Appropriately Leveraging the CEO
One of the great challenges we face in fundraising is to know when and how to appropriately engage senior leadership, and most importantly the CEO, with “fundraising duties” worthy of their time, expertise, and role.
There seem to be two existential challenges with this. The first is leadership’s time... it’s so valuable and finite. Philanthropy never wants to impose unnecessary requests when it might not produce a valuable outcome. The second is the CEO or the executive’s knowledge. More and more, I am finding CEOs need a great deal of coaching regarding fundraising and philanthropic activities but sometimes aren’t willing to listen to their experts in the Foundation or Development Office. This causes a very large chasm that doesn’t maximize the value of the organization’s ultimate leadership position and sometimes does actual harm to fundraising efforts.
But when correctly done, magic seems to happen.
A client’s case in point.... a very influential and successful physician decided to leave the healthcare system. This physician was close to a very large donor. The physician notified the Foundation of her decision and was attempting to set a time with the donor to let the donor know of her departure. After some planning time with me, the Foundation brought in the system CEO and had him call the donor directly, prior to any communication with the physician, to let the donor know that the physician was leaving… but the organization was looking forward to bigger and better things in the area of the donor’s interest. The donor was touched and appreciative that the system CEO would take time to let him know that this was happening. And while the donor was very excited for the physician’s new opportunity, he (the donor) would be sticking with the system in terms of philanthropic support.
The Foundation Office did a tremendous job of prepping the CEO, giving him a good outcome goal for the situation, and leveraging his role as the ultimate leader in the organization to further develop and foster a deeper relationship with the donor. Time, energy, and effort well spent in engaging a CEO.
Do you know when and how to engage your CEO or leadership team and make sure that they’re successful?