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NEW!!! KLCC-FM Gains Donor and Listener through Sustained Cultivation
During its recent successful capital campaign, KLCC-FM in Eugene identified a couple who had the potential to make a major gift. While "Dan" or "Jill" were regular annual donors to the station, no one on staff had ever met them.
The community volunteer chaired the station's site committee recommended that Dan would be a good member. They contacted him, and he agreed to serve, but during his first meeting with General Manager Steve Barton and Development Director Paul Chan Carpenter, he said, "I hate KLCC."
It turned out that Jill was the KLCC listener, while Dan had to endure being awakened by the station each morning on the couple's clock radio. While he was helpful on the site committee, he still didn't become a fan.
That changed when University of Oregon President David Frohnmeyer held a KLCC prospect reception in his home, with NPR President Kevin Klose as special guest. Dan and Jill attended the reception and a small dinner that followed. Dan was favorably impressed with Kevin, and KLCC maintained cultivation after the event.
Later, Steve, Paula, and a campaign volunteer made a solicitation call for the campaign. They asked Dan and Jill to consider a $250,000 gift. After giving it some thought, they agreed to give $200,000. They soon added another $50,000 and have since offered an additional $25,000.
Dan has become a good friend of the station... and a devoted listener.
NEW!!! WCQS-FM Reaches $2.2 Goal through Broad-Based Campaign
WCQS in Asheville, NC used a combination of PTFP and CPB grants, bequests, proceeds from a special event, and major gifts to raise $2.2 million for the renovation of its offices and studios.
General Manager Ed Subkis reports this theirs was a broad-based campaign, with many gifts coming in small installments made over a multi-year period. There were nearly eighty gifts of $5,000 and more — remarkable for a community of this size. Two of the eight top gifts came from individuals.
NEW!!! WYPR-FM Buys License from Johns Hopkins University
When John Hopkins University decided to divest its interest in radio station WHJU-FM in 2001, program host Mark Steiner and several other employees formed a non-profit organization to buy it. With the university's deadline for the sale looming, a firm price of $5 million, and other suitors in the wings, Steiner was introduced to Anthony Brandon, owner of American General Media. Brandon, whose firm owns over 50 commercial radio stations across the country.
Brandon became interested in keeping the station under local management in Baltimore. He involved a local financial institution and helped to assemble a group of individual guarantors to underwrite the financing while fundraising could get underway. With the backing of these Baltimore-area individuals, the non-profit assumed the license in early 2002 and renamed it WYPR — for "Your Public Radio." The guarantors became involved in the station's board and continue to advance its mission as a community licensed station today.
2006 PBS DevCon Award Winner: WGBH (Special Achievement Category)
TITLE | Breaking New Ground: The Campaign for WGBH — Surpasses Goal Ahead of Schedule
GOALS | In January 2003, WGBH launched a $40M campaign to help support the construction of our new headquarters. Funds from the sale of our current facility allowed WGBH to keep our bricks and mortar goal modest. The $18.5M Building Fund will allow us to reinvent our infrastructure from the ground up to accommodate the digital age, instead of continuing with expensive retrofits of our current facilities. For the first time, we will have the space to bring the public into public broadcasting, and will be able to showcase the riches of our intellectual and cultural community as a convener of screenings, lectures, and performances. A $10M Endowment Fund was established to ensure that increased costs of operating the new building would not burden the current operating budget. An $11.5M Strategic Opportunities Fund was created as a spend down fund to support the research and development of original, innovative, high-quality content and services that will further our public broadcasting mission. An accelerated time frame of 4 years was established for the campaign (rather than the traditional five or more) to accommodate the construction schedule. While the campaign has not yet ended, the goal has already been surpassed. The momentum shows we have the opportunity to raise more money, and the effort will continue.
