[NPFX Ep. 4] Capital Campaigns during COVID-19: Pivot and Adapt

Welcome to The Nonprofit Fundraising Exchange, a podcast from IPM Advancement. Our mission is to help you raise more money so you can make the world a better place.

Today’s topic: Capital Campaigns during COVID-19 — Pivot and Adapt

In this episode, we discuss:

• One of the biggest roadblocks for nonprofit fundraisers
• How one nonprofit transformed the cancelation of a major annual fundraising gala into an opportunity to improve long-term relationships with their best donors
• Why honest communication and good stewardship with donors is so vital to the success of a capital campaign
• How to use technology to continue and strengthen your campaign when in-person meetings and events are not feasible
• Examples of how to pivot and adapt your mission to continue serving your community even when your doors are shut
• The importance of reminding yourself (and your board) of the needs in your community that inspired your capital campaign in the first place
• How to show donors that your nonprofit is still relevant and that their support can still make a valuable impact
• Why your nonprofit’s leadership is needed now more than ever

Special Offer: Free 30-minute consultation for NPFX listeners

Guests:

• Kim MacEwan, Executive Director for the tag! Children’s Museum in St. Augustine, Florida

• Shannon Dixon, Director of Development & Communications at the Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville, Arkansas

• Karen Thomas, Chief Development and Marketing Officer for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central and Northern Arizona

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Transcript

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led many nonprofits to question the feasibility of running a traditional capital campaign right now. Should they stay the course, press pause, or change their strategy?

In today’s podcast episode, IPM’s Senior Consultant, Rich Frazier hosts a virtual panel of representatives from different nonprofits to discuss how they’ve adapted their campaigns to the shifting landscape. They’ll also share lessons learned and advice for other nonprofits facing similar challenges with their capital campaigns.

Take it away, Rich.

Adapting Capital Campaigns to COVID-19

Rich: Hi I’m Rich Frazier, the Senior Consultant for IPM Advancement, and I’m here with Kim MacEwan, Executive Director for the tag! Children’s Museum in St. Augustine, Florida; Shannon Dixon, Director of Development & Communications at the Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville, Arkansas; and Karen Thomas, Chief Development and Marketing Officer for Ronald McDonald House Charities at Central and Northern Arizona. Thank you all for joining me today.

Kim, let’s start with you. We’re talking about capital campaigns and the decision to move forward with a capital campaign during COVID-19. So here’s your chance for a free plug: In your current campaign, what are you raising money for? What’s the priority?

Kim: Well, thank you for having me today. Rich, the tag! campaign priority right now is to raise the funds to build phase one of tag! Children’s Museum on four acres of property that we purchased in early 2016. Yes, it’s a beautiful piece of property. And it’s a perfect location. And we’re excited to get started. So this project has sort of been underway for a long time and the vision and the plan for this project has been around for over 10 years now.

Rich: So what stage of the campaign were you in when COVID-19 hit?

Kim: We were in the stage of doing a short-term, quick $1 million raise. We had started that in early February, and we had made significant progress on that. And that was going towards the capital campaign, but we were actually seeking our elite gift of a million dollars. That was our goal. And so that’s where we were and we started those meetings and received several verbal commitments and a couple of commitments. And then everything shut down for us March 12.

Rich: Shannon, tell us about your campaign for the Scott Family Amazeum. What are you raising money for?

Shannon: Sure. So at the Scott Family Amazeum, we are in the middle of launching a $20 million campaign to expand our footprint and to expand our programs, really to reach a wider audience. Right now we are catering to families and children providing these hands on interactive experiences and based in STEAM, and we want to expand that to teens and to adults. And we also want to get outside of our walls and get out into the community. We live in a community that’s surrounded by rural areas, people that maybe can’t come to the museum so we want to be able to get out and provide programming to them and out across Northwest Arkansas. The other piece is that we are expanding our outdoor area which we just feel like it’s we want to make sure it can live up to both what happens in of our museum, but also the transformation that’s happening around the Amazeum.

Rich: You mentioned that the interactive experiences at the Amazeum are based in STEAM. Now, since both the Amazeum and tag! are both very STEAM-focused, let’s just take a moment and clarify for our audience. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. So Shannon, if you would, what stage of your campaign were you in when COVID-19 hit?

Shannon: Just a few months before COVID-19 hit the board approved both a budget to launch a capital campaign and approved for us to launch this $20 million campaign and by launching it I mean, it was the quiet quiet phase. So it’s a very, very, very beginning of it.

