When foundations and corporations see enthusiastic staff giving to your capital campaign, they see a sincere and impressive endorsement from the people who know your organization best

By Lynne T. Dean, CFRE

Staff giving makes a huge difference to outside funders. Consider this comment from a local banker we solicited for a capital campaign gift to Hospice of Southwest Oklahoma: “One of the most important things you said during the presentation was that 100 percent of the employees of the organization have contributed to the campaign. That speaks well of the organization and the campaign.”

You’ve probably heard about the necessity and value of 100 percent financial participation of the board of directors. Foundations look for this statistic in proposals. Corporations often respond more favorably to gift requests when board members demonstrate their unanimous endorsement of the campaign.

Equally important, however, is the participation rate among those who have an internal view of the organization. In fact, staff participation can sometimes make an even stronger impression on foundations, corporations, and individual donor prospects.

Hospice of Southwest Oklahoma has launched a capital campaign to fund construction of an inpatient facility for terminally ill patients and their families. The building will also house clinical and administrative offices for the organization. When campaign organizers asked employees to participate, the 55 nurses, home health aides, social workers, chaplains and support personnel answered in two remarkable ways: everyone contributed and they pledged over $105,000.

Although the effort was not without its challenges, we discovered strategies that worked best for us. The following six tips will help you make the employee giving division of your campaign successful, too.

1. Recruit the right leader. Although support and involvement of the executive director or CEO is crucial, select someone else to chair the employee campaign. One way to identify good candidates is to consult the person who conducted the campaign’s Feasibility and Planning Study prior to the campaign (if it included staff members). Look for an individual who is widely respected among his or her fellow employees, someone with energy, a positive spirit, creativity, and passion for the organization and the project. Select a peer, not a member of senior management, so that you can avoid the conflict of supervisors “soliciting” their subordinates.

2. Make giving easy. Before starting the campaign, coordinate with the business office to set up payroll deduction as an option. Specify the date that deductions will begin so that staff members can more easily plan their contributions. Studies indicate that donors using payroll deduction will give an average of 5 to 6 times more than those who give check/cash gifts.

3. Set an employee division goal within the campaign goal. Encourage employees to give more by setting a goal that is both aggressive and attainable. When you set the goal at the beginning, employees will feel as though they are helping to reach that goal when they make their pledge. Along with the goal, arrange incentives to be rewarded to everyone when the goal is achieved. Incentives can range from paid days off to extra half hour for lunch to casual day to leave work early passes to pizza parties. We established two goals— the participation rate (100 percent) and a dollar goal ($100,000). Because staff members reached both goals, they will receive vouchers for a full day off and board members will treat them to a “tailgate” cookout party.

4. Communicate and publicize the campaign. Employees can’t give to the campaign if they don’t know that it’s happening. Make the campaign a “big deal” around the office and you can get excitement and momentum for your efforts. Throw a kick-off party to get everything started, then communicate frequently with staff members using payroll stuffers, mailbox stuffers, posters, email blasts, and give-aways.

5. Implement the 100 percent ask and 100 percent follow-up. Ensure that 100 percent of employees know about the campaign. If some staff members have work that keeps them away from the office, devise a strategy for communicating with them and making sure they have the information on how to make a gift. A face-to-face ask is always the most effective. Using an all-staff meeting to ask employees to give is very effective. Follow-up with individual solicitations after such a gathering has a high rate of success because of the awareness and spirit the meeting generates.

6. Say thank you. Thank each employee submitting a cash gift or pledge within 24 hours. Coordinate with the business office and the campaign office to create a system of logging donations and preparing acknowledgements. We prepared thank-you letters from the executive director and the campaign chair so that each staff member received two acknowledgements. Be sure they’re personalized. Additionally, we did not include the gift amount on the letter signed by the executive director, because we did not want staff members to feel that their job performance might be evaluated on the basis of how much they gave to the campaign.

Capital campaigns mark extraordinary times and often a transformation in the life of a nonprofit organization. When staff members participate in campaigns, the nonprofit gains much than dollars toward the campaign goal. Contributing employees and board members demonstrate to everyone asked to give to the campaign that the mission, the project, and the organization matter, especially to those who carry it out every day.