Sometimes, Small Is Better

Charities find success with drives that have modest fund-raising goals

When officials at the University of Iowa decided last year to refurbish the women’s softball complex, they decided not to wait until their next full-fledged capital campaign to raise the money. Instead, they started a one-year drive to raise $1-million. That way, the renovation would be completed even before the next capital campaign got under way, in 1999.

The same was true when officials decided to spruce up an old ornithology exhibit at the university’s Museum of Natural History. Fund raisers brought in about $500,000 during 1997 to give the exhibit a new look, make it more interactive, and include current information about environmental issues. The project will be completed early next year.

At any given time, the university has as many as 20 small drives going on at once, says Susan Shullaw, associate vice-president for communications and campaign support at the University of Iowa Foundation, in Iowa City. “We have a lot of needs that can’t wait for the next big campaign to come along,” she says.

Many organizations use small drives in between big ones — or sometimes instead of them. Advocates of the small campaigns say they are far easier to run than big efforts — and they offer fresh opportunities for staff members and volunteers to learn solicitation skills they may need for bigger campaigns. And some charities have come to rely on small drives in part because they fear donors have been turned off by campaigns that seek to raise a half-billion or more.

“Big campaigns don’t move fast,” says Ms. Shullaw. “They are great for institution-wide goals. But there will always be needs that don’t fit quite so neatly. And frankly, it’s easier to get enthused about small campaigns. You can get your arms around them.”

The small campaigns tend to borrow many of the techniques used in major capital drives, but they involve fewer volunteers, fewer donors, a shorter time frame, and more modest goals. Sometimes they seek money for several needs at once, but often they are designed to raise money for just one project. The drives may run one right after the other, or they may be occasional efforts.

Not all fund raisers think small campaigns are such a good idea. They say many charities start mini-campaigns simply because they have not done enough planning to figure out all the projects they will need money for in the next five to ten years.

“The competition for funds is so strong right now, you need to prove to donors that you’ve done some long-range thinking and that this campaign is really going to make a difference,” says Jeanne Brodeur, a senior consultant at Wolf, Keens & Company in Cambridge, Mass. “You need to let them know you’ve thought about what you need and what it’s going to take to get there.”

The definition of “small” depends on the size of the organization. A big, well-established charity that has raised significant sums in previous capital drives might consider a $2-million campaign to be small. For a grassroots group, it might be more like $20,000.

One reason many charities decide to embark on a small campaign is cost.

“A traditional campaign takes a lot of staff resources to gear up and gear down,” says Nancy Thompson, a fund-raising consultant in St. Louis. “That can be incredibly expensive. Typically, larger institutions are the ones that do major campaigns, because they have large staff to begin with. Smaller institutions have trouble justifying the expense.”

Ms. Thompson adds that small drives can be much more exhilarating than capital campaigns for both staff members and volunteers, in part because they see the fruits of their labor so quickly.

When the University of San Diego won the right to hold one of the 1996 Presidential debates, part of the agreement was that the university would pay the $500,000 cost of producing it. University officials were thrilled to win national attention, but they needed money quickly to produce the show.

The campaign director, Kathleen Quinn, conducted the effort much like a major drive — but in a fraction of the time. Committee members were identified within the first couple of weeks, and lists of potential donors were drawn up in the first two months. A case statement was produced on letterhead — instead of in a slick, four-color brochure — saving time as well as money.

In just six months, the campaign brought in $615,000 in cash and pledges and $573,000 in in-kind gifts. But the university’s good fortune did not end there. Ms. Quinn estimates that the drive pulled in more than $3-million from donors who were asked to give to the debate project but instead chose to support other programs.

Despite the hectic pace, it was a heady experience for both staff and volunteers, she adds. “There were incredibly long days for those six months,” says Ms. Quinn. “But it was the most exhilarating experience of my professional life.”

It also strengthened her resume, says Ms. Quinn, who is now associate vice-president for development at San Jose State University. “I think that experience was very important from a career development standpoint,” she says.

Because mini-campaigns are focused on a specific cause, they often attract donors and volunteers who would not have been as willing to help out with an institution-wide drive.

When St. John’s Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pa., held a one-year campaign to raise $450,000 to rebuild its pipe organ, several gifts came from people who did not attend services there and would not otherwise have given to the church, says the Rev. Jim Wolford.

St. John’s has a music program featuring concerts that are popular with members and non-members alike. Several important donors to the campaign were non-members, including the man who made the largest gift, $30,000.

“He had really loved the music program,” says Mr. Wolford. “He had saved his money all his life, and he really wanted to give it to this kind of thing.”

Thanks in part to gifts from non-members, the campaign exceeded its goal by $50,000.

Small campaigns often allow charities to build good will and name recognition for their organizations.

The Missouri Historical Society, in St. Louis, had never conducted a large capital campaign, and its last small one had been held in the late 1970s. So when the society decided to start a $16.7-million campaign to quadruple its exhibit space, officials decided to get a head start by first running a small drive to raise money for a show on the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

“People in St. Louis and beyond are very romantic about the 1904 World’s Fair,” says Marcia M. Kerz, vice-president for institutional advancement. “So any solid program or exhibit relating to it presents a great opportunity.”