Rich: So but you had already done your feasibility study, and you had a campaign cabinet put together? That is correct?

Shannon: Yes, we had. Yeah. So we were really ready to roll I mean, we are still putting together, we’re still putting together case for support and messaging. But we were already starting to have conversations with some of our hopefully lead givers about the campaign.

Rich: Karen, now let’s turn to you and Ronald McDonald House. Your campaign is a little bit different because you actually started going down one road with a special event, and you got t-boned by COVID-19.

Karen: Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central and Northern Arizona is celebrating our 35th anniversary this year. And we have a highly successful special events program that we celebrate our donors and our families and our corporate sponsors every year. I joined the organization in January and we were full speed ahead in terms of planning our events. They account for probably about 24% of our overall development budget, and COVID-19 hit. And to have the same level of excellence and customer service and guest experience for our donors just isn’t feasible in the current health climate that we have. We’ll likely still see social distancing throughout the rest of the year. And so as an organization, we made the difficult decision to cancel our November in person gala.

So, you know, we sat down and thought, you know, what do we need to do? We’re still serving families, there’s still a need; childhood illness and injury doesn’t stop because there’s a global pandemic. Our families need us now more than ever for a safe place to stay, a clean place to say, somewhere to rest their heads after a long day at the hospital and get a home-cooked meal. And so we really thought it was time to build upon our donor base and ask them to join us in terms of a comprehensive major gifts program.

And so for us, it’s a pivot. It’s a little bit different than how we’ve normally operated, but we really see this as a huge opportunity to get out in front of our donors and tell our story and talk to them more about the impact that they’ve made to us and to our families over the last 35 years; and now go on a different journey with us, rather than just going to an event. Let’s go back to the heart of the house and really understand how their giving is an investment in the lives of the families that we serve.

Rich: Shannon, the Scott Family Amazeum was on the verge of the solicitation phase of your capital campaign. What I love about your response is that you focused on stewardship and talking to donors.

Shannon: We did, just to check in with our donors to see how they were doing, and most of them were just in wait-and-see still, even when the initial shock was had passed, but still just kind of waiting and seeing. And at that point, we were a little afraid — maybe not afraid — we just didn’t think it was wise to ask for money, to ask for support even for our day-to-day for our operations that determine that point. And we haven’t. We had a gala scheduled for this time period to which we had postponed and then recently cancelled until we reached out to all of those sponsors. And they’re all more than willing to continue on with their support for our operations. But we certainly weren’t asking, we were just continuing that relationship. We had planned on already having conversations with these folks about the capital campaign. We aren’t doing that yet. And we’re just keeping them updated and letting them know what’s happening, and hinting here and there about this campaign that maybe that is coming up, but we aren’t asking for money yet.

Rich: So where does that leave you now with the capital campaign?

Shannon: For us, we are glad that we had this time, this two and a half months so far, to prepare our messaging and to prepare plans with architects so we feel like we’re going to come out of the other side of this stronger and ready to go. And so we’re just going to keep moving forward with planning for the capital campaign and having conversations with donors. I envision that it may just extend the timeline a little bit of how long we thought this was going to take.

Rich: And you’ve been using technology in new ways to continue delivering your mission.

Shannon: Well, of course, everything’s going online. I know we all love Zoom calls now and or whatever form you use. And so we’re doing a lot of that. I mean, that’s really how we’re delivering our mission right now. But the Amazeum even though our doors are shut, we are providing content and activities for children and families to do together at home. And so we’re just trying different ways of communicating with that audience.

Rich: What you’re doing is brilliant. How would somebody find that content on the web that you’ve been putting out?

Shannon: They can go to a Amazeum.org and it’s just right now on the front page. Or they can go to our visit page and it’ll take them to AmazeumYou. We also have just started a YouTube channel so you can find it there as well. Amazeum-Y-O-U.

Rich: Thank you, Shannon. Kim, I’m gonna turn to you now. The tag Children’s Museum had some classes and fundraising events that you had to cancel due to the pandemic. But you retooled some of those resources to help out your community. And like the Amazeum, you’ve also used technology to your advantage to continue your programmatic work. What can you tell us about that?

Kim: So what we did is we took all of the items that we had planned to do in the class, all the consumables that we had already purchased, and for we had two huge events that were postponed. They were fundraising events, so and we had activities and supplies that we had purchased for those. So we created tag! bags, and we put kits together in these bags and we’re taking them to our women’s shelter and our Fostering Connections organizations and foster homes and homeless shelters so that kids have an opportunity to play. And so I feel like we’re fulfilling our mission in a way by doing that.

