What Are Your Campaign Priorities Actually Prioritizing?

There's a noticeable difference in how Purdue and Maryland have organized their current comprehensive campaigns.

​Purdue's Victories & Heroes gives prominent attention to major institutional initiatives, including Purdue Computes, One Health, and expansion in Indianapolis.

​Maryland's Forward organizes 12 fundraising priorities beneath three broader themes, ranging from scholarships and experiential learning to AI, quantum science, literacy, and civic engagement.

I've spent quite a bit of time studying campaign architecture the past two years, especially as some of my clients work through similar decisions. There's a lot more involved in those choices than a campaign website or launch announcement might suggest: research, aligning institutional leaders, working through priorities across schools and units, and identifying and developing the programs, initiatives, and funding opportunities behind them.

Strong Advancement MarCom leaders and teams can help shape some of those decisions when they're involved early (not just package and communicate them after the fact).

Different approaches, different choices

​Duke's Made for This emphasizes science and technology, climate, student experience, and health—areas Duke believes it can make a meaningful impact.

The University of Chicago's Chicago Minds draws heavily on institutional identity, with its commitment to free inquiry and expression featuring prominently in the overarching campaign story. An interesting choice given the university's history and the current environment for higher education.

And just last week, La Salle University launched More Than Imagined, a campaign organized around Student Support, Student Success, and Student Spaces. Fairly conventional fundraising categories but together, they make a coherent case for helping students access an education, succeed academically, and benefit from a stronger campus experience.

I wouldn't rank these approaches based on how original their priorities sound.

Some institutions organize campaigns around the fundamentals of their mission: educating students, advancing research, and serving their communities.

Others draw more directly from strategic plans or elevate a handful of major institutional initiatives, perhaps ambitions targeting ambitious outcomes, societal challenges, or signature "bets."

And plenty land somewhere in between.

A simple campaign structure can be just as intentional and effective as a more elaborate one. What matters more is whether there's the right strategy and a compelling set of investments behind it.

Of course, public campaign materials can't tell us everything about the decisions behind them.

Getting the institution aligned

Having worked on campaigns from the inside and outside (and somewhere in-between), I can tell you that getting leaders to agree that scholarships, faculty excellence, research, and student experiences matter usually isn't the hard part.

The harder part is deciding which investments to put front and center, knowing there are plenty of other worthwhile items competing for attention and funding. What deserves focus, why, and what can philanthropy actually make possible?

The president has a vision. The provost and deans have academic priorities. Development leaders know where donor interest and capacity exist. Finance and administrative leaders are weighing institutional needs and long-term sustainability. And every school or major unit understandably wants a meaningful role.

It's a lot to reconcile.

A strategic plan provides an important starting point, but not every institutional priority necessarily lends itself to philanthropic investment. Some ambitions may be better advanced through operating investments (or streamlining), policy changes, partnerships, or other means.

Likewise, an important academic priority may not appeal to donors, at least initially. And sometimes donors are enthusiastic about something that doesn't rank particularly high on the institution's strategic agenda.

Understanding what donors care about should absolutely inform these conversations. But it shouldn't replace deciding what the institution itself believes is important.

That's why Advancement and institutional communications leaders should be involved alongside academic, development, and executive leadership—helping reconcile ambitions, philanthropic opportunities, and the campaign narrative.

One campaign, many schools and units

The university-wide campaign is only part of the picture. Schools and units have their own ambitions, donor relationships (including corporations and foundations), and funding needs, and they need room to pursue them.

We sometimes use the words “campaign priorities” to mean different things: the themes that frame the institution-wide story, major investments leadership wants to advance, and specific funding opportunities across schools and units.

They should connect, but they don't need identical labels or structures. Creative themes, philanthropic priorities, and underlying fundraising plans serve different purposes.

Two campaigns that launched last week show different ways this can work.

The College of Charleston's The Promise of Charleston emphasizes national prominence, enriching its campus and city, and advancing the community. The campaign also features specific funding opportunities across its schools and units.

Meanwhile, Bucknell's Be the ’ray campaign has five overarching commitments. One, The Launch, focuses on career preparation and lifelong professional success, with career hubs for Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Management, and Athletics, alongside alumni mentoring and networking.

I like how Bucknell gives those investments a common purpose while recognizing that preparing an engineering student for a career may look quite different from preparing someone studying the humanities or business.

Ideally, this relationship works both ways. University-wide priorities help explain how individual investments contribute to something larger, while the ambitions and opportunities emerging from schools and units help determine what the broader campaign emphasizes.

Not every worthwhile opportunity will fit neatly beneath a headline theme, and not every school or unit needs equal billing. The challenge is to make room for those priorities without turning the campaign into a collection of unrelated fundraising endeavors.

It rarely unfolds in a perfectly tidy order

Now, those decisions don't always happen in a neat sequence.

A school might be ready to pursue a compelling funding opportunity before the larger university has settled its overarching priorities. A transformational gift may come together before the campaign narrative or identity is finalized. Sometimes those opportunities even help determine what deserves greater prominence in the campaign.

That's not necessarily a problem.

Campaign strategy, philanthropic priority-setting, school-level case development, and communications planning often move forward together on somewhat parallel tracks, influencing one another.

The important thing is keeping those efforts connected—and making sure everyone understands what's been decided, what's still being worked through, and who needs to be involved.

Otherwise, different parts of the institution can move forward with genuinely different understandings of what the campaign is supposed to accomplish.

Something worth trying

With so many moving parts (who said this work was easy!?!), how can you tell whether your overarching campaign priorities and the funding opportunities beneath them are actually working together?

Here's one way to find out.

Take one of your overarching priorities and look at how it translates into funding opportunities in two or maybe three schools or units.

Could their deans and frontline fundraisers explain how those investments contribute to the larger priority? Can they explain what philanthropic support would make possible? Does that connection strengthen the case for supporting those investments?

Then try the exercise in reverse. Start with a major school-level priority and ask how it connects to the broader campaign.

Those connections won't always be obvious, and not every opportunity will fit neatly beneath an overarching priority. But if they're difficult to explain—or start sounding forced—it may be worth revisiting how your priorities are defined and developed across the institution.

I'd rather discover those disconnects while there's still time to address them than after the campaign has launched.

Maybe that's the bigger question worth asking:

Are your campaign priorities helping the institution make thoughtful choices about what to advance—or just organizing the things it already plans to fund?

Dan

P.S. I'll be attending the CASE Campaigns Workshop in Chicago, December 7–9. If you or a colleague are planning to be there too, let me know!