Once you’ve created a topline revenue goal like this, you can set smaller, nested goals as you go along, too. For example, you might set goals for a certain dollar amount of major gifts secured or a certain number of social media followers acquired. Extensive capital campaign budget template planning is essential for safeguarding your resources, maximizing your chances of meeting your goals, and making an excellent impression on your key stakeholders. Use this guide and the included template to ensure you’ve covered all of your bases.
- The budget for a typical campaign will likely be under 10% of its goal.
- You’ll need experienced development staff and effective systems before you begin your campaign.
- When you do reach the public phase, your aim with your marketing strategy will be to spread the news about your campaign and build enthusiasm for your cause that can encourage people to donate or volunteer.
- You may not need some sections, or you may want to add a few of your own that will help you better visualize your campaign.
In addition, your nonprofit can benefit during the planning process from the varied perspectives that these individuals have to offer. On your depth chart, you will include all of the qualified prospects you have for the lead and major gifts of your campaign. Bring in professionals to ensure that the infrastructure you hope to acquire or build meets the needs of your nonprofit and service area.
While this makes sense on the surface, the reality is that your nonprofit needs to invest in the necessary expertise and manpower to make your capital campaign work. If you fail to do so, your capital campaign will be disadvantaged from the outset. If you’re ready to tackle your campaign but could use a bit of assistance getting started and staying on track, Capital Campaign Pro may be the solution for you. However, remember that these dates may change — and while you want to stay on track, it’s understandable if this initial timeline shifts along the way. By timetable, we literally mean a calendar in which all key dates for your campaign are outlined.
In general, events are the most expensive type of fundraising, with major gift fundraising and planned giving being more cost-effective. To see some examples, check out these success stories of our own clients who ran successful mini-capital campaigns during the worst of the pandemic. Capital Campaign Pro is support system for nonprofit leaders and their teams. Part expert consultant, part resource library, Capital Campaign Pro https://simple-accounting.org/ provides the expertise, resources, and confidence necessary to complete a successful campaign. Finally, one of the most important areas of your capital campaign’s plan that should be addressed is how your nonprofit intends to cultivate and engage with prospects throughout the campaign. Your nonprofit may incorporate your gift range chart into a variety of collateral materials as a way to suggest giving levels to supporters.
Conduct a capital campaign feasibility study
A well-thought-out timeline will give you different milestones to aim for that can help you eventually meet your ultimate campaign deadline and topline revenue goal. Remember, in this planning phase, you’ll want to think of this as a working timeline. Exact dates may need to shift around a bit, so remain flexible and pencil things into your calendar, but don’t shy away from including as much detail as possible in this section, either. The case for support will be useful to guide your initial stakeholder conversations, but can also be refined and tinkered with during the planning phase.
If your department is not adequately supported, you run the risk of burnout once the capital campaign is launched. When organizations can’t add a dedicated campaign staffer, campaign counsel can assist with managing the campaign. Further, one of the key markers of a successful capital campaign is a robust prospect pipeline.
Communications and Marketing
It’s often organized into one document and spells out how you will conduct your campaign. The template below combines all of the elements discussed in the previous section into one template and includes some examples. You can use this template to begin planning your own capital campaign! Note that, like the rest of the planning process, you should remain flexible in filling out this template.
What Does a Capital Campaign Cost?
Note that these are rough estimates to help illustrate the stages’ proportional sizes. The length of each phase will naturally vary based on a nonprofit’s specific needs and the scope of the campaign. For more information and stories about raising money during uncertain times, download our free e-book that offers tips and practical advice about how to make the most of crisis to strengthen your fundraising. While it may feel inappropriate during a crisis, don’t hesitate to ask donors for help. Some donors may be even more inclined to make a commitment to your campaign just to be sure that it doesn’t come to a halt.
Just like marketing strategies, each donor will respond to your donor recognition strategies in different ways. A little thank-you will go a long way in building your relationships with your donors during your capital campaign and setting you up to retain their support for future campaigns. To ensure your staff, volunteer, and board members’ time is being used as efficiently as possible, you’ll need to match each person with a capital campaign assignment that they’re prepared to excel with. A feasibility study is a big part of capital campaign planning because it allows your organization to do its due diligence and goal setting before actually committing to such a large-scale campaign.
However, your consultant can help you refine the draft and get it ready to use for your feasibility study, the quiet phase, and eventually, the public phase. The capital campaign journey begins when your nonprofit sees a need for a specific capital investment that would further your mission and promote future growth. That need translates into your campaign objective, the capacity-building purpose of the campaign. For example, your organization may identify that you’ve outgrown your current facility and decide to build a new one. Whatever the specific objectives of your campaign, the ultimate purpose is to raise the funds needed to increase your nonprofit’s capacity (your ability to raise money and serve constituents). This influx of capital in order to make capital investments essentially allows you to scale up your operations.
Your campaign plan is constructed during the first three phases of your campaign — the pre-campaign planning phase, the feasibility study phase, and the campaign planning phase. Effective communication and marketing are essential to the health of your campaign from the start. The timeline for your specific campaign will likely look a little different than this one based on the scope of your unique campaign. For example, you may need only a year to solicit major gifts, or your campaign kick-off may take the form of a month-long celebration instead of a one-off event. Regardless, the important thing to remember is that by writing out a timeline, you’re setting yourself up to be accountable for each task, phase by phase, that will need to be accomplished in order to meet your goal.
Second, what will be your strategies for getting the word out about your campaign? You’ll most likely want to use a multichannel strategy, including printed and digital materials, spoken conversations, and perhaps even events. It’s important that when you’re using multiple channels and materials for communication, these channels are integrated with one another. This means they build upon one another, rather than creating an overwhelming echo chamber. First and foremost, how will your staff communicate across campaign teams?
During this phase of the campaign, you will solicit the largest gifts to the campaign, as well as gifts from board members and other key stakeholders. This phase of the campaign is conducted without publicity or fanfare. Organizations should raise at least 75% of the campaign goal during this phase of the campaign.
In this section, we’ll cover the eight elements of capital campaign planning that you’ll encounter in the capital campaign plan template below. We’ll go into each component in detail, highlighting how you can plan out that component of your own capital campaign plan as you fill out the Donorly template. You can create your capital campaign plan any way you like—whether it be with a template or a color-coded binder with dozens of different sections. You should also ensure it’s accessible to every member of your team at all times.
Also, note that fundraising consultants can often fill in temporarily for gaps in your development team (taking on tasks like major gift prospecting and fundraising). They can help you keep your capital campaign operations going while you look for the right person to fill the job and even help you with the hiring process. In general, however, the largest gift in your pyramid should make up 10-20% of the total amount you’re planning to raise through major gifts. A prospect research consultant will know their way around all of the necessary prospect research tools and how to interpret the markers they find. Plus, many prospect research consultants also have expertise in other areas of fundraising and can help you with your feasibility study and other aspects of your capital campaign. Your capital campaign budget will include the cost of acquisition and construction along with all the costs surrounding your project.
Your campaign may also need additional writers, graphic designers, and printing and/or digital expertise for the case for support. Campaign videos are more common in today’s fundraising environment and they can be very effective, but also costly. It’s never too early to think about what type of donor recognition will work best for your organization, and importantly, how you will keep in touch with your donors once the campaign concludes. One of the most overlooked aspects of successful capital campaign planning is budgeting for the necessary expenses related to carrying out your fundraising plan. The roadmap covers five years, allowing you to plan, strategize, and track the progress of your digital advertisement capital campaign over a more extended period. The template is designed in a flowchart process, from organic search to blogging and paid search to social media channel management like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to customer retention program and PR.