So the second thing that we did was produced videos and we launched on June 1. We had received a National Science Foundation — so that’s another thing that you deal with is that you have all these grants, and you’re not able to fulfill the mission. But fortunately, and of course, all of our grant organizations have been completely understood, you know, understand what we’re dealing with. So that hasn’t been an issue. So we’re creating these videos and has a few purposes, one to help us continue our mission and vision. It keeps us relevant, and it helps us fulfill our grant obligations. And those are through the National Science Foundation, those grants.

Rich: That’s really great that you’re able to keep that mission out in the community and fulfill that and stay relevant out in the community, even during a time of social distancing.

Kim: IPM has offered some really helpful guidance and I think, you know, we’ve all pivoted and figured out different strategies and is that we have to be very honest with our donors, and can, you know, help them understand that we are going to get through this, that we’re going to build the museum that their investments in us are safe and secure, and we will fulfill their philanthropic goals. So what we’re planning to do is continue these meetings and continue to meet with donors online. Use some of these videos and messages from kids and show donors the impact that we’re still able to make under these circumstances and imagine what we’re going to be able to do for our community once our doors are actually open, and help them visualize that right there and bring them some, some joy and happiness right now in a time of uncertainty.

Rich: Karen, I’m going to come back to you now. What’s interesting to me about your situation is that you’ve taken what was supposed to be a major fundraising event — your anniversary gala — and you’ve transformed it into a major gifts campaign modeled on how one might conduct a capital campaign. Where did that idea come from?

Karen: As the development professional on the team, I really tried to take pause and think about how can we maximize the situation that we were handed and use it as an opportunity to think a little bit outside the box and do something different. I sat down with my CEO and really was honest and frank with her about, you know, the revenue that we depend upon from our annual gala. The only way that I knew how to make that up was talking to donors strategically and thoughtfully about making an investment in the house. And I tried to look at it more as an operational capital campaign for lack of a better term.

And so, you know, Carrie, our CEO, and I sat down and really did some planning in terms of, you know, who are the folks that have supported the gala over the years, and you know, where we thought we’d be able to reach back out that they would continue their giving and then put together proposal and a plan for our Executive Committee of our board of directors. And so we had really frank and candid conversations with them about, we needed to make this more conversational. We needed to be storytellers. We needed to engage donors, we needed to take them back to the house, you know, we’re many of them haven’t been for a long time and get them — get all of us really — mission-focused again. And so for us, you know, this was a huge opportunity to pause what we were doing, reset things and look at things a little bit different. But you know, as Carrie and I both like to say we’re making lemonade with the lemons that we were handed, and, you know, we think we have huge potential to be able to support our families, you know, to the highest degree.

Rich: Karen, you use the word opportunity and you describe making lemonade out of lemons. Can you be more specific about some of the challenges you encountered and the opportunities hidden within?

Karen: The challenges and roadblocks that I see in terms of implementing a major gifts campaign is that we’ve never really talked to our donors like that before. Most of our larger gifts come in because of special events. And so it’s a very transactional relationship there. The donors and sponsors are getting something in return for the gift that they make. And so you know, there’s dinner or recognition at an event or you know, their presenting sponsor. I think the opportunity with that, though, is that now they can give their gift and it goes directly to mission programs, so that they can see, you know, “For my $5,000 gift, I’m providing X amount of nights of stay for a family. I can support this family for their entire stay at the house,” and that they remove all the barriers for that family to get access for medical care for their child.

The opportunity is that, you know, we get to tell our story and we’re not doing it, you know, just in one evening, you know, a snippet of the program of an event. You know, the two minute video soundbite, where the dollars from that night goes, we really have a chance and an opportunity to talk with donors one-on-one, virtually face-to-face if you will, bring them to the house through other means. So that they really get to see you know what their investment, what kind of difference that’s making in life for families.

Rich: And with the expenses of a gala no longer being there, the overhead almost disappears.

Karen: Absolutely. Absolutely, huge opportunity.

Rich: So you are now looking at this campaign over the next six, seven months. And the event then becomes what?

