Every thirteenth campaign gets the dream committee of fundraising unicorns, but perhaps your experience has been different.
Perhaps—when it’s month nine but you still haven’t had the first committee meeting, or the person you know you need won’t sign on for the chair role, or the staff you need on the frontline is busy arranging the little cheese cubes for yet another meeting—you’ve allowed yourself the forbidden thought:
Wasn’t this supposed to help me?
The truth is that campaigns can find success with more and less volunteer-driven models, but basically every campaign needs the unique contribution of volunteer leaders in some specific and essential way. They’re too valuable, and because they aren’t paid to be there, they bring something even the best professional fundraising staff can’t bring to a donor conversation.
But there truly isn’t one campaign leadership structure that fits all, and chasing some idealized model that isn’t readily available to you is a surefire road to frustration.
If you’re launching or managing a campaign, start from what you truly need from your committee, and consider more creative ways to accomplish it.
What do we really need from volunteer leaders anyway? The list of non-negotiables is actually pretty concise:
That’s basically it. As you can probably tell, each of those responsibilities can scale up or down from a helpful minimum viable level to a truly transformational level. You rarely get the max on all three from every member, or every committee—but if you know what you really need, you can build a committee that gets you there.
So let’s consider some options.
This is what you picture when someone says “campaign committee:”
This model still works great, and it gives you a balance of reach/visibility, working capacity, and strategic support that can serve your campaign through every stage with continuity. It hinges on the strength of the co-chairs, and if you have the right people for those roles, this can be the best model to build around them.
The standard model works best for established programs with strong volunteer benches to recruit from (though you’ll want some new faces as well), and it requires diligent staff support throughout to prepare for meetings, support members in their duties, and follow up on everything you ask of them.
It’s worked for countless campaigns, but if it doesn’t sound right for you, it’s not your only option.
If you need momentum more than mass, consider a small, deeply engaged “working committee” that rolls up their sleeves and helps you move the campaign forward week by week:
This option offers something nimbler and more productive, and can be just the ticket for smaller teams that don’t have the capacity to support two dozen volunteers. It works especially well for shorter campaigns or for a more intensive “sprint” in the critical first year or so of a longer campaign.
The lean and mean option may lack the extensive reach and “blue ribbon” visibility of a larger committee—but if you have the right half dozen people around you and you’re hitting your solicitation targets month after month, you won’t miss the rigmarole. (And of course, if you want to expand the committee later for a broader phase of the campaign, you can!)
If what you most need from your volunteers is the power of their example—a highly visible signal that makes your community believe in your campaign—you might consider a broader committee structure with a much lighter ask for members:
Despite the longer volunteer roster, this option generally suits staff-driven campaigns. If you have the internal capacity to “run” the campaign and cultivate the prospects you need, this committee helps give you the lift and reach to get in all of those doors and get the conversations started.
It’s especially well suited to missions and communities with a strong social dynamic—where a “who’s who” of names on the list can help bring other prospects off the sidelines—and to big-swing campaigns (landmark civic projects, moonshot visions, big organizational leaps) that need the visible example of trusted leaders to show your community that this is real, and really happening.
Baggy jeans notwithstanding, it’s not the 90s anymore. If you’re hoping your community’s most significant figurehead will happily sign up for six years of open-ended service as campaign chair, you might be in for a tough meeting.
It was tricky to get the best person for five-plus years then—and it’s very hard now.
If you’ve got fundraising unicorns on board as co-chairs for the life of the campaign, thank your lucky stars and skip the rest of this section. If you don’t, be careful about locking in someone less equipped—especially when there’s another option:
You can just ask people to serve on your committee—or as co-chair—for a year or two. We’ve seen campaigns go full “relay race” with five or more co-chairs taking the baton at different stages.
If it helps you get a “yes” from the most capable campaign leaders, you can build a ton of momentum during their periods of service. You’ll have their full energy knowing they don’t have to pace themselves for half a decade. And, you’ll have fresh legs as you bring on the next wave of leaders mid-way.
Oh, and: Don’t be surprised when folks who sign on for just a year actually end up staying on much longer, because they’re invested now and they want to cross the finish line with you.
Everything you dreamed about as a child is possible. Have pizza and pancakes for dinner! Wear a blazer over your SpongeBob pajamas!
Recruit a lean-and-mean core for the first couple years and then add a broad and buzzy honorific committee around it for the public phase!
Assemble an ad hoc “starter” group that gives way to a standard committee after a nucleus of key gifts is committed!
Organize lean-and-mean task forces within your larger committee to take on specific audiences or initiatives!
Why not?
The question is obvious and someone will ask it: We already have an existing board committee dedicated to fundraising—why wouldn’t we just use them as the campaign committee?
If that strikes you immediately as the wrong choice—and most of the time, it is—it’s worth asking whether you might need some board development on the development committee, either now or down the road.
Some organizations already have the committee they need right in front of them, and some use the campaign as the spur to turn a fixer-upper development committee into the fundraising force they need for the campaign and beyond. Their teams only have one set of committee meetings to manage, and the dividends of a stronger development committee continue far beyond the campaign. (By the way: This works best if your bylaws allow non-board members to supplement board committees.)
Most campaigns, though, conclude for various reasons that they don’t have time to turn their dev comm into the campaign committee they need, or they need the former focused on annual fundraising while the latter goes big game hunting. All reasonable—we just invite you to sit with the question for a minute.
Whether it takes on the campaign or not, you need a development committee that helps you win.
Go standard, go small, go big, go through stages—it all works, as long as it works for you.
Start from what you really need, think about what you can really manage, and solve the puzzle from there.
The power of strong volunteer leaders has no substitute—but the model for engaging them is pretty dang flexible.
We’re ready to invest in your success. Are you?
