johns Hopkins Medicine, more than half of Johns Hopkins University’s $4.5 billion effort.
Tell Your Organization’s Story
Stories can touch people’s hearts and inspire them to contribute to the important causes in your institution. Find the human element in your campaign ideas while leaning into the details that make your development plans come alive. Including emotionally evocative visuals is a great way to tap into your donors’ and audience’s emotion appeal to make them feel the importance of your campaign’s mission. And always remember, people give to their passions. Finding that passion and matching it to your organization’s needs is the key to a successful fundraising campaign.