Karen: We’re going to pivot the event and make it a virtual gala like many organizations in the community are doing. However, we’re really looking at it as a celebration of the campaign. Rather than trying to bring in dollars that evening, we want to honor the donors and the corporate sponsors that are making an investment in our families. So it’s time to celebrate, it’s time to celebrate that we’re 35 years old, it’s time to celebrate that our founders are involved. And they’re here and they can see the fruits of their labor, you know, over 35 years and being able to serve 55,000 families over 35 years, that’s a huge milestone and accomplishment. We have a lot to celebrate. And so we’re really looking at utilizing the virtual gala as the opportunity to do that.

Rich: Speaking of virtual, you’ve also found a way to connect with donors now that traditional face-to-face meetings aren’t really feasible. So how has that played out?

Karen: I think this is an opportunity to really try to use technology to our advantage. So you know, how do we bring a potential donor or corporate sponsor to the house if we have restrictions on visitors to the houses right now. Putting together a virtual tour and taking them along the path of what it’s like to be a guest. And what’s it like to go in and check in and let me take you on a tour. Here’s your room, here are your accommodations, you know, here’s the pantry. You know, this is where dinner will be provided, dinner’s at six o’clock and it’ll be here and it’ll be hot and they’ll be waiting for you. You know, when we say Ronald McDonald House is a house, it really is; it’s a home. So this is where families can lounge and watch TV and the play yard where the kids can play and green spaces and sit in the garden. We want donors to have that experience too so they see how important that is for families, that they have a place that’s a sense of normalcy outside of the walls of the hospital. It’s a definitely different fundraising environment, you know, having to do zoom calls and FaceTime calls to try to talk to folks. But I think, you know, the folks in our community are open and receptive and responsive and they want to help, they just don’t know how so I think it’s on us to tell them the how at this point, and then we make take technology work for us to our advantage.

Rich: So I’d like to go a little behind-the-scenes in terms of the decision making process to either pause or continue your campaigns. Kim, you mentioned earlier that the tag! Children’s Museum was in the phase where you were trying to do a quick $1 million fundraise. But that was really part of a bigger $7 million capital campaign already in progress. That’s a lot of momentum to just hit the pause button on. So what were those conversations like in making the decision to continue?

Kim: I think, looking back on it, we have had to pivot before as an organization, we’ve had to be flexible. As you said, we’ve been working on this for 10 years. We have incredible community support. We have a lot of unique donors across Northeast Florida, where we’re located. So I think this was to us, you know, it’s been a challenge, no doubt, but I think it was also as we’ve all done in the past, we just looked, where are the opportunities? What can we do, how can we, you know, look at this as a way to revisit the campaign? And fortunately, we had just started the conversation with IPM, and how we could move forward with hiring a capital campaign consultant. And so we had a lot of meetings on Zoom. And then I developed like three or four paths for us to take. One was anything from continuing as we were to completely icing the whole organization and putting it on pause for a year. So we met and looked at those four opportunities from the budgets, the financial impacts, the public relations and marketing impacts, our donors losing faith in the project, all of the negative implications and the positive implications until we went with basically path number three, which is where we’re at now.

Rich: So how seriously did you consider the option of pausing for a year, and what changed your mind?

Kim: I think in the beginning, we were shy about, you know, continuing the campaign. We saw the need in our community at our food banks and our social service partners and, you know, our domestic violence shelters. And so we were concerned that it wasn’t appropriate, really to ask for capital campaign dollars when there’s such a huge need right now in our area of the world. So I think that those conversations were hard. And I feel like it was the right thing to pause and regroup and figure out, you know, what is our message for the capital campaign going forward, and you know, it is that we need children’s museums, we need to be together. Isolation is difficult, but it’s the right thing to do, in our view right now. So we want to be ready and open and be a happy, wonderful, playful place for the community. And it was a need before this, and it’s an even bigger need, since this has happened.

Rich: Right? Yeah. Karen, I’m gonna look at you now. You told us earlier about the transition from your anniversary gala to a major gifts campaign. Was there any conversation at all about the Ronald McDonald House Charities to just pump the brakes and not do any of this fundraising at all?

Karen: No, we know our budget, our, you know, we’re not raising money just to meet a budget number. We know what it costs for a family to stay at the house each night. We know our costs are fixed. Our operational cost is this program. And so again, pediatric illness doesn’t stop because there’s a pandemic, if anything, there’s a greater need for our families right now. They’re away from home, they don’t have their support systems and so we have to be that you light in the darkness for them, and take away the obstacles for them to have access to health care for their children.

Rich: Shannon, same question to you. Any talk about pumping the brakes and not moving forward?