PROCESS | Prior to the commencement of the campaign, Real Estate and Building committees were formed to council staff in negotiations and plans for our current and future locations. They were comprised of volunteers with specific interest and expertise in real estate, architecture, and vendor negotiations. Many of these volunteers later went on to form the Campaign Steering Committee, which was comprised of 14 trustees and 17 overseers (total committee giving $12.7M). The staff and institutional leadership recommended four co-chairs, drawn from both boards. Each made a campaign leadership gift and later pledged a second commitment (total co-chair giving $3.2M). Four subcommittees were formed to address policy on gifts, donor recognition, events, and marketing materials. Campaign Committee members offered guidance on cultivation and solicitation strategies and well over half participated actively as solicitors, both independently or in tandem with our CEO, COO, Chair of the Board, appropriate vice presidents, program producers, and development staff. This integration of content producers, volunteers, executives and staff allowed for highly individualized solicitation strategies, and had the added benefit of infusing a spirit of cooperation and campaign buy-in internally throughout the institution. We held several cultivation and stewardship events, both large and small scale, and used the unfinished top-floor of our new building for two of these events, which allowed prospective donors a glimpse into WGBH's future. Of particular note was an event held at the Boston Athenaeum celebrating the premiere of American Experience's John & Abigail Adams. Committee members took responsibility for inviting at least one new campaign prospect, meeting with remarkable success. While this event resulted in over $800,000 of new gifts, its greatest contribution was the new relationships established that have potential long beyond the life of this campaign. A case statement was created using the resources and expertise of several departments as well as a volunteer subcommittee. This award-winning document outlines the case for support in the context of the work-programs, services and technologies-for which WGBH is best known including national productions, children's programming, Accessible Media and educational productions and outreach.
RESULTS | In addition to the outstanding results of surpassing our goal by $2M (and counting!) 7 months prior to the scheduled completion date, engaging every level of WGBH membership, reaching into the community, building deep relationships through leadership giving, leadership roles, full board participation, and naming opportunities, the Breaking New Ground campaign provided the opportunity for an organization of close to 900 employees to work in tandem towards one important institutional goal, creating a culture of philanthropy that can prosper long beyond the life of this campaign. This institution-wide understanding of each department's unique role in fundraising will enhance our ability to raise funds for strategic priorities well into WGBH's future.
IMPACT | The once-in-a-lifetime nature of this effort allowed us to foster new relationships and capitalize on existing ones. The magnitude and visibility of the project allowed us to approach donors who had not previously been approachable beyond annual giving, ultimately expanding our base of major supporters and our prospects for the future. Our local and national audiences and communities are richer for what this new facility will allow in terms of local impact on the cultural community and the increased opportunities available to our creative and production talent through the Strategic Opportunities Fund. Breaking New Ground campaign was a tall order with a short time frame but due to the commitment and hard work of staff and leadership volunteers, we were able to rise to the challenge, and leave behind the constraints of our 40-year-old facility, and move to a new headquarters built to maximize efficiency and flexibility, welcome our community, and, most importantly, advance our crucial mission of informing, educating and inspiring millions of people in New England, across the nation, and around the world.
2006 PBS DevCon Award Winner: WNED (Special Achievement Category)
TITLE | The Persistence of a Child; The Patience of a Saint: The Split Personality of a Capital Campaign
GOALS | The goals of WNED's Capital Campaign were to: 1) Raise $15 million for digital equipment and new program development, 2) Identify new major donor prospects to WNED, 3) Identify and cultivate new pool of WNED members with capacity to become major donors, and 4) Establish strong major donor program in Canada.
PROCESS | The campaign had struggled early. We did not know how to do major donor fund raising. We continually tracked behind our campaign goals and because of that, we did not receive a Kresge Foundation grant. Our Campaign/Board Chair, Kevin Keane, from the beginning had led by example in demonstrating great patience and never stopped cultivating. FY05 was the turning point of the campaign because three years of cultivation finally began to yield significant major gifts, which in turn resulted in The Kresge Foundation awarding us a $900,000 challenge grant in our second attempt. The start of FY06 marked the start of the Public Phase of the Capital Campaign. The Campaign had already raised a total of $10,378,141, 69% of the $15 million goal. To earn the Kresge Challenge and complete the Campaign, WNED had one year to raise another $3,721,859 — which was 37% more than what we raised in FY05. Furthermore, The Kresge Foundation no longer counted government grants or estate gifts. The Public Phase moved forward on three fronts.
- WNED Members — It is not possible to truly communicate the planning that was necessary to solicit every WNED member through thoughtful direct mail and telemarketing. Under the leadership of Stacie Waddell, Director of Special Projects, every dimension of WNED's membership department was replicated for the Capital Campaign to ensure that our annual membership efforts would not be adversely affected by the Campaign. We also needed to construct two different messages — one for Western New York members and another for Canadian members — designed to inspire them to invest in something that most of them could not even comprehend.
- Major Donor Prospects in Canada — WNED opened an office in Toronto to cultivate major donor prospects in September 2005. Experienced Canadian fund raiser James Bindon was contracted to work in the Toronto office. A number of events were held, presentations were made, people were cultivated. Patience and persistence had served us well in the quiet phase, so we embraced these same principles in Canada. More than $310,000 CN in major donor gifts were received in the last six weeks of the Campaign, including two $100,000+ gifts in the final month.
