Campaign Cabinet – The Importance of Volunteers When Making The Three-Part Ask is fundraising veteran Linda Lysakowski’s take on the role of FUNDRAISING VOLUNTEERS when raising campaign gifts. (VISIT HERE to meet AMERICA’S FUNDRAISER Linda Lysakowski, MTS-FT, ACFRE, CNC).
You’ve held your non-ask awareness event and presented your case for support to a group of potential donors and volunteers, When you ask to meet with these people, don’t jump the gun and focus just on the money part, you want to recruit these people to talk to other prospective donors. Volunteers are the backbone of your campaign.,
The right campaign cabinet is one of the most important indicators of whether your three-part campaign will be successful or not. Involving key community leaders in your project can make all the difference in the world. Your board and staff alone should not try to run a campaign without the support of key community leaders. If they do, they miss out on a lot of talent, connections, and money these community leaders can provide to your campaign.
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Before recruiting people to serve on the campaign cabinet, your CEO, board, development staff, and campaign chair if you have already recruited one, should review a list of potential donors and try to get those with the greatest potential to give to also become involved in the campaign. A list of business and individual donors will be developed through the awareness event and donor research you have done. This list can serve as the basis for recruiting campaign leadership. It will be vital to include key community leaders in the awareness event. It is much easier to invite these leaders to serve in a campaign capacity if they’ve been included in the early campaign plans.
Volunteers will also be able to expand the scope of your prospect base and will be far more effective at soliciting their peers than anyone within the organization can be on their own. They may, in fact, be the only ones who can open doors to major donors.
Campaign Cabinet – The Importance of Volunteers When Making The Three Part-Ask – Linda Lysakowski
What will the volunteers do? You will probably need dozens of volunteers to run a successful campaign. Starting with the campaign leadership, it will be important to find the right person to do the right job. You may want to involve some volunteers in planning campaign and events and coordinating campaign publicity, but the majority of campaign volunteers will be involved in the important tasks of identifying, cultivating, and soliciting, and stewarding donors. It is critical to have an organization chart and position description for every volunteer job within the campaign.
How do you find volunteers? The non-ask awareness event is the first place to look for potential volunteers. Also, ask your board members, other volunteers, and staff for their suggestions about people who can help. And of course, most campaign volunteers will be inviting other volunteers to join their committee or somehow get involved.
Volunteer recruitment will need to be handled with extreme care. Often, organizations want to jump the gun and start recruiting campaign leadership before they have a clear idea of the expectations for these volunteers. It will be vital to have a campaign plan in place that includes, among other things, position descriptions for all volunteer roles and timelines for each committee.
Trying to fit volunteers into roles after they are recruited is like hiring a staff person and then deciding what the organization wants the person to do. The volunteer recruitment process must be handled just as carefully as one would handle hiring a staff person, with due diligence and thoughtfulness of the best role for this volunteer.
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The campaign plan is the foundation for a successful campaign and will help you get things off to a good start. The plan should include a brief overview of the process taken by your organization that led to the campaign. A key ingredient of the plan is the campaign organizational chart showing all the various divisions of the campaign and the number of committee people that will be needed to staff all the divisions. For example, you will want to have business leaders call on other business leaders, philanthropists call on other philanthropists they pal around with, and if you are a school or a group that has members, you will want to have alumni calling fellow alumni, parents calling other parents, members calling on other members. People find it easier to contact people they know and talk to them on a peer-to-peer level.
Position descriptions for all volunteers should also be included in your plan along with a timeline for each committee and an overall time schedule. Volunteers should not be recruited until the plan is completed. It will be critical to show your volunteers that a well thought out plan, including expectations of volunteers has been developed so they understand their role and the time and monetary expectations that will be asked of volunteers. The principal groups of volunteers that will be involved are members of the campaign cabinet, which includes chairs of all the various committees that will be involved in the campaign.
And don’t forget once a person who agree to serve on the campaign cabinet, ask them who they know that might also be interested, and suggest they invite these people to serve with them. Volunteers are more likely to serve if they are invited by a friend or colleague.
Building team camaraderie among volunteers is essential, and often a little friendly competition can’t hurt. It will be important to have volunteers meet regularly to share progress, encourage each other and even brag a bit.
Campaign Cabinet – The Importance of Volunteers When Making The Three-Part Ask was first posted at Development Systems International
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Linda is one of slightly more than 100 professionals worldwide to hold the Advanced Certified Fund Raising Executive designation. In her thirty-plus years as a philanthropic consultant, she has managed capital campaigns raising more than $50,000,000, and helped countless nonprofit organizations achieve their development goals. A graduate of Alvernia University, with majors in banking, finance and theology/philosophy, and a minor in communications, Linda is also a Master Teacher, graduating from AFP’s Faculty Training Academy. She served on the Association of Fundraising Philanthropy (AFP) Foundation for Philanthropy Board and the Professional Advancement Division for the AFP. She is past president of the Eastern Pennsylvania and Sierra (Nevada) AFP chapters. Linda received the Outstanding Fundraiser of the Year award from the Eastern Pennsylvania, Las Vegas, and Sierra (Nevada) chapters of the AFP, was honored with the Barbara Marion Award for Outstanding Service to the AFP and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Las Vegas AFP chapter. Linda is currently a staff writer for the National Development Institute and its Major Gifts Ramp Up Program, as well as a Senior Counselor for Development Systems International.