Shannon: So we did when COVID-19 hit and we made the decision to close the Amazeum because we closed it a little bit before we were totally absolutely had to. We did a board call just to let them know what was going on. To tell them what we anticipated would be revenue loss where 50% of our revenue is earned revenue. So with clearly with the door shut, we knew that was going to be a significant impact. So we talked the board through that, and then told them that our plan was to continue with the contracts we have on the capital campaign, including our architects, including IPM Advancement that’s helping us with our campaign, and their immediate reaction was, “Whoa, whoa, should we be asking for money right now? This doesn’t seem like the right time to do that.” People were expressing concerns about even their own ability to give and this you may be this was mid-March. So as you may remember, the stock market had tanked pretty well, even Walmart at that point was so scared. So we quit talking about the capital campaign and said we’ll come back to that in a couple weeks.

Two weeks later, we met with the board and just said, we are planning to put the capital campaign on pause. We still believe that there is a need for the capital campaign, but we are going to pause it. So that was I think two weeks after we had closed the museum. Then we went back a month later and just walked through all the financial implications of COVID. And really reminded them of the reasons we were doing the capital campaign in the first place. At that point, the stock market was beginning to rebound. And so they’re a little more open to having that conversation. And we just said, we would like to continue the same conversation we had mid-March — this is, I guess, a month and a half later — we would like to continue with these preparing for a campaign so that when we reopen our doors, we can start having these conversations and we are ready to go. We’ve got our case for support. We’ve got our architectural renderings, I mean, all those things we put on pause and they said, “Go for it.”

Takeaway Advice for Nonprofits

Rich: Alright, so I’m going to try to wrap things up here. So to end our conversation, I want to ask all of you for some nuggets of wisdom. Let’s start with you, Kim. What advice would you give other organizations who are in capital campaigns or starting a capital campaign?

Kim: I think nonprofits are the thought leaders in the community. And we have an opportunity now to really demonstrate what our value is to the community — how important we are, I think both to our elected officials and to our residents in our community, and that we can actually take this opportunity to elevate ourselves and be honest with your donors and continue your capital campaigns. I think there are priorities, of course, in every community with nonprofits, but I think people are looking for ways to help right now, not just volunteering, which is so important, but also, “How can I invest in something that will help?” And I think it’s an opportunity for us as nonprofit leaders to help our fellow community members see us through this crisis.

Rich: Awesome. Shannon, what lessons would you say you’ve learned, and based on those, what advice would you give another organization who is in a capital campaign or starting a capital campaign?

Shannon: I think it’s a couple of things. I think, in this crisis, we’ve had to pivot quickly — I have, we use this word a lot, sorry to use it again — but pivot quickly. Be creative and innovate. Organizations are very good at that. And we have done that well, but at the same time, we’ve remained calm in making decisions. So we decided, we didn’t decide immediately, but decided to continue on with this capital campaign. And that has really helped us the last 10 weeks, we would have lost 10 weeks of work otherwise. I would also say that I think it’s very important to remember why you were doing the capital campaign to begin with, and you actually, Rich, reminded me of this when we were in the middle of quickly making decisions and really nervous about moving forward with this capital campaign. We were scared, it just seemed like why would we move forward with something when we don’t want it to fail. Because then we can’t go back and do it. But you just reminded us and we reminded our board. The reason that we wanted to do this is still there and the need is still there in the community, and when we get on the other side of this, obviously that need is going to still be there. And people are going to want to support something exciting and want to continue to build the community. And so it was helpful just to remember and remind yourself that.

Rich: Thank you. Karen, I’m going to turn to you now and ask you to respond to that same question.

Karen: I think a lot of organizations — I know for myself, it was scary to do this big of an about face in terms of our development plan and trajectory. Events are comfortable; we know what to expect of them. They can become formulaic. The gala for us was definitely formulaic. And you go after the same sponsors and make the same ask and know what recognition levels that they like and what they don’t like. And I think it was time to be able to really say, “We have to do something different.” Our families need something different right now, and so on. We have to ask. I think that’s probably the biggest roadblock for us as fundraisers: I think we’re afraid to ask.

The ask is what I think for a lot of us can be the scary part. It’s easier to send a piece of direct mail or a letter or, you know, corporate pitch. But you know, having that interaction, that face-to-face with donors, that’s what they’re craving. That’s what they want. And they don’t know what you need until you ask them. I think for most of them, they’re going to say yes, and wonder why we haven’t asked sooner. And I think there are going to be a lot of folks that are going to surprise us, we’ll be able to open up doors for donors now for a long-term, renewable, sustainable relationship and go back to them year after year, because now we know what they’re interested in, and hopefully, you know, capitalize on that long term and really build a true relationship with those donors in the house.

