Prior to substantial structural reforms of the Sierra Club in the early 1970s, members conducted “business” within the organization in their own distinct fashion. To become a member before the 1970s, about the only place one could find a membership application was the “printed application on the book jacket of a Sierra Club book, requiring you to cut up the jacket and find two club members to recommend you for membership” (xxii). Fundraising was segmented within the organization, as there existed three separate, decentralized fund-raising staffs that failed to share information or donors amongst each other. Underneath these logistical complications existed a management unwilling to demonstrate firm control of the organization in the fear of preventing the existence of innovation and progress. It was this situation that Denny Shaffer of North Carolina entered into when he became a member of the Sierra Club in 1969. At his first National Sierra Club meeting, Shaffer was bewildered at the state of the organization, stating:
“The first meeting I came to out here was, without a doubt, one of the most--I want to say I was shocked, maybe that's too strong a word. I was sure amazed that this powerful organization which was viewed as being so wise and old and right in its thinking and effective, in some levels was just really quite primitive” (30).
Upon observing the general state of affairs within the organization, Shaffer went about with initial plans aimed at restructuring and strengthening two primary areas of the organization: (1) membership development and (2) fundraising. Under the leadership of Denny Shaffer, the Sierra Club underwent significant reforms that transformed the largely California-focused environmental organization into a new dimension of membership size, financial stability, and political influence, contributing to the rise of the organization as the preeminent environmental organization within American society. Prior to Shaffer’s membership development reforms, the Sierra Club had no individuals whatsoever focused towards the recruitment of new members. The only promotional material was “one brochure that read “Why the Sierra Club?” on the front outside cover in brown on beige and inside, told of the history and mission of the club” (38). Although done in an eloquent fashion, the brochure was not much of a sales document and prior promotional outreach initiatives such as newspaper ads were utter failures, leading the organization to the conclusion that advertising simply would not work. The issue lay with the fact that the efforts put forth by executive powers of the club in terms of membership recruitment were lackluster at best. Little to no emphasis was placed on expanding the membership of the organization till Shaffer developed a new prerogative in 1972. Shaffer, realizing the organization’s potential for expansion took the original printed brochure and made significant aesthetic changes to it. Developing an innovative “point-of-sale” brochure, Shaffer introduced several ideas utilizing the brochure that were revolutionary to the organization at the time. Replacing the original dreary brown catalog of history that the organization had long utilized, he introduced a new color brochure invoking humor, with the brochure’s headline reading, “A bunch of crazy people want you to join them” (39). Receiving a small amount of funding to run a pilot program to test out this campaign from the nationals, Shaffer went to local chapters to ask for additional money, which gave him assistance and allowed for the new membership project to flourish. As Shaffer would claim, “it was new, it was attractive, you had members out there on the ground, and it set a precedent that we have forgotten about a number of times since then, which is the best way to do it is to get people who are the best you can to put together the product” (40). While the Sierra Club achieved its objective of generating buzz around the organization through its brochure campaign, the traditional complications involved in becoming a member of the organization persisted. Till Shaffer’s arrival, the organization’s efforts towards membership recruitment were meek, with occasional coupons in the organization’s official publication, the Sierra Club Bulletin, asking people to join. Most members ended up joining through “writing to the Sierra Club asking for permission and information on becoming members” (43). While this method was effective in securing individuals who were truly passionate about the causes that the Sierra Club championed, the organization witnessed limited growth politically and financially simply because of too few resources. Seeking a new strategy towards membership recruitment, Brant Calkin, president of the Sierra Club at the time, appointed Shaffer as President of the Membership Committee in 1976. In his effort to transform membership recruitment from a passive to active position, one of Shaffer’s first directives was to institute ads within the Sierra Club Bulletin. Along with the placement of ads within the magazine, Shaffer came to an agreement with the organization’s publisher, Scribner, “to run ads within the already tremendously popular Sierra Club calendars” (47). Shaffer began creating clip art and miniature cartoons for local chapters to place within individual newsletters and “ran membership contests amongst chapters where for example, for every new member a chapter registered, they would receive a tree from a nursery” (49). The logic behind these initiatives lay rooted in the belief that there existed a great number of individuals out there who could further advocate the Sierra Club’s message, but these individuals were not being actively reached out to. In essence, Shaffer sought to harness the potential for organizational growth that the club was neglecting. The magazine and calendars however were not enough in terms of generating significant levels of interest around the organization. Shaffer realized that for significant growth, the product had to be forcefully “pushed” into the hands of the consumer, and the best way to do so at the time was through the utilization of the direct mail program. With the assistance of Roger Craver, a political consultant with expertise in fundraising techniques at the time, Shaffer developed a direct mail membership solicitation program with multiple test packages to see which one resonated best with potential members. The key ambition of the program was to initially get new members and have them renew their membership each year, “in the first year, there's an expense of getting the member. But the second, third, fourth years, if you can keep them out there longer, are very profitable” (58).
