Leaders Communication Strategies for Large-Scale Gains

Rod Miller
Executive Institutional Advancement Exchange, USA
rod@ExecIAE.com

Abstract: Purpose Principles, priorities and practices for large-scale gains in communication and external
funding are the focus of this paper. It outlines communication priorities and practices of institutional leaders in
more than thirty educational institutions located in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - including
observations about why, when and how the leaders optimize success, measured by substantial increases in
funding.
Methodology/Approach Consultation and interviews with enterprise leaders in world-class and aspiring
educational institutions were conducted, and key results in income, process and actions were reviewed.
Analysis of approaches identified key assumptions and practices that shape the leaders strategic use of
communication. The study draws on the findings to describe strategies used for interpersonal communication to
engage key stakeholders.
Findings The discussion identifies communication strategies institutional leaders used for these efforts to
1) Assist alignment among board members, senior leaders and operational teams, including field staff.
2) Concentrate collaborative effort on major new undertakings.
3) Facilitate projects which help the institution to develop an international reputation.
4) Catalyze students and educators to use knowledge and develop new knowledge.
5) Increase the margin of financial flexibility for the leaders initiatives.
Conclusions are outlined concerning key critical success factors for start-up, emergent and mature programs to
advance beyond benchmarks and to make large-scale gains through the effectiveness of external
communications.
Research implications A distillation of strategy, process and behaviors used in world-class and aspiring
educational institutions to lead improvement in the results of external communications.
Practical implications Useful as a guide for corporate leaders, as well as communication and advancement
professionals. The paper will help with framing a specific approach for large-scale gains in engaging
stakeholders.
Keywords Institutional leaders, Large-scale gains, Leader communication, Stakeholder engagement, Funding
growth.
Paper type Research paper



it's the way a thing's done that makes it right or wrong.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens


Why, when and how to engage with stakeholders are questions for enterprise leaders.
Answering why the enterprise exists and what stakeholders would miss if the enterprise ceased to
exist is properly the responsibility of a leader. When the question why does your institution exist?
was put to the leaders of education enterprises from more than thirty widely known and successful
higher education enterprises located in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who are the
subject of this paper, the predominant thematic answer was to educate youth for leadership. Their
follow-up mention of science, the arts, rigorous analytical learning or cultural and economic
development varied according to individual emphases.
What distinguishes the enterprise or what initiatives the enterprise will deliver as
improvements for stakeholders requires leadership focus. Enterprises in the corporate, government or
non-profit sectors share common concerns about many important challenges, especially which
community needs to serve, how to meet community needs, and what steps improve relationships
within the community. A leader must select and engage collaborators who are willing and able to
bring substantial resources for the advancement of the mission of the enterprise in the community.
What values a leader expresses and lives will normally so permeate the daily activities of an
enterprise that through inference and reference the culture and reputation of the enterprise itself will
evolve.
The enterprise leaders from five countries whose insights inform this paper might not be
surprised that much the same principles, priorities and processes are effective in different places. The
paper reviews communication assumptions of the leaders and includes observations about why, when
and how the leaders optimize success, measured by substantial increases in funding. Some important
and often subtle differences pertain among countries in tactics for translating principles into action.
Likewise, nuances of difference were found among enterprises within the same country that
developed highly individualized practices. The paper amalgamates leaders responses and
observations to questions about what they considered important about why, when and how leaders
optimize success, measured by substantial increases in revenue, philanthropy, government or venture
funding.
Key assumptions that leaders expressed about the strategies, processes and behaviors to
develop high-performance in external relations efforts are described. The discussion is organized in
relation to the main strategies used within interpersonal communication to move forward priority
actions:
1) Align board members, senior leaders and operational teams, including field staff;
2) Concentrate collaborative effort on major new undertakings;
3) Facilitate projects which help the institution to develop an international reputation;
4) Catalyze students and teachers to use knowledge and develop new knowledge;
5) Increase the margin of financial flexibility for the leaders initiatives.
While such factors as the ability to engage sufficient numbers of volunteer community leaders, the
commitment of the chief executive, the availability of well-trained and experienced external relations
professionals, the reputation and community focus of the enterprise, and an organized system for the
involvement of stakeholders were frequently referenced in conversations, these seemed to be viewed
as internal problems to be solved within the enterprise. The five strategies above most consistently
focused the leaders external efforts. Conclusions from this discussion are outlined concerning key
critical success factors for start-up, emergent and mature programs to make large-scale gains in the
effectiveness of communications to secure external funding.
All about Values

