Fundraising · Operations
1,000 People. 78 Days. $360,000.
Given a first-day assignment with no fundraising target, date, or plan, I built the event and fundraising operation simultaneously.
Challenge
“A lot” isn't a target.
At the end of my first day as Finance Director, the Executive Director pulled me aside with one of my first assignments: create the Party's annual fundraising dinner and raise the money for it.
"How much do we need to raise?" I asked.
"A lot."
That wasn't a target.
There was no event already scheduled, no contribution structure, and no fundraising plan. I knew the dinner needed to happen before Thanksgiving, which gave me less than three months to create it and raise the money.
The fundraising strategy and the event had to be built simultaneously.
Observation
The original plan wasn't materializing.
I needed a number, a date, and a structure before I could organize the work.
I also knew fundraising couldn't be a solo operation. My original expectation was that I would carry approximately 80 percent of the fundraising, while leadership would cover the rest through major donors, existing relationships, and new opportunities.
Within a few weeks, it became clear that the leadership calls I’d planned around weren’t happening.
The strategy had to change. I couldn't leave the outcome dependent on participation that wasn't materializing.
Decisions
Give the assignment numbers and a structure.
I started by researching what the dinner had raised in previous years. That history gave me an internal floor of $300,000, although my stretch goal was $500,000.
Next, I studied Atlanta's calendar, looking for major events and potential conflicts before selecting a late-October date.
I created the contribution levels and established an initial attendance goal of 650 donors.
For fundraising, I prioritized people who had already demonstrated their willingness to support the organization. I called every donor from the previous year and asked whether they would consider increasing their contribution by 10 percent.
When the leadership calls didn't happen, I made those too. That meant placing new-donor cultivation behind the immediate work of securing commitments.
The goal stayed the same. The plan had to adapt.
Process
Build, delegate, adjust.
I hired a production consultant, engaged vendors, organized volunteers, and brought on a Finance Assistant.
I made a deliberate choice with my assistant: she would own her responsibilities. My job was to explain, answer questions, and provide support, not take over her work to demonstrate how I would do it.
That approach was tested.
The Friday before the dinner, she accidentally left a box of tickets beside her car and drove away. She was devastated. I spent time comforting her, but the operational solution was straightforward. We reprinted the tickets.
On Monday, the original box was returned. Someone had found it in the parking lot and stored it in another office.
It was a repairable mistake, not a reason to remove her responsibility.
Meanwhile, fundraising continued. Some asks required more than a telephone call. I invited the leader of a union that had contributed the previous year to my office for coffee and conversation. That meeting resulted in a contribution $20,000 greater than the year before.
Attendance also exceeded my assumptions. When I requested an updated ticket count, we had reached approximately 1,000 people.
I posted SOLD OUT.
An event planned for 650 now required adjustments to seating, production, ticketing, and guest management. The deadline hadn't changed, so we adjusted the operation.
2019 State Dinner floor plan. 100 tables of 10.
Outcome
The dinner created revenue and capacity.
The dinner sold out at approximately 1,000 attendees and raised $360,000.
That was $60,000 above my internal floor and $140,000 short of my stretch goal.
Less than a month after the dinner, Atlanta hosted a live presidential debate. The staffing, volunteers, vendor relationships, and operating structures we had developed for the dinner were adapted to help support that event.
The dinner produced revenue. It also created capacity that could be used again.
There is something I would do differently today.
I didn't complete the kind of final fundraising analysis I would now require, including new contributions, increases from returning donors, and other measures of donor performance. Some of the prior year's information wasn't reliable enough for clean comparisons, and I was building the baseline as I went.
Today, I would make that reporting part of the assignment itself.
A fundraising total tells you what happened. A reliable baseline helps the next person understand where to begin.
Operating Principle
Move with urgency without making urgency contagious.
The deadline required speed, but panic wouldn’t have improved our decisions. Neither would taking work away from people whenever something went wrong.
The objective was to deliver the event, develop the people doing the work, and build systems that remained useful afterward.
