The $500,000 Launch Strategy for Employee Giving

When our team launched our first employee giving campaign nearly a decade ago, we didn’t know what to expect.

We certainly didn’t walk into the campaign with a perfect plan in year one. Sure, we readied ourselves by collecting inspiring projects, designing the campaign brand and marketing materials - and we even had a communication plan that counted down the days to the launch… but ironically we missed one of the greatest factors to a successful launch.

We were so focused on launching - that we forgot to pre-launch our campaign.

Of course you are going to lose some donors and dollars by not effectively launching your campaign, but beyond this you are missing out the opportunity to build momentum - which is critical to cultivating a grassroots movement.Over the next couple of campaign cycles, we refined our approach to build an integrated, comprehensive plan of staging the campaign with a pre-launch - and the results spoke for themselves. Our pre-launch efforts now garner roughly 50% of our total dollars raised of each campaign - all before the public launch. Are you sold yet?

We call our approach impact-led staging.

The premise behind impact-led staging is simply that you let the campaign's previous year impact lead your efforts to stage the campaign. If this is your first campaign (or you have no campaign impact to show) then rely on stories of impact from other philanthropic efforts at your hospital to show what’s possible when private supports meets critical needs.When your plan relies upon starting with campaign impact, this does two important things for the long-term success of your giving program:You ensure you have the mechanisms in place to ensure quick, efficient spending of campaign donor dollars, resulting in impact.When you accomplish factor #1 - you are equipped with the proof and storyline to update donors of their gifts and prepare them to renew their gift for another year.The flip side of this equation is if you don’t start with impact - you are limiting what can be done in the pre-launch phase. Do you want to be in a position where you are asking for another gift from a donor before even being able to share the impact of their last gift?Armed with impact, you are ready to begin your campaign staging efforts.Here’s our exact playbook for ensuring launch success each year. We break down our pre-launch into phases breaking down five different audience groups:

1. Pre-Launch to Matching Gift Donors:

If you leverage a matching gift donor (and ahem, you should be!), then this should be your first stop. Since these donors are visionary in their gifting, we like to approach them first to cast vision for what their gift can do as an inspirational challenge to the groups to follow.At our hospital system, we have cultivated a unique and treasured relationship with our volunteer auxiliaries. Each year we invite our volunteers to provide matching gift support of our employee gifts of the campaign. Their response has been nothing short of incredible. Beyond the financial and campaign benefits of a matching gift partner, our volunteers also serve as our beta test group for us to make sure the projects and campaign messaging will resonate with the rest of organization family.If your hospital doesn’t have the incredible gift of a philanthropic auxiliary, consider launching to another group who may step into a matching gift role in your campaign. Explore your Foundation or hospital boards, philanthropic groups who support your organization or other closely connected partners to your mission.

2. Pre-Launch to Leadership

If you’ve read my articles, you know I’m not one to get hung up on 100% participation… (see my thoughts here) but this pre-launch group is my one caveat to that statement.I believe it is imperative to set the expectation for leadership at your organization to participate at some level in your employee giving campaign. The reason you want to pre-launch this effort is because you want this "endorsement” as part of your campaign presentation and talking points as you spread the message to all employees post-launch.If the definition of "leaders" at your organization needs to start small - don’t sweat it! Begin with your most executive team of leaders - secure 100% at that level in year one. Work on engaging the next level down to 100% in the following year. The key point here is the work with your leaders to set the tone of importance for the campaign.

3. Pre-Launch to Foundation Team

Likely your smallest pre-launch group, but arguably one of the most critical! Take the time to properly launch your annual employee campaign to your own internal team. This launch is twofold. One, you are giving your peers the respect of experiencing the campaign as a prospective donor and the opportunity to consider the campaign on their own. And two, you are modeling a best-in-class rollout of the campaign to them - so they can help in turn train others to do so in their departments. Pre-launching to your internal team is a critical step, because advancing forward with a unified group of participation from those closest can speak volumes to your peer departments across the organization. 

4. Pre-Launch to Campaign Volunteers

It’s time to train! Be sure to set time aside to pre-launch to all campaign volunteers. At our organization this includes facility leaders for the campaign and individual departmental ambassadors too. As you train them with their roles and responsibilities (see article here!) for the campaign, also ask for their own personal gift. We’ve found that by securing most of our campaign volunteer gifts at this step goes a long way in creating momentum for the launch - and the side perk is this group can be among the first to snag the campaign incentives or swag you are offering (if you are offering it?!) which can create some nice buzz leading up to launch.

5. Pre-Launch to Past Donors

Our final group we pre-launch to is our loyal campaign donors. Before all the campaign materials officially canvas the campuses and takeover the internal intranet, we make a targeted effort to invite our past donors to renew their gift. This is our biggest surge of pre-launch support. This special appeal is following the delivery of their annual impact report - so the proof of impact is already on the mind. So many of our donors take pride in being among the first to re-up their support each year.Even for your donors who don't renew their gift in the pre-launch phase, the gesture of reaching out to them first with customized messaging provides a nice customized donor experience. What have you got to lose?If you take the time to pre-launch to these five groups using the impact-led staging approach - you will see growth in your campaign. That’s the benefit of building a campaign based around the simple (but not easy!) approach of defining projects annually and proving impact year-after-year. In doing so, you are creating a system that builds trust, equity and belief in your cause. And the results will be akin to rolling a snowball that is gaining momentum and size with each passing campaign. It is certainly one of the key reasons we continue to see growth - even after 9 years.

In Closing

Do you pre-launch your employee giving campaign? Would love to hear about your experiences in the comments below!

Jonathan McCoy, CFRE is Director of Annual Giving at INTEGRIS Foundation and Founder and Chief Visionary of We are for Good. {Read more] [Email Jon]