After more than two decades leading communication, marketing and funding efforts with
start-up, emergent and mature enterprises, I still find it remarkable that some otherwise sophisticated
people shrink from fundraising professionals which partly speaks to the failures among
professionals to do things the right way. The commitment to an enterprise should extend to respect
for stakeholders, and where one might find a match of values between the stakeholder and the
enterprise. At the most basic level, a key value of an enterprise is its commitment to do good for the
members of the community it serves. Where the driving of processes of outreach becomes the focus,
rather than listening to stakeholders to identify where the stakeholders input and engagement would
provide greatest value for both, the enterprise substantially abrogates its service to the community.
That this occurs embarrassingly often is illustrated in a story that a foremost pioneer in
fundraising education in North America, Hank Rosso used to tell many of us with pleasure. He
described that moment in airline travel when it is time to exchange business cards with the person in
the adjoining seat. Hank took delight in answering the shrinking cringe of this person from the
fundraisers business card with the quip but Im off-duty (Miller, 1995). I prefer to point out that
everyone Ive ever known who makes a gift does so voluntarily.
How well the enterprise opens the door for stakeholders to gain understanding of the
enterprise and be engaged in an ongoing conversation for mutual understanding will determine to a
large extent how well the enterprise discharges its community service responsibility. Astute leaders
make it known that the donor-investors wishes rule. If an enterprise leader needs a more pragmatic
reason for pursuing a responsible exchange with stakeholders, it might help to know that how much
stakeholders feel engaged in advancing the added value of the enterprise is largely what drives
stakeholder commitment.

Strategy 1: Align the Collaborative Team

Leaders involved in building the external relations efforts must initially and recurrently find
accommodations of understanding among the individuals involved. Board members, senior leaders
and others, including professionals often have a wide array of assumptions and perceptions of what
constitutes best practice. Beliefs about what are effective practices in communication and fundraising
may derive from a wide range of experiences of the individuals, whose only point of agreement might
be a common purpose to serve the mission of the enterprise. What external relations efforts work for
an art museum located in a region with wealthy stakeholders will not apply to the needs of an inner
city school serving a disadvantaged population, with no affluent stakeholders immediately apparent,
and the variation of individual experiences of success or otherwise in securing funding is great.
It was apparent in the discussions with successful leaders that the principles for effective
engagement of fundraising are stable, and the differences are in the tactics and emphases for
execution. So the leaders primary challenge, as with any new activity as it takes shape, is to align
collaborators on the essentials to move toward best practice. For communication, for cooperation and
for coordination of fundraising, this means securing alignment on what strategy will engage
stakeholders in saying what each values about the enterprise, what process will help build the actions
for teams of board trustees, program leaders and staff professionals to set the pace of interpersonal
engagement, and what behaviors will make connecting conversations happen on big opportunities
every day.
Most commonly, the leaders affirmed that a key challenge is to keep focus on these and
related actions that are both important and urgent. A central concern of the successful leader was to
clear the way for team members to focus on building beneficial external relations and initiative/risk-
taking through organized interpersonal communication. All considered this enjoining of enterprise
collaborators to place outreach, initiative and risk-taking first in the days activities as essential for
enterprise growth. What mattered to a leader and closest collaborators was how to advance the
mission of the enterprise in the community it serves. Effective enterprises continuously extend the
capacity for people to cooperate purposefully arguably, the most powerful force to advance the
mission of an enterprise. The leaders place faith in the creative power of people to do the right things.
If as Lao-Tse advocated, the leader is best when least evident (Miller, 1987), the catalytic role is to
encourage, support, ask questions, but also to trust people to make the right things happen.
In short, to make large-scale gains, leadership is all. Firstly, a leader keeps laser-focus on the
substantive mission of the enterprise and what actions contribute to the fulfillment of the mission.
Secondly, the leaders knowledge of colleagues performance, work practices, and morale provide the
essential touchstones for determining appropriate strategies and tactics for their use. The enterprise
leaders accomplished large-scale gains in communication and funding, with very developed personal
qualities of passion, single-mindedness, determination and follow-through, combined with
commitment to use opportunities creatively, build personal relations strategically and being ready to
take risks.
Strategy 2: Concentrate Each Year on New Major Initiatives