The small drive was used in part to let donors know they would be asked to give again when the big campaign began. “The response was overwhelmingly positive, from corporations, individuals, and foundations,” she says. “They didn’t say they would definitely be giving, but they knew we’d be coming back.”

The World’s Fair effort brought in $1-million, tripled the museum’s attendance, increased the number of donors from 4,500 to 6,300, and garnered more press attention than any other exhibit in the group’s history. It also laid the groundwork for the larger effort, which has raised 93 per cent of its goal so far. The drive ends June 30.

After the organization started its major drive, it began another popular mini-campaign, this time to refurbish a replica of the Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh’s airplane, which is currently on display at the local airport. When the work is finished, the plane will hang in the historical society’s new building.

The “campaign within a campaign” is called “Catch the Spirit.”

“We have used it as a way to motivate people who have a special interest in that part of St. Louis history,” says Ms. Kerz.

The theme has been used in everything from direct-mail appeals to requests for previous donors to give bigger gifts than they have before. And Ms. Kerz believes it has generated even more interest in the major campaign.

Mini-drives can also draw attention to obscure projects — and even end up bringing in money for other parts of an organization.

When the Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital, in Allentown, started a special campaign to expand its pediatric-rehabilitation center, some people who had not known much about the hospital’s services for children ended up giving generously, says Jim Waters, director of planned and foundation giving.

“Some of those people have retained strong interests here,” he says.

When one former schoolteacher learned that the pediatric-rehabilitation program offered early-childhood education, she gave $25,000 to the initial campaign and another $25,000 when the facility expanded again some years later. More recently, she gave $28,000 to another division of Good Shepherd. She would not have given so generously to either division had it not been for the original campaign’s focus on childhood education, Mr. Waters says.

As enthusiastic as some fund raisers are about small campaigns, others deliberately steer clear of them if they have the means to conduct a larger drive instead.

Ms. Brodeur, the Massachusetts fund-raising consultant, says she was approached by officials at the Flynn Theater for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vt., asking for help with a small drive to retire a $750,000 debt.

At her meeting with theater officials, it soon became clear that raising that amount would not solve the organization’s problems, she says. Once the theater erased its debt, its leaders hoped to begin educational programs and expand the building to accommodate classrooms and a smaller theater for readings and experimental productions.

“It was clear they had some big goals for themselves and that retiring that debt wouldn’t even begin to put them on the road to those goals,” says Ms. Brodeur. “They thought, as many organizations do, Well, we’ll get out of debt and we’ll be in a stronger position and then we’ll do things as we go along.”

Instead, theater officials ended up mapping out a 10-year plan for future projects, and from that made a list of capital-campaign needs. Eventually they raised $4.5-million in a capital campaign and were able not only to eliminate their debt but also to buy an adjacent property and start new programs.

Bob Carter, president of Ketchum Inc., a fund-raising consulting company based in Dallas, says that while small groups may find the mini-campaign approach helpful, large institutions are better off conducting one major drive every few years than to run small ones continuously. Well-heeled donors are more likely to give large sums to major campaigns than to small ones, he says.

“People give in context,” says Mr. Carter. Michael Bloomberg, the financial-information publisher, would not have made a $55-million gift to the Johns Hopkins University during an $850-million campaign if the institution had been running a drive whose goal was $100-million, he says.

“That’s one of the issues that was the beginning of the mega-campaign concept,” says Mr. Carter. “The most cost-effective way to raise money is to do it all at once.”

What’s more, some experts say, charities can run into problems if they use the same volunteers or tap the same donor pool during frequent mini-campaigns.

Small campaigns can also present dilemmas when people who normally give to the annual fund are called on to make a gift for a special project.

“You have to be very careful not to rob Peter to pay Paul,” says William C. Krueger, president of Capital Quest, a fund-raising consulting company in Tucson, Ariz. “You don’t want to take a donor who has been giving $5,000 for operations and have him say, ‘I’d rather give to this project instead.’ You have to be very careful about managing that process.”

But it can be done, he says. When asking for a gift to a special campaign, be sure the donor is willing to continue his or her other regular gifts, Mr. Krueger says.

“You just have to make those judgment calls,” he adds. “You have to determine whether the organization is strong enough financially to take that risk. If you’re living and dying on that person’s gift, then it’s better not to ask.”

But even critics of mini-drives agree that they have their place.

“Small campaigns are a good learning tool,” says Mr. Krueger, who has worked with many groups on their first campaigns. “We have found it to be a great place to start fund raising.”

It can be just as valuable in large institutions. At universities, for example, campaigns that focus on the needs of one department can drive home the importance of fund raising to faculty members, as well as build better relationships between professors and fund raisers.

“In a larger capital campaign, when you go for the big themes and the big vision, you hope you bring everybody along, but it’s hard to take the time to work with individuals and really educate them and make them into partners,” says Ms. Shullaw of the University of Iowa Foundation. “The smaller campaigns give volunteers a chance to get over their fears of fund raising so they can be more valuable partners in the big campaign to follow.”

The same is true of faculty members, she says. “We’ve had a number of conversion experiences,” she says. “Until they got involved in the fund-raising effort, they weren’t quite sure who we were, and fund raising was a dirty word. Now they’re our best friends.”