1. Successful Campaign
Interventions
Tim Weidmann
Two war stories. As campaign director, I produced necessary repo-
sitioning for Northwestern University’s Medical and Engineering
campaigns, in order for those campaigns to become successful.

2. Introduction
• Usually we hear how a campaign failed rather
than how a campaign was rescued
– This presentation tells of rescuing two campaigns
• There should be more stories like these
• My personal and professional skills, acuity,
experience and honesty made the following
rescues possible
– Those qualities are available to you

3. Two big problems
• Became director of $65 million medical
campaign, when it was at $33 million and
about to launch the public phase
– Campaign counting had been done too liberally,
which led to subtracting $6 million from total
• Took control of campaign at $27 million not $33 million
• Given prospect list for campaign
– Met with 12 top prospects; discovered no interest
in giving to medicine

4. What was done?
• $6 million less than expected was “just the
facts”
– Way to deal with that was “suck it up, and get on
with it”
• Reviewed campaign staff and made changes
• But uninterested prospects was deal-breaker
– Not to fix that would sink the campaign
• Contacted peer institutions, which had
conducted successful medical campaigns

5. Paradigm shift
• Peer institutions feedback:
– Only way to conduct successful medical campaign
was to get gifts from wealthy grateful patients
– Nobody had formula for finding grateful patients
– Original prospect list had NO grateful patients
• Discovered that wealthy grateful patients self-
identified when they said, “Gee, doc, you
saved my life. What can I do for you?”
• “What can I do for you” was the key phrase

6. Action
• Asked Dean to appear regularly in front of his
monthly meeting of department chairs to talk
about need to identify grateful patients
– After second meeting, Director of Cancer Center
called Development Office to say that “golden
moment” had happened with a family called Lurie
• Met with Lurie’s and they decided to give $12.5
million to name Cancer Center
• After this, physicians regularly called about
“golden moments”

7. Medical Campaign
• The $65 million medical campaign came in at
$128 million
– Wealthy grateful patients were the primary
donors
• While we were building grateful patient
fundraising at the Med School, we also built
mega-gift fundraising for the university

8. Discouragement: Why?
• Became director of Northwestern’s
engineering campaign when it had achieved
$40 million toward its goal of $67 million
– $40 million, however, amounted to NO large gifts
from wealthy alumni or friends
• $30 million gift was to name the School, given by a
large metropolitan foundation, and $10 million was
being counted from various state and federal grants
• No large gifts from constituency was the cause
of frustration

9. Important Discovery
• Visited top 12 prospects for the campaign
• All were willing to give to the campaign
– BUT all of them said they were NOT willing to give
a large gift
• Why not? Because “Mr. Murphy did it all.”
• Either because no one had asked “why not?”
before OR because prior fundraisers were
afraid to report the answer, this was NEW
information

10. Campaign Deal-Breaker
• “Mr. Murphy did it all” was deal-breaker
– It meant that wealthy alumni and friends of the
School believed that the School really did NOT
need the campaign
• The myth said that Mr. Murphy’s gifts had provided
enough money for engineering forever
• If the campaign was to be successful, that
Murphy MYTH needed to be de-fused

11. De-Mythologizing
• Created campaign newsletter
• Headline of first edition, “Mr. Murphy did NOT
do it all”
– Article told truth about Mr. Murphy’s gifts in the
late 1930s and early 1940s and their status today
• In that edition also, covered two $3 million
gifts to the campaign, one from a wealthy
alum who was disabused of the Murphy myth

12. Engineering Campaign
• After fitful start, campaign came in at $114.5
million toward its original goal of $67 million
– With many large gifts from wealthy alumni and
friends of the School of Engineering
• That was made possible
– ONLY by facing up to and de-fusing the
“mythological” factor that undercut entire
campaign

13. Conclusion
• Campaigning = complex process that warrants
close attention
– Presentation relates how two campaigns would have
failed without decisive interventions
• The interventions changed the ways the campaigns were
conducted
– Chairs and steering committees of both campaigns
had to be briefed and approve those interventions
• As well as the VP Development and President of the
University
• Each intervention was a “breakthrough” that
worked stunningly well