Commitment to bold initiatives characterized the leaders uniformly. Each focused on the
potentially most effective areas within the enterprise to underpin the external relations effort. Each
tackled major initiatives that the enterprise and the community found significant. Some higher
education enterprises become significant in the life of a city or region through economic or cultural
impact well beyond the educational goals. The community concerns of enterprises ranged from
researching how to control disease to changing the urban infrastructure to providing a cultural
precinct in a neglected central city area and many other priorities particular to the circumstances of an
enterprise. In all cases, the major needs of communities required major resources. The wise leader
chose carefully which community needs to address namely, needs that were challenging and still
within the realm of reality in terms of the enterprises capacity to serve the needs perhaps best
described as keeping eyes on the stars and feet on the ground.
In this matching of enterprise to community, the leaders found the colleagues who were
stars within the enterprise, who could express the vision and opportunity for new major initiatives
during guided conversations with stakeholders. One leader managed to secure external funding for
seven new buildings and twelve overseas campuses over a five-year period by concentrating on new
areas for improvement each year. In this case, he traveled to foreign governments to secure
substantial funds to support areas of foreign language teaching that were under budget threat. Close
understandings between the leader and a pro-active and hands-on external relations professional, who
partnered in follow-through played a major role to assure success, along with the initial careful choice
among options for focus.
From local to international contexts, educational enterprises have many opportunities to
deploy resources to maximize improvement in the human condition. Resources do have boundaries,
whether already in-hand or yet to be secured, and the key is to select and concentrate on what will
make real difference. One leader worked in partnership with city leaders to rejuvenate the inner city
blocks on which the campus was located; another focused efforts for external funding to enable
community access to a previously little-known art collection; still another so focused efforts that
within a decade two-thirds of all the research efforts of the enterprise were directed to control a
specific disease; and another initiated interdisciplinary efforts on new approaches to access the right
information for an array of health, commercial, social or security needs.
Whatever the selection and concentration on matters of community substance, the momentum
was to leverage funding through positioning the enterprise as a community resource. Among the
unplanned benefits from vigorous external relations were the building of long-term relationships with
community leaders and the identification of unexpected funding opportunities, such as a major
interest-free loan from government for a building and substantial funds from community leaders
previously unconnected with the enterprise.

