Combined Federal Campaign
2003 CFC Innovators
CFC of the Pikes Peak Region developed a highly effective
innovative strategy based on the cultural conditions of the region during the
2003 campaign. The War in Iraq had a significant impact on their area as one-third
of the region's federal personnel were deployed. The Local Federal Coordinating
Committee (LFCC) projected that contributions would decrease by $375,000 or
23% from the previous year and created a strategy to maximize donations by duplicating
the strengths of the prevailing institutional cultural conditions into the CFC
culture. With 95% of the region's personnel being military, the standards of
service before self, character development, taking care of our own, executable
plans with measurable results, integrity of the process, and heroic effort are
very high, and inspire people on a personal level.
With this in mind, the LFCC selected the campaign theme, "Heroes of the
Pikes Peak Region - BE ONE!" This theme focused on the area's Iraq war
heroes, charitable agency heroes in the Federal family, and being a CFC hero.
It was integrated into all campaign materials including a highly motivational
picture presentation of the heroes that captivated the federal personnel and
motivated keyworkers. In addition, the Air Force Academy created a "character
development" CFC initiative for cadets. It included CFC education, competitions
and a service academy challenge with West Point and the Naval Academy.
In conjunction with the recruitment of highly recognized and trusted former
military leaders and federal employees to oversee the campaign as the LFCC,
the campaign increased donor confidence and raised per capita giving by 30%
despite a 33% decrease in federal personnel. Further validation of the success
of the initiatives was the receipt of over $118,000 in new donor dollars. The
strategy to utilize an intangible asset, emotion, led to a tangible result -
campaign growth during a period of projected decline.
The lesson learned is that when Federal employees have the presence of their
own culture in the campaign, they will respond and will be compelled to feel
ownership and invest.
Denver Metropolitan Area CFC had been experiencing
a steady decline in participation for the past six years, which was in danger
of dropping below 30% in 2003. Historically, the more generous and consistent
donors have been "baby boomers" and there was growing concern within
the cabinet that the foundation of the campaign was about to fall out due to
retirements, riffs, and the inability to solicit retirees and attract younger
donors. Primary and secondary local research conducted in late 2002 and early
2003 on the campaign website drew nearly 700 responses. The data was combined
with the results from six subsequent focus groups of young employees from six
counties. The results revealed that young employees who didn't give through
the CFC would actually consider doing so if they had more and better information.
In addition, many complained that they only heard about CFC once a year.
The campaign implemented a marketing strategy that included monthly articles
solicited by member charities and/or written by employees assisted by one or
more CFC charities for Federal publications and e-zines. Also, a seven minute
local CFC video highlighting local employees who were helped by CFC charities
were made available. These were copied, at no cost, by one of the Federal agencies.
The campaign also partnered with a number of popular organization to offer and
sell discounted tickets to Federal employees for "Federal Employees Appreciation
Night". Publicity for this came via broadcast emails to agency chairs,
keyworkers, and cabinet members as well as in employee publications. The result
of the collective marketing effort was an increase of $150,000 despite the loss
of 2,311 employees. More importantly, donor participation went up for the first
time in seven years.
The campaign learned that donors, young or old, will consider giving through
the CFC if they are given all of the facts and information they need to base
their decision on and if the CFC keeps their attention all year long. What's
noteworthy is that these efforts were achieved with no budget whatsoever. All
work was performed by staff with the assistance of unpaid graduate interns from
a local university, some Federal volunteers, and help form a local Federal agency
which hosted and sorted the results of the survey.
CFC of the National Capital Area In 2002 and 2003
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) experienced a wave of older workers retiring,
coupled with the unprecedented hiring of young workers just out of school. For
the 2003 campaign, DIA set their sights on reaching their goal by Thanksgiving
and implemented a marketing strategy to energize these young workers and encourage
them to participate. They personalized the DIA drive around a theme of heroes
- heroes we all know and heroes we call can be. They reminded all employees
that a hero is anyone who makes an extraordinary sacrifice to help someone else
and that DIA people make such sacrifices every day.
