7 Habits of Highly Effective Campaign Chairs

No matter how compelling your mission or case statement, the success or failure of a capital campaign largely rests with the effectiveness of your campaign leadership. A campaign chair or chairs, with a small Steering Committee, will become your champions in the community, communicating your vision and encouraging major donors to join in as partners in the campaign. If you don’t have strong campaign leadership, you just have a good story, and that isn’t enough.

Recruit your campaign chair carefully. Just because someone loves reading or libraries does not make them an effective campaign leader.

Here are some habits of highly effective campaign leaders:

1. Passionate about the civic value of a strong library
2. Highly respected and visible in the community
3. Available to give significant time and attention to the campaign over a 12-18 month period
4. Disciplined and well-organized to progress through the campaign plan systematically
5. Connected to potential major donors through professional or personal networks
6. Able to give a notable gift to leverage the ability to ask others to join in the campaign
7. Willing and able to personally ask for significant gifts from peers or other leaders in the community

With the right case statement and campaign support infrastructure, a strong campaign chair or chairs with these attributes can take your campaign from zero to success.

While campaign leadership is perhaps the most important consideration for campaign success, there are many steps to an effective campaign. Library Strategies provides ongoing campaign counsel to help your campaign leadership clarify the case for giving, structure the campaign, identify and qualify donors, develop effective solicitation strategies and provide ongoing communication and marketing ideas.