Strategy 3: Facilitate Projects that Develop an International Reputation

From local to international contexts, among the many opportunities for educational
enterprises are usually a very few opportunities to distinguish the enterprise through a unique output.
Reputations come from the accomplishment of the difficult, whether in the worlds of ideas or action,
and this is true for enterprises as well as for individuals. In the creation of new knowledge or its
novel application, an enterprise earns standing particularly through the delivery of outputs that
touch peoples lives and improve the human condition.
Leaders who developed international reputations for research primarily sought privately
funded professorial positions, research fellowships and unrestricted research funding, and then
attracted the most promising and focused potential stars to the roles. The emphasis was to recruit
the best minds for the pursuit of the newest and most exciting frontiers of knowledge the best minds
whose outputs already suggested a much higher potential is likely. The most famous higher
education enterprises long ago also made commitment to undergraduate research programs of the best
quality, and strategically this enabled an in-house recruitment pool for future researchers within the
enterprise.
When resources are provided to aggressively attract and refresh a community of the best
minds engaged in the most exciting frontiers of innovation, substantial accomplishment becomes
possible. International accomplishments emerge through the efforts of such faculty and students. The
leader who consults regularly with external stakeholders learned and understood most quickly what
ranked as the important community needs. This empowered decision about the important areas for
which to secure funds that, in turn, enabled recruitment of the best and brightest students and faculty.

Strategy 4: Catalyze the Magic of a Student and Teacher Seeing and Using Knowledge

Students embody the future. The excitement of creating a better future propels the
intellectual and emotional commitment to see and use new understandings. Face-to-face and virtual
collaborations, equipment to probe new galaxies or bio-molecular processes, or imaginative dance
choreography are some of the ways students and faculty catalyze the magic of learning and discovery.
The real advances in education occur when an inquiring student and faculty member understand what
was not previously known.
One enterprise shows five students in a video sharing very personal reflections about what
each valued in the educational experience concluding with You have just heard five of the best
reasons for supporting the endowed scholarship program at One leader aptly stated that the
brightest students seek out the brightest faculty and the brightest faculty will seek the brightest
students. Accordingly, funding for the right things is important. While funding for scholarships or
financial aid for students might not directly support the faculty, in higher education enterprises
sufficient funding of these functions is essential for long-term development.

Strategy 5: Increase the Margin of Financial Flexibility for the Enterprise Leader

Some educational enterprises reconceived all possible community services as revenue-
raising, while also serving the educational purpose for which the services originated, including the
medical school/hospital, arts facilities and technology laboratories. When well-handled, this approach
helped to accentuate the sense of community ownership of the enterprise. In this way, the leader
moved the external relations function from providing a margin of flexibility in the budget to being a
percentage of the operating budget.
Large enterprises that focused mainly on philanthropy considered the achievement of ten
percent of budget from these sources to be a substantial accomplishment. Some achieved this, in
addition to external funding being a significant portion of every major building plan. In most start-up
or emergent philanthropic efforts, the accomplishments generally came more slowly than some
ambitions might like. Some perspective is evident in the example of one enterprise that committed to
goal-directed resource development eight decades ago. Here the leader considered twenty percent of
budget derived from philanthropy a substantial accomplishment, with interest earnings from the large
endowment adding a further seventeen percent to the operating budget.

Reality Check

What is feasible in external relations gains is illustrated in the following comparisons of five
of the institutions studied. For such advancement, the strategies discussed above of: 1) leadership
alignment; 2) concentrated initiatives; 3) international projects; 4) catalysis of student/faculty inquiry;
and 5) increased financial flexibility provide the framework to set targets for process and behaviors.
The agreement of time-based priorities for action and a leader who empowers forward movement are
essential to avoid the painfully too common endless chain of negotiations and ambiguities that
stagnate performance for outreach in many enterprises. For external relations efforts in the start-up or
formative stage, special leadership wisdom is essential. It is especially important then to recognize
and applaud successes and build upon these. The enterprise that tries to benchmark against worlds-
best before some core strategies, processes and behaviors are operating will do more harm than good.


