Capital Campaign Fundraising

Capital Campaign Fundraising Best Practices

I grew up around capital campaign consulting and now working in hedge fund marketing and it amazes me how similar the two types of work are.

Both capital campaign fundraising and hedge fund marketing:

Relies heavily on relationship cultivation
Requires using the 80/20 rule to focus on the best prospects at hand
Requires a multi-stage marketing/sales process to effectively move through the "marketing" campaign
Demands an ability to sell the intangible. In one case you are selling the good feelings and community benefits of a large donation, in another the hopefully secure or proper management of your capital.

Some lessons that hedge fund marketers could probably learn from capital campaign fundraising consultants might be:

Use internal champions to help ask for new investments. Using testimonials from a current investor or creating an environment which includes a few of your more supportive current investors with potential investors may be effective. Many times capital campaign consultants get volunteers from within the hospital or university they are raising money for to go out and help ask for gifts or in the case of hedge funds - investments.
Stage your marketing campaign - Many capital campaign fundraising endeavors are managed a staged 3-4 step project helping the organization systematically develop close relationships with dozens of even hundreds of well qualified donors. Some hedge funds may take this same approach to marketing to a channel, such as family offices...but most that I have come in contact with do not. There are efficiencies in doing things in batches, so if your hedge fund marketing team consists of only 2-3 individuals it may help to try this approach.
Market Research - Many development offices conduct thorough market research on their potential donors (investors). In the hedge fund marketing arena there is always a balance that must be struck between knowing who you are approaching for compliance and selling effectiveness reasons while not "wasting time" by spending hours researching a potential target investor. This is because many "targets" may not be searching for your strategy or may have minimum AUM requirements your fund does not meet and some research time could be wasted on these contacts. That said, many times no research is done on prospects in the hedge fund industry - and groups are simply cold called through directories, databases, and internal Sales CRM systems with no long of what the firm does besides their type of business.

Here is a site on capital campaign fundraising - Major Gifts Guru.

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Tags: Capital Campaign Fundraising, Capital Campaign, Capital Campaigns, Non-profit Capital Campaign, Capital Campaign Consultant, Capital Campaign Consulting & Hedge Fund Marketing, Seeking Hedge Fund Investors

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