Throughout the campaign, they featured a variety of real-life DIA heroes and
made their CFC slogan "Be A Hero… There is Power in Sharing."
To further personalize the theme, they chose a symbol everyone would recognize
- the torch from their agency seal - and created torch-carrying male and female
superheroes to lead the marketing program. These included a 20-foot high goal
poster outside the agency's main entrance, comic-strip adventures of their superheroes
- CFC campaigners - that ran on their website and in the DIA employee magazine,
a lobby display featuring superhero bodies with heads that were cutouts for
flat-panel screens showing morphing heads of DIA employees, life-sized superhero
cutouts that appeared at CFC events, and costumed superhero actors, played by
DIA employees, who participated in humorous skits and videos for the kickoff
and mid-campaign rally.
Thanks to this marketing, DIA's 2003 campaign raised more money in less time
than any previous agency campaign, broke the DIA record by raising more than
$800,000, surpassed their goal in just ten weeks, ended $121,000 over goal,
earned seven Department of Defense communication awards, including Best Campaign
award, and received three National Capital Area awards for Best Website, Best
Lobby Display and Most Original Campaign Technique. The lesson learned is a
simple one: make if fun, make it fast, and include everyone.
Gateway CFC John McKnight, an employee of USDA's Rural
Development Agency, brought his e-gov approach to the CFC's local eligibility
process by conceiving, developing, and testing a project on his own time. After
serving on the evaluation committee in 2001, John quickly realized that the
process was manual and consumed many hours to fairly evaluate each applicant.
Due to his knowledge of database programming, he designed and developed a database
system that enabled evaluators to quickly enter each applicant's eligibility
data and perform automated calculations of analyses of the applicant's eligibility.
The program generates summary reports on applicants that did and did not qualify
for participation.
Prior to this database a reviewer was assigned fifteen to twenty applicant
files to evaluate. These reviews could each take approximately one hour for
an experienced evaluator and as much as two hours for a new evaluator. The automated
system significantly reduced the amount of time required for evaluators to assess
and document participant eligibility, reduced the risk of human error in performing
analyses and calculations of eligibility determinations, produced documentation
to allow reviewers to quickly respond to appeals from applicants, and can be
easily transferred to other campaigns around the country.
The lesson learned was that the use of this system helped to retain experienced
reviewer and attract new volunteers, reduced the time to train new evaluators,
enables the campaign to quickly respond to applicants, and local charities applying
to the Gateway CFC can get accurate calculations of their administrative and
fundraising rates.
CFC of Northeast Florida/Southeast Georgia The 2002
campaign was a challenge for the Jacksonville-based campaign. None of the five
divisions in the area had achieved their individual goal and, overall, only
89% of the campaign goal was achieved. Further, participation was down by almost
4% and the campaign raised $116,000 less than 2001. Thanks to research conducted
by the Principal Combined Fund Organization (PCFO) on past campaign data as
well as learning from successful campaigns around the country, the LFCC and
PCFO developed a plan to address four major areas: campaign goal setting, incentives
for pledging to increase participation, and enhanced training of coordinators
and keyworkers.
The innovation was the depth and breadth of change to how the campaign was
to be conducted. First, the goal for 2003 was set below the dollars raised in
2002 in an effort to motivate the five Divisions to achieve their individual
goals. Second, the LFCC approved a two-year plan to model Leadership Giving
Levels and Awards after other successful CFC's to achieve 5% of donors giving
33% of all donations. Finally, the LFCC approved a training plan by the PCFO
that would greatly increase the number of coordinators and keyworkers to be
trained.
These efforts resulted in the campaign breaking its all-time record with almost
$300,000 in new campaign dollars, all five divisions exceeded 100% of their
goals, participation increased by 746 new donors, leadership giving skyrocketed,
and 5% of the donors contributed 1/3 of all donations.
The lesson learned was that collaboration and teamwork can achieve tremendous
results. The LFCC and PCFO were both willing to be bold and decisive in changing
how things were done and the results clearly validate the joint effort. The
slogan throughout the 2003 campaign slogan was "One Team, One Mission."
CFC Main
