Chief Operating Officer, DonorSearch
If your nonprofit wants to complete a major building project, invest in significant equipment or property, or launch a brand-new program, a capital campaign is likely the best way to secure the large amount of funding you’ll need for those initiatives. Capital campaigns are targeted fundraising efforts that take place over a defined period of time.
However, a capital campaign isn’t something your organization should undertake lightly—they often span multiple years and take lots of resources and effort. Although 96% of nonprofits that complete capital campaigns consider them successful, this is only possible because they planned carefully beforehand.
In this guide, we’ll discuss five steps to help your nonprofit prepare for a successful capital campaign. Let’s get started!
1. Assemble Your Campaign Team
Capital campaigns are all-hands-on-deck efforts, and your approach is only as strong as your team.
Start by making sure you have support from all of the following groups at your nonprofit:
- Staff members—not only your executive director and fundraising team lead, but also individuals from across your organization who may touch the campaign in any capacity, from managing finances to cultivating donors and creating marketing materials.
- Board members who will likely be key donors and represent your nonprofit and campaign in the community.
- Volunteers who can take manual tasks like stuffing fundraising letter envelopes and setting up for events off your staff members’ plates so they can focus on higher-level strategic aspects of the campaign.
- Consultants—the study linked above showed that nearly two-thirds of successful capital campaigns involved external consulting, highlighting the value of bringing in an expert to guide your team based on their experience planning other organizations’ campaigns.
From among these groups, select a planning committee to organize your campaign and a steering committee to keep it on track once it launches. Additionally, recruit an experienced board member or volunteer to serve as the campaign chair, who will oversee these committees and help get your whole community on board with your campaign.
2. Conduct a Feasibility Study
According to DonorSearch, a feasibility study is a comprehensive assessment that “help[s] you determine if your nonprofit has the resources, bandwidth, and stakeholder buy-in to complete a capital campaign.”
Before you conduct your feasibility study, finalize your overarching goal for the campaign—i.e., how much you want to raise and what the money will be used for—so you have a starting point for the assessment.
From there, most of your feasibility study will consist of interviewing key stakeholders (such as current and past board members, potential major donors, and community leaders) to get their perspective on your nonprofit’s situation. You should also review your organization’s past fundraising data, assess internal resources, and brainstorm potential obstacles to your campaign’s success during the study.
When you put all of this information together, you’ll have a good idea of whether your nonprofit is ready for a capital campaign. If you are, you can dive into the rest of the planning process. If you aren’t, don’t get discouraged—it may just mean you aren’t ready yet, and you may simply need to make some adjustments to your processes or wait for your nonprofit to recover from other recent challenges before you launch the campaign.
3. Lay Out Your Campaign Timeline
Once your campaign is “all systems go,” your next move is to start charting its course.
First, set its end date—it isn’t sustainable to let a capital campaign take up resources and staff bandwidth indefinitely. Then, work backward to lay out a general timeline for the campaign’s:
- Quiet phase, in which you’ll solicit most of the major gifts that will get you 50-70% of the way to your overall goal.
- Kick-off, where you introduce the campaign to your wider community through events and mass marketing.
- Public phase, in which you raise the rest of the funds you need through small and midsize gifts.
- Wrap-up, where you analyze campaign results and thank everyone who made your success possible (which typically extends beyond the end date for fundraising).
In addition to determining how long each phase will take, set fundraising goals for the quiet and public phases when you make your timeline to keep your team on track. It’s also helpful at this point to consider campaign objectives that aren’t directly related to revenue but are still impactful for your organization, like acquiring new donors, retaining existing supporters, and spreading awareness of your nonprofit’s mission.
4. Create Essential Campaign Materials
To help you stick to your timeline, there are a few documents you should prepare well in advance of launching your capital campaign. These include your:
- Case for support. This document concisely and professionally explains why stakeholders should support your campaign. Your team should use it to guide conversations with prospective major donors, corporate sponsors, and local media.
- Marketing materials. Develop email and direct mail templates, social media posts, print and digital advertisements, press releases, and a dedicated webpage or microsite early on to make it easy to introduce your campaign to the public. As your campaign progresses, you can return to these materials at any time to tweak the details and personalize individual donor messages before they go public.
- Gift range chart. This resource will guide the quiet phase of your campaign by laying out the numbers and sizes of major gifts you need to secure to reach your goals. For example, if you want to raise $1 million during the quiet phase, you might determine that you need one $200,000 gift, two $100,000 gifts, four $50,000 gifts, eight $25,000 gifts, 10 $10,000 gifts, and 20 $5,000 gifts and lay out your chart accordingly.
- Capital budget. As Jitasa’s nonprofit budgeting guide explains, a capital budget lays out all of the upfront expenses associated with your campaign (consultant fees, promotion, software, event planning, etc.) and explains what revenue you’ll use to cover each one. Double-check that this budget aligns with your organization’s operating budget for every year of your campaign.
Keep all of these documents in shared folders or databases so any member of your team who needs to access them at any time can do so easily.
5. Conduct Prospect Research to Identify Major Donors
Before you dive into the quiet phase of your campaign, your last step is to identify the prospective major donors you plan to approach to fill out your gift range chart.
Leverage a prospect research solution to screen potential donors based on the following criteria:
- Affinity indicators: Passion for your mission, nonprofit involvement history (event attendance, volunteering, board service, etc.), personal information (e.g., interests, values, and family ties)
- Capacity (wealth) indicators: Real estate holdings, stock market transactions, business affiliations, political giving history
- Philanthropic indicators: Previous donations to your nonprofit or other similar organizations
A potential donor needs to exhibit all three types of indicators for your nonprofit to consider them a viable prospect who is able and willing to make a large gift to your campaign. While you’ll likely find brand-new major donors through prospect research, make sure to also screen existing supporters in your database—it’ll be easier to cultivate them since they’re already passionate about helping your organization succeed!
(Click to enlarge)
A mind map of capacity, philanthropic, and affinity indicators to look for in capital campaign prospect research, which are listed to the left.
After you’ve completed all of the above steps and your capital campaign is underway, refer back to your planning materials frequently so your team stays on track with timing, spending, and messaging. Additionally, collect data throughout the whole endeavor—not only will this make it easier to evaluate your success once this campaign wraps up, but you’ll also be better informed when you plan your nonprofit’s next capital campaign.
Sarah TeDesco is the Chief Operating Officer and Part Owner of DonorSearch, a prospect research company that focuses on proven philanthropy. Sarah is responsible for managing the production and customer support department, which focuses on client contract fulfillment, retention, and satisfaction. She also collaborates with other team members in various areas like sales, marketing, and product development. Sarah holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and worked as a foundation prospect researcher before joining DonorSearch, providing her with industry experience that she applies to her responsibilities day-to-day.
Editorial Note: This article is a partner-contributed piece and does not necessarily reflect the views or strategic recommendations of the Winkler Group. We believe in engaging with a wide range of sector voices and encourage readers to consider this content as one of many perspectives in the philanthropic landscape.
