What is a Capital Campaign?
What it is, why you need it and 5 key steps for planning your next major fundraising effort.
You might think a capital campaign begins when you start asking for major gifts, but a successful campaign actually begins long before.
Securing contributions to a capital campaign—especially lead gifts that make up the first 50-75% of your total goal—can be an easy and natural process if a strong culture of giving exists around your organization.
Donors who have been properly stewarded and who display both an interest in your mission and capacity to give are typically generous supporters of capital campaign projects.
If you’re wondering whether your donors have been stewarded toward a capital campaign-sized gift, here are our steps to set you up for success.
5 Key Components of a Successful Capital Campaign
1. A Strong Annual Fund
There’s a saying in fundraising: “Strangers seldom give.” Building genuine relationships with donors is critical if you want to eventually raise major funds. You can achieve and maintain strong relationships with your donors through a strategic marketing program that supports annual fundraising.
Some elements of your annual fund should include:
Consistent, frequent and meaningful communications—these can be by mail and email
Ongoing dialogue that gives donors opportunities to express their feedback and opinions
Donor-centered language that illustrates where contributions are going and how they are making an impact
Ongoing recognition and acknowledgement of your donors
Events and other opportunities for donors to be acknowledged and interact one another and other stakeholders
A good annual fundraising program keeps your donors regularly connected to your organization and clearly illustrates the impact they are making on your mission. Analyzing your annual fund donor base and results from year-to-year will help you to build a solid lead list as you approach a capital campaign.
2. A Feasibility Study or Audit
Though it may sound like a complex process, a feasibility study, at the core, is a survey. This portion of the project helps you collect important insights that will shape not only your prospect list, but also your final ‘pitch’ to donors.
By presenting your case for support and proposed project in draft form, so to speak, you offer your stakeholders an opportunity to share their advice and contribute their vision. Through this process, you gain their buy-in and help them to feel ownership, increasing the likelihood that they will lend their support.
It’s especially helpful, though not often done, if interviews and surveys are completed not only with donors and prospects, but also with internal staff, volunteers, board members, partner organizations and other stakeholder groups. By comparing the responses, you can identify areas where these groups are out of alignment.
How are their responses different to questions such as:
What is your vision for the organization?
What is the unique impact of the organization on the community or its client/membership base?
What is the biggest challenge facing the organization?
If the organization had unlimited funding, what priorities should it focus on?
What if the organization didn’t exist?
Ultimately, the feasibility study helps you to determine the financial viability of the project and reveals objections that you can anticipate along the way. While you should not ask for gifts during this phase, you can assess the interest, capacity and willingness of your donors well enough to refine your path forward.
3. The Silent Phase
This is where the hard work happens. While the silent phase is not secret, it’s not the time to make broad solicitations for your campaign. You should plan for multiple meetings with your top prospects and extensive follow-up leading up to securing your lead gifts.
The goal of the silent phase is to make personal solicitations using your final case for support and project outline to secure gifts or pledges that total 50-75% of your goal. On average, it’s likely that you’ll need to meet with prospects about 2-3 times before they make a firm commitment. Remember that they will want to confer with spouses, family members and their financial planner before making a large contribution.
During this phase, donors at the highest levels of giving can work with you on special ways to participate such as naming opportunities or matching gifts. It will take more than one meeting with each donor to secure the gifts you need for this phase, but a successful silent phase helps to ensure strong support when your campaign goes public.
4. The Public Phase
People feel good investing in success. When you announce that your campaign is already more than halfway toward its goal, mid-level and smaller donors will be eager to get on board to close the gap. During the public phase, events can help to bring more donors on board.
For example, large gatherings where you celebrate your progress or smaller events at which lead donors present the case to a group of mid-level donors can help to drive gifts.
As solid ending to your public phase, consider a direct marketing solicitation to all remaining prospects offering a last opportunity to add their name to the donor list—it’s helpful to include your “honor roll” of contributors so these prospects can envision adding their name.
Once the campaign has closed, consider a celebratory event to reveal your final honor roll and say thank you.
5. Pledge fulfillment
If you’ve built your campaign around pledges, gifts payable over 3 or 5 years, for example, make sure to maintain good records along the way. Donors will rely on reminders to make their payments, so having email addresses is helpful. Even better, consider setting up online recurring payments that donors can establish in advance.
In the end, you may collect between 90-95% of your pledges but remember that your donors’ financial circumstances can change over time.
The takeaway?
A capital campaign is a marathon, not a sprint. Efforts to raise major funds require long-term focus and patience, but also strict adherence to maintaining momentum.
You’ll face obstacles and challenges, but also triumphs. A capital campaign can be more than just a fundraising project–it can be an opportunity to deepen your relationships with donors at all levels of support.
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