Educational
Institution
Year FR Started
1

1936
2

1960
3

1946
4

1990
5

1987
5
(15 yrs
later)
Income/yr $182M $27M $37M $1.3M $1.5M $32M
Endowment $2.7B $262M - $8M $184,000 $38M
# FR Staff 85 18 16 11 4 9
Contactable Alumni 129,160 57,449 120,000 45,000 1,600 118,000
Major Gift Officer
Visits/month
15 27 12 14 12 12
Major Gift Officer
Asks/month
4 4 3 2 2 4

Table: Sample Key Data Comparisons

This comparison of five enterprises in the same year (recorded in the first five columns)
illustrates substantial differences in accomplishment, resulting from a variety of factors, including the
year that fundraising commenced and levels of staffing, both of which very much correlate to the
scale of external funding secured. Another difference worth noting is the substantially greater
number of visits per major gift officer in institution 2, which was conducting a major campaign at
the time and had committed substantially greater resources than others to in-office staff, who made
appointments for visits to prospective donor-investors for the in-field major gift officers. Yields from
effort of course also depend on an array of characteristics beyond what is listed in this table, including
the average age and affluence of alumni and the level and type of engagement alumni have
experienced. The last column on the right shows an update fifteen years later for institution 5,
which has yet to be able to engage contactable alumni adequately to provide higher levels of support.
Such success is built slowly and this enterprise continues to secure most major funding from sources
other than alumni.
To achieve ongoing growth, the leader and operations staff leader must agree more than
dollar goals, including what are the education and research areas to seek funding for, who are the
volunteers able to open doors to potential funders and what resources enable the setting and follow
through of conversations with potential funders. In formative/start-up or early emergent efforts, the
too common management guess-work used to set percentage increases over the previous years
funding will result in frustration of the efforts or worse. The leaders in more mature programs made
more informed decision on targets for the year ahead by considering the size of the investor base,
what level of access to community leaders was possible, how much income was already pledged for
the year ahead and how many proposals of what scale were already under consideration with potential
funders. One enterprise with annual income under fifty-million dollars found a middle ground by
targeting an annual increase of ten percent to move toward a goal of fifty-million dollars in a defined
number of years in this case, however, it was already known where more than 70-85 percent of the
money would come from in the years ahead, so the hoped-for addition was 30-15 percent. Few of
these metrics are available in the early stage program. Leaders of programs at all stages of
development advocated the importance of thinking bigger than incremental gains. Appropriate
engagement must drive the metrics, not the other way around. The largest successes come from
deployment of the five strategies discussed here emphasizing bold moves, engaging sufficient
numbers of volunteer community leaders, committing the leadership effort and energizing
professionals who secure quality visits and follow-up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was found that principles, priorities and practices are common to successful
leaders who aim to advance the external relations efforts. The transformational leader envisions a
better future and provides pathways for individuals to recognize how each might help to bring about
this future. When the external relations efforts to secure funding are viewed as organized
interpersonal communication, the opportunities to plan and execute for success are potentially great.
It is true that effective face-to-face communication leads the enterprise. It is equally true that the
leaders personal communication with stakeholders is the predominant basis for stakeholders to feel
engaged sufficiently to belong and provide funding for the efforts of the enterprise. The pertinent
goal is to improve understanding through personal communication.


References

Saint-Gaudens, A., (2009), Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Master of American Sculpture. December 28 Television
Broadcast on KTEH.

Miller, R. (2011), Why, When and How the Big Gift Campaigns Work: March 16 Webinar, Slideshare.

Miller, R. (1995), Benchmarking Institutional Advancement. Monograph, Queensland University of
Technology, January 1, Brisbane.

Miller, R. (1987), Leadership through communication, Australian Journal of Communication, No. 12, pp. 1-
8.


Acknowledgment

For making this study possible, thanks go to leaders at the following institutions who during the past one and a
half decades have provided information, insights or perspectives Amherst College, Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, Drexel University, Harvard University, Haverford College, Indiana-Purdue University, Keene State
College, Kings College University of London, LaTrobe University, London Business School, McGill
University, Manchester University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Merton College (Oxford), Monash
University, Oxford University, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Queensland University of
Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, St Catherines College (Oxford), Stanford University, University
of Adelaide, University of Auckland, University of Canterbury, University of Massachusetts, University of New
England, University of Queensland, University of the Sciences, University of Strathclyde, University of
Technology Sydney, University of Western Australia, University of Western Sydney.