If campaign names are so important, how do you explain this?

A conservation group successfully raises more than $300 million in philanthropic gifts in the wonderfully named “Campaign for Last Great Places.”

The same group then gives its next five-year fundraising effort the drab name “The Campaign for Conservation”—and surpasses its goal of $1billion.

Go figure.

I’ve helped name many campaigns and found that every nonprofit does it differently. No matter what they come up with, people get used to it quickly. But an outstanding name can make a difference. How do you create it? Why is it so hard?

Let’s start with the hard part: First, coming up with a name or title for anything is hard work. Second, in fundraising, everybody thinks he knows what the campaign should be called. From the board chair to volunteers to senior staff, everyone engaged in campaign planning has a name in mind. To select one name is to disregard all others.

Years ago, New York University avoided the latter hassle by asking the editorial director of its development office to name a capital campaign. He went into his office, closed the door for two days, and came out with “The Leadership Campaign.” Ugh, you say. P.S. The campaign surpassed its $111-million goal.

The Nature Conservancy involved many people in naming “The Campaign for Last Great Places,” which raised money to conserve 75 pristine landscapes. Staff, donors, and others made suggestions. The chosen name was so popular that people still argue over whose idea it was. One story has it that a corporate donor suggested the name on a Conservancy retreat. Just for the record, as a director in that campaign I suggested “The Last Best Places Campaign,” from the title of a Harold Hayes book about Africa (The Last Best Place), and I still think someone simply took that and substituted “great”—a word I like much better, by the way.

That campaign name was so feel-good that the Conservancy still uses it in its tagline: “Saving the Last Great Places on Earth.”

The same group was hard pressed to come up with an equally striking moniker for its subsequent campaign, even though—or maybe because--it involved countless people in the naming process. I well remember sitting one evening in a room filled with 40 or more board members and state directors who called out possible campaign names, all of which were dutifully listed on a board. People offered every name imaginable; others quickly offered objections. You can’t name it “The Heart of the Land Campaign,” because we also conserve wetlands, someone would say. And so it went. Most suggestions were unimaginative and unmemorable. Months later, a vice president in charge settled on “The Campaign for Conservation”--in my view a terrible name, tantamount to the Julliard School launching “The Campaign for Music.” For all that, the Conservancy raised more than $1 billion. As I say, go figure.

So: do names matter? My own guess—and it comes down to guesswork—is yes, and sometimes they are more important than others. If you have the donor strength of The Nature Conservancy, you can probably conduct the “Send Your Money In Now Campaign” and surpass your goal. If you are struggling to win attention and donors, choose a name that stands out.

Here are tips:

Brainstorm with key audiences.

The naming process can help foster buy-in for a campaign, so by all means involve board members and prospective donors. But do so in a planned and thoughtful manner. If you overdo the brainstorming, the process will become more chore than challenge. You’ll hear the same suggestions time and again. Better to elicit the spontaneous first-thoughts of your best people, and then end the brainstorming.

Ask communications professionals to make the final recommendations.

Naming your campaign is a marketing decision. Bring the ideas
generated at brainstorming sessions to your staff members and consultants responsible for communications and marketing. They have experience developing catchy names for everything from products and programs to articles and books. They are less interested in being descriptive (reflecting the needs included in the campaign) and more intent on grabbing attention with a name that promises to deliver the heavens.

Have these marketers submit three possible names to the campaign chair and development director, or whoever will make the final decision.

Select a name that’s “larger than all of us.”

Your campaign offers donors an opportunity to take part in a special undertaking,
and the name ought to reflect that. If your case for support is bold, majestic, urgent, and irresistible—and it had better be--the campaign name should give voice to your ambition.

Sometimes, you hit it right on the head, as in “The Campaign for Last Great Places,” which conveys urgency (the last) and majesty (great) and uses a word that conservationists understand (places). The name expresses a bold vision.

But even a simple and direct name can sound a strong note. Several years ago, the River Conservancy conducted a fundraising effort to support expanded conservation work throughout the West and called it “The Campaign for Western Rivers: Creating the River Protection Fund.”

Other nonprofits prefer names that combine key elements of their new vision. For a five-year effort ending in the year 2000 that aimed at sustaining traditions of opportunity while reaching for new academic heights, The George Washington University conducted “The Centuries Campaign: A Legacy of Opportunity, An Opportunity for Excellence.” MIT, on the other hand, speaks to the hearts of its brilliant, nerdy alumni in its current $2 billion effort, “The Campaign for MIT: Calculated Risks, Creative Revolutions.”

Americans have been wrestling with campaign names since the 1640s, when Harvard raised money in England under the rubric “New England’s First Fruits.” There’s no right or wrong name for a campaign. What works? What will resonate with prospective donors? What will inspire volunteers? Find that name—none other—and you’re ready to roll.

This article originally appeared in Contributions Magazine.