Rich: I think that’s, I think those are incredible words, and I appreciate hearing that. Those who are philanthropically minded, they want do good with what they have. And if they like your organization, they want you to succeed. So I really appreciate hearing that.

So thank you again, Karen; also Kim and Shannon, for sharing your lessons learned as well. You’ve been a great panel and I love the work that we’re doing together. We will be sure to add the links to your websites in the show notes. Thanks again for choosing IPM to be your partner through all of this, and again, thank you for allowing me to chat with you today just to get a peek behind the curtains.

Curtis: This is Curtis Schmitt, back in the studio with Rich Frazier. Rich, thanks for doing the heavy lifting today.

Rich: You know, it was truly my pleasure. These are some of my favorite people to work with. Not all of my favorite people to work with, but just some of them.

Curtis: Well, as I listened to the conversations that you had with Kim and Shannon and Karen, I was really impressed with how creatively they each responded to COVID-19’s impact on their campaigns. What I wanted to ask you was, what are some of the key differences between their responses, and why do you think those distinctions are important for the listeners to understand?

Rich: I think it’s interesting, you know that all three organizations are different, right? Every nonprofit is unique. And they’re always going to be in their own situation. And the way that they, these organizations responded reflects that. So let’s take tag! Children’s Museum. So Kim told us that when COVID-19 hit, they got together, they laid out various paths forward, right, to kind of see how to proceed and ultimately decided on the most logical path for them that would advance the mission and maintain their relationship and the confidence of their donors, right? And that was continuing this campaign because that’s what they decided they needed to do in order to maintain that confidence with donors and the community, right? So that was their decision-making process.

The Amazeum was in a totally different spot. Whereas tag! doesn’t have a public facility, he Amazeum is almost six years into being a public facility. COVID-19 hits and they had to shut down. And when you shut down a museum, that means loss of revenue, it impacts employees. Fortunately, they took advantage of various relief packages like many nonprofits and they created a new path forward. They kept their mission relevant, and they used this time — I wouldn’t say off because I think like many of us, they’ve been busier than ever — but they used this time to fine tune their case for support and other elements of the campaign so that when they are ready to go back and move into that solicitation phase, they are ready and prepared to do that. And they’re and they’ve been communicating with their donors and their donors are ready for this.

Now Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central and Northern Arizona, totally different, totally different scenario. They were not in a capital campaign, wasn’t on their radar. COVID-19 hit, and because on their board of directors, they have representatives of some of Arizona’s largest health care providers, they said, “Hey, really, it’s not a good idea to have an anniversary gala where we have 500 people in the same room.” So that anniversary gala, which was their largest revenue producer, got shut down. So now what do you do? Well, it just turns out that Karen had started a major gift program, which is not something that they had ever intentionally done in their strategic plan. So this was a great opportunity to — here’s that word — pivot, and move from gala to implementing a major gift strategy. And so now their communication is really all focused on mission and keeping families together and instead of providing recognition and stewardship for just one night of a gala, they’re providing recognition and stewardship for their donors throughout the year, as per a good strong major gift program.

So three different programs, three different ways of responding to COVID-19, but all sort of moving forward with the importance of the mission and the importance of maintaining relationship with donors and keeping donors engaged because the donors want to see these organizations stay successful.

Curtis: So inspiring. I love to hear stories of nonprofit organizations moving forward, being creative, and potentially coming out stronger on the other side. It’s just so great to hear. Last question before we close for today, I want to get a takeaway from you. One thing that you would like listeners to take away from this podcast episode?

Rich: So one thing, one takeaway, I like what Kim said about nonprofits being thought leaders in their communities. I think we can agree 2020 has been a dumpster fire of a year. And I really want to encourage nonprofits to look for opportunities to make a change for the better in their communities. Be true to yourself, be authentic, stay true to your mission. But where are the opportunities out there for collaboration, for convening, for conversation, and for making change? That’s my takeaway.

Curtis: That wraps up our conversation on capital campaigns during COVID-19. Thanks to the panel for sharing their insights and expertise. If you liked this episode, please subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. And leave us a review. For the nonprofits who so generously participated in this episode, we will link to their websites in the show notes so you can learn more about them and support their work. We also invite you to explore our growing library of blog posts, whitepapers, and infographics in the Resources section of the IPM website. That address is ipmadvancement.com/resources. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.