- Major Donor Prospects in Western New York — In the final two weeks of the campaign, two current campaign donors made additional gifts of $100,000 each — one which was combined with the Kresge Challenge to make the incentive to reach the campaign goal $1,000,000.
Important note: On June 1, WNED was nearly $600,000 away from our goal. Yet the entire organization, including WNED's Board of Trustees and every department and employee, persisted onward. We make a targeted effort to do on-air fund raising on six nights around core programming with special emphasis on mission and the impact of the campaign on WNED's future in hopes of motivating people to make last minute, major gifts to help us achieve our goal.
RESULTS | On the evening of June 24, 2006, WNED reached our goal, and we met the Kresge challenge with a total of $15.1 million in pledges. WNED had also continued to secure government grants, even though they did not count toward the Kresge Challenge. The final tally, including government grants, reached almost $16.9 million, 12.6% higher than our original goal. In FY06, the Campaign raised nearly $6.5 million, 140% more than in FY05. The Campaign included four gifts of $1 million or more and 20 gifts of $100,000 or more. Our largest gift was a $2.5 million grant from The John R. Oishei Foundation to create ThinkBright Lifelong Learning. Gifts at these levels are unprecedented in WNED's history and especially noteworthy considering that both the City of Buffalo and Erie County governments are operating under Financial Stability Control Boards — a sign of the dire straits the region finds itself in. WNED will not let the opportunities created by this Campaign be lost! The Capital Campaign was just the beginning.
IMPACT | On July 1, 2006, WNED launched its new major donor initiative. The public phase of the campaign revealed that hundreds of WNED's current members have the capacity to make major gifts. Significant resources have been allocated to properly steward capital campaign donors. We have also made a significant investment in developing our Canadian donor prospects, which represent a largely untapped and rapidly growing service area. WNED struggled early to learn the art of major donor fund raising. We were not truly effective until FY05, and then we had to work twice as hard to make up the ground we lost early in the campaign. WNED did learn how to do "major giving fund raising"... for the first time in our 47 year history. We intend to apply the lessons learned and the new fund raising skills developed in our board leadership and staff to grow major giving as a significant, long-term revenue stream for WNED. Campaign Chair Kevin Keane was constantly encouraging us with these words from Thomas Jefferson, "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." Patience and persistence breed success. And so WNED marches forward confidently with our Major Giving Initiative, learning from the lessons and the successes that resulted from the split personality of the capital campaign.
2005 PBS DevCon Award Winner: KNPB
Planning for KNPB/Channel 5's campaign to fund the conversion to digital television started in 1999. Key staff members for the campaign included the President/CEO, Vice President for Development & Marketing, Vice President for Technology, Director of Major Giving, and an overall coordinator.
Community leadership was recruited in 2001. Phil Satre and John Sande accepted the position of co-chairs of the campaign — Defining Five. Satre was chairman of Harrah's Entertainment and Sande was a prominent attorney and lobbyist.
Other members of the lay leadership team included board members, business leaders and the former president of the University of Nevada.
A goal of six million dollars was set with a completion date of September, 2005.
Having completed a capital campaign for a new building to house our station just six years earlier, the prospect list was still fresh and new potential funders were researched. The E.L. Cord Foundation gave a lead gift of 1.1 million to Defining Five. (Following the building campaign, KNPB honored them by naming the facility the E.L. Cord Foundation Telecommunications Center.) The Redfield Foundation followed with a $300,000 gift.
Friends of KNPB in Reno and Lake Tahoe opened their homes for Defining Five social events, which lead to nearly $3 million in donations.
PBS performer Mark Russell was the headliner for a Defining Five banquet at Harrah's Reno. Over 700 people were highly entertained. Harrah's, through Phil Satre's corporate generosity, picked up the dinner and facility tab of $43,000.
A campaign to reach the existing and lapsed members of KNPB was commenced in 2003, utilizing the southern Nevada firm of IDC. IDC used a program of letters and telemarketing to target existing and lapsed members. Those who pledged had up to three years for fulfillment if they chose an installment plan. On a goal of $387,575, pledges from 7,500 prospects came in at 48 percent over goal for a total of $574,675. The projected average gift of $212 was surpassed by 30 percent, coming in at $302.
On a goal of $6,000,000, we have...
- $5,921,135 pledged through June 30, 2005.
- Matching grants totaling $60,000 have been secured.
- Expectations of positive response on DDF and PTFP equipment grants totaling $1,032,000.
...for a grand total of $7,013,135.
A Defining Five celebration of success will be held at the home of Phil Satre in October 2005.
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