Dan Kennedy, VP of Marketing Services
I was eager to present my idea to my Chinese colleague in my office in Tianjin. I felt confident about the proposal, knowing it was based on the best practices I’d learned while in brand management at Procter & Gamble. The idea? A name, in Mandarin, for a new division of the NGO we both worked for.
I thought it was brilliant. She agreed! My big head and I floated down the hall to share the news with a Western colleague with decades of Chinese culture experience. He declared the idea was… terrible.
I protested: “But John, Xiǎo Fan said it was fēicháng hǎo!” (very good!)
He smiled gently and explained what I can now see clearly: she was being kind. (Saving face, as it’s often described.) Her encouragement to share it with “others” in the office made much more sense in hindsight.
The lesson? Knowing best practices is good. Understanding your context is even better.
I had the right strategic direction (building out a branded house), but the wrong approach in implementing it (using a direct communication style in a high-context culture). That moment shaped me—and continues to shape me. As I’ve spent the last 20 years working to adapt business best practices to the Kingdom-building work of faith-based nonprofits, I have continued to see the value of best practices and the importance of knowing how to implement them in specific situations.
One of the places I see this most clearly? Fundraising (including capital) campaigns.
Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of walking with several clients of The FOCUS Group through building strong public phase marketing plans as a part of their capital campaigns. Every organization is different (yes, context matters!), but these five lessons continue to show up and have a consistent positive impact.
1. Start Early
Most organizations begin planning for the public phase well into their capital campaign. But the most successful ones start much earlier—sometimes even before the campaign officially launches.
At The FOCUS Group (TFG), we break campaigns into five phases. The first three are “silent,” focused on major gifts. Phase 4 is the public phase (typically launched once 90% of the goal is secured). Phase 5 is all about sharing results and gratitude.
In that framework, public phase planning should begin no later than Phase 3 but, ideally, sooner. The best-case scenario? You undergo a full campaign readiness assessment before campaign launch, including a deep dive into your marketing and communications capacity. (More on that in a future blog.)
2. Engage Widely
Campaign planning often lives with a small group—top executives, board members, and the development team. If marketing and communications are only brought in to design the case statement, you’re missing out.
The most effective campaigns bring in marketing leadership from the very beginning. They don’t just provide creative horsepower—they can also expand your thinking about other audiences (beyond your current donor base) that this campaign can serve. These other groups could include:
- Staff (including past team members)
- Volunteers and their families
- Alumni (K–12, higher ed, seminaries, even camps)
- Church leaders
- Visitors and “beneficiaries” of your programs or resources
Broader engagement = deeper impact.
3. Goal-Set Broadly
Yes, you need a clear financial goal for your campaign. However, the public phase offers an opportunity to pursue other goals, too—goals that can leave your organization stronger in the long term.
Questions worth asking:
- Can we increase email engagement or social media reach?
- Can this campaign help to shift brand perceptions? (Do people see our brand as only talking about the past, or not caring about _____?)
- Can we inspire more staff applicants?
- How does this campaign pave the way for our next one?
- Could it help launch or legitimize a new leader?
- For schools: Can it rekindle alumni enthusiasm or engage grandparents?
- My favorite for K–12 schools: How can this effort help parents disciple their children in generosity as an act of worship?
4. Examine Your Brand Carefully
This might be the hardest—and squishiest—part. But it matters.
Let’s define your brand simply: It’s what your audience believes about you.
It’s not just what you say—it’s what they hear. You can influence it, but you don’t control it.
That’s why, before launching a campaign, every nonprofit should ask:
- What do our external audiences truly believe about us?
- How does that compare to our intended brand strategy?
- What language do our internal teams use to describe who we are and what we do?
- What tools guide our communication (brand guidelines, image libraries, boilerplate copy)?
- Who owns the brand internally, and what’s our workflow for delivering creative?
This kind of brand audit is hard to do alone. (Fish swim in water all day, but don’t know they’re wet.) Getting an outside perspective is often illuminating and always healthy.
5. Stay Relational
This might feel obvious, but it’s easy to forget.
During the silent phase, relationships with a few dozen high-capacity partners take center stage. Later, as you scale your campaign into the public phase, relationships still matter, but they just look different.
Staying relational means applying empathy and human connection at scale. Even if the ask is small (open this email, attend this event), the first principle of Taking Donors Seriously© holds:
People give to people that they know and trust.
In public-facing communication, every touchpoint has the ability to grow trust. Let’s use each one well.
(For a practical article on this topic, check out “How Do I Become a Compassionate Communicator?”)
Bonus: Invest Structurally
When communicating at scale, your CRM matters more than ever. To proceed efficiently and effectively, your systems need to help you communicate with the right people at the right time and then evaluate what’s working. Without that, your best communication efforts will be greatly limited.
In my next blog, I’ll share a case study of one campaign that lived out these lessons and the fruit that followed. That time, I chose to stick with English instead. (My Mandarin is still bù hǎo… not good.)
We’ve been privileged to help many organizations be more effective in their fundraising by learning and implementing relational fundraising principles in their work with donors. Want to talk?