To build on this growing momentum, the organization went on to pursue an activist direct mailing campaign against the Secretary of the Interior James Watt, whose perceived hostility towards environmentalists became the target of the direct mail initiative in the early 1980s. As the public became increasingly infuriated with the anti-environmentalist policies of Watt, the Sierra Club became a source of justice for them. By mailing letters to hundreds of thousands of individuals proclaiming that the organization was there to take action against the policies of Watt, membership development grew as the anti-Watt campaign made the Sierra Club appear to be, as Shaffer would proclaim “an organization out there to do something” (59). In the eyes of the public, the Sierra Club had become more than just an environmentalist group with the anti-Watt campaign; it became a symbol for institutional reform for the betterment of the American land. The Sierra Club grew in membership out of the anti-Watt campaign because people saw that the organization actually wielded power and took the activist initiative protecting and preserving the natural state of the land. To sustain these membership development programs for the long-term, Shaffer sought to promote life memberships and an initiative towards building endowment. The logic attached to this scheme was that “if you got the money for the life membership and didn’t spend it, and only spent the income that it created, you had more money to spend each year” (60). In essence, this money would be placed in an endowment that could not be immediately spent. Furthermore, the income generated each year from each life membership would be sustained forever and was more profitable than an individual joining every year. As Shaffer would claim at board meetings proclaiming the benefits of this program, “you’ve got that income forever, including when they’re dead and gone. Even if they get mad at you, you’ve still got it” (61). As the Membership Committee expanded its promotional activities on a yearly basis, the cost of maintaining programs such as direct mail and generating additional advertisements in newsletters and magazines exponentially grew. The establishment of the life membership program provided the constant stream of funds necessary to thrust these membership development programs further into the future while also logistically offering the opportunity to those truly dedicated to the environmental cause everlasting support for the programs and initiatives of the Sierra Club. While Shaffer reformed multiple aspects of the membership development program, he continually sought to look for flaws within his own work. In the early 1990s, over a decade after the introduction the of direct mail program, the Membership Committee hired Peter Hart, a pollster, to conduct a survey amongst Sierra Club members. The news proved to be devastating, demonstrating significant drops in both membership development and renewal rates. Shaffer noted that, “people who had been members for years, four, five, six, twenty years, were not renewing, but instead were throwing their renewal notices in the wastebasket” (63). The survey illustrated that the Sierra Club had retreated from the personable aspect that had made membership development so successful in terms of expansion in the 1980s and had adopted a form of static communication with potential donors. Hart, the pollster, found that the organization “asked people for money and for their calls and letters on an issue, yet barely thanked them” and that the Sierra Club was simply “not giving members any feedback, but rather just asking for more and more” (63). Through conducting this survey, Shaffer went about creating a task force to devise proposals to offer club members a feeling of ownership. The organization’s resolution and commitment to enhance the communication between members and the organization stabilized membership development. The institution of these emergency actions Shaffer have allowed the club to grow and prosper in terms of overall membership recruitment and expansion of the Sierra Club’s membership base. While membership development required significant reforms, the primary lifeline of the organization, fundraising, was equally inept prior to the arrival of Denny Shaffer. Within the organization there existed three separate fundraising arms: the Office of Program Funding, the Sierra Club Foundation fundraising staff, and the legal defense fundraising staff. These separate staffs were competitive, withholding information about operations and potential donors from each other, and operated on their own individual agendas. Shaffer would claim, “one could go in not knowing the prospect [potential donor] very well and do a rather superficial presentation and come out with $500, where somebody else had been working two years on developing a proposal to get $100,000 from this person, but the other guy didn't know it” (66). While the membership development programs were bringing a steady stream of revenue into the organization through new member registration fees and renewal fees from existing members, the fundraising committees, the primary sources of income for the organization, were generally inefficient. Witnessing the general lack of control in terms of fundraising, Shaffer instituted initiatives aimed at centralizing the fundraising arm, in hopes of greater potential revenue for the organization and more importantly, preventing the losses in revenue occurring because of a lack of internal communication and organization. The primary issue at hand with fundraising at the time centered on the decentralization of power in regards to all fundraising tactics and measures amongst different committees within the organization. Realizing that the aggregate costs exceeded the aggregate revenue being brought in, Shaffer concluded that centralization of power was necessary to reduce losses. Speaking to the board of trustees, Shaffer urged the board “to get one fund-raising department here, and get rid of this silliness, and what you’re doing is not working very well” (71). After heated debates questioning the merit and intentions behind this move, the board finally approved of Shaffer’s plan for a coordinated staff in the hopes of soliciting the interests of major donors who could provide an immense and immediate infusion of cash into the organization. As Shaffer would note in later years, “the change to having a coordinated staff, the contract with the club, bringing in professional fund-raisers, coordinated and so on, has raised immensely more money than we ever thought about, significantly more money” (72). What Shaffer had done was lay out a clear trail for all fundraising initiatives by replacing the prior inconsistent and inefficient decentralized system with a centralized system that prioritized communication and devoted its interests primarily to donors rather than competing with different committees within the organization. By restructuring and shifting the core values, focus, and organization of the fundraising arm of the organization, Shaffer had revamped a system that was losing money because of an internal power struggle and created a department that brought the organization unprecedented amounts of money. The unease that remained after the reorganization of the fundraising department however existed in the sense that the organization struggled to attract major donor contributions. The Sierra Club had made efforts in the past to entice and contact wealthier individuals who could provide significant resources towards the club’s mission, but as Shaffer observed, “the organization had major donor fund raisers who went out and made the attempt to do it, but without great success” (76). The reasons behind these original fundraising failures were similar to those of the struggles of the direct mailing program and membership development programs of the 1990s: a lack of communication between the organization and potential donors. Donors were reluctant to donate after contributing once because there was “very little in the way of developing the donor, of courting the donor, and helping the donor see what it is we [the Sierra Club] were doing – getting their personal involvement and then going to them for money” (76). To donors, it seemed the organization was more focused on taking their money than forming a mutual relationship and actively involving them with the initiatives and goals of the Sierra Club. This lack of a relationship eroded trust between the major donor fundraising base and the fundraising arm of the organization, preventing the growth of the organization in terms of building up an endowment to plan for and sustain future projects and movements. It was this dysfunctional relationship between donors and the organization that led Shaffer to adopt an initiative that would come to be known as the Centennial Campaign. The original goal of the Centennial Campaign under Shaffer was an “endowment build-up of millions of dollars which would continue to fund programs of the Sierra Club on forever” (78). To accomplish this long-term mission, Shaffer and his advisors urged to the board to invest in fundraising efforts to build an ability to continually raise money. Rather than continuing the old policy of simply contacting donors, probing around their potential interest, and then leaving them off to the side, Shaffer’s goals were centered on a desire to build relationships and communication between both parties. To create such an environment, Shaffer established two committees for the Centennial Campaign: the planning committee and the steering committee. The mission of the planning committee was to keep the budgets moving. For example, on bequests, the Centennial Campaign planning committee set up a policy “that the chapter got something from any bequest of a member from that chapter, even if the chapter was not mentioned” (80). By handling this, the professional major donor-fundraisers in the steering committee would not have to go to board meetings and argue on the allocation of money left or given by donors and members. Rather, the steering committee could focus on the critical aspect of developing and understanding the culture of the Sierra Club, to figure out what exactly would connect best with the emotions and sentiments of potential donors. Shaffer appointed Bill Meadows to lead the steering campaign and Meadows immediately came to the conclusion that the entire mission of the Centennial Campaign was the reason behind the alienation of potential major donors. The Centennial Campaign had initially been focused solely on the philosophy that the organization ought to build an endowment. Meadows noted to Shaffer however that “everybody you went to, that was willing to give you a big piece of money, was willing to do it if they could see that they were going to make a difference in the near future” (81). Major donors wished to see their money in action; they wanted to see definitive programs that the organization would establish utilizing their money. By building up an endowment, the Sierra Club appeared to be an organization focused on hoarding money. Through pushing various programs and initiatives through the organization, there existed an impetus for major donors to contribute. Meadows realized the passive nature of the endowment contradicted with the activist spirit of the Sierra Club. The idea of the endowment did not fit the culture of the Sierra Club and sensing this, major donors were hesitant to assist the organization. Through pitching the establishment of a range of short-term projects and programs that the Sierra Club planned to undertake, Shaffer and his subordinates had managed to align the goals of the fundraising arm with the values of the Sierra Club, offering major donors insight into the operations of the organization. For the first time, these donors felt part of the Sierra Club’s environmental movement and could see the activist spirit that had come to define the culture of the organization, leading to the significant growth of major donations to the organization. The Centennial Campaign and the reorganization of the fundraising arm of the organization proved critical in creating financial security for the organization. As Shaffer would state, “the club’s financial health varies based on political situations and the mood of the country, and things which are outside the control of the organization” (82). The uncertain external factors meant that the Sierra Club had to handle its finances vigilantly or risk the chance of turbulent times for the club’s economic state in the future. The Centennial Campaign had created, in a colloquial sense, a “rainy day fund”. The legacy of the Centennial Campaign and Shaffer’s centralization of the fundraising department can be seen in the continued strength of the club today. As other mass means of fundraising have slumped due to the recessionary nature of the economy in recent years, the Sierra Club has continued unabated in its environmental programs and mission, largely in part due to the buildup of funds under the control of Denny Shaffer. Through Denny Shaffer’s leadership in membership development and fundraising program reforms, the Sierra Club had evolved from the “primitive” state that it had existed in when Shaffer arrived to his first national meeting in the early 1970s. The institution of membership development programs such as the direct mailing initiative, life memberships, and the simplification of becoming a Sierra Club member, the club witnessed a record amount of individuals joining the organization. With the centralization of the fundraising department and the success derived from the Centennial Campaign, the organization had the financial ability and more importantly, the security, to venture into an increased amount of national projects and environmental programs. The significant reforms instituted by Denny Shaffer allowed for the organization to enter into a new era of membership size, financial stability, and political clout, establishing the Sierra Club as the nation’s preeminent environmentalist organization. References
Denny Shaffer, interviewed by Ann Lage, Regional Oral History Office,
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2006.