Capital Campaigns

A process is "a systematic series of actions directed to some end." The process in strategic planning, for example, can even be more important than the resulting plan. If you conduct planning as a process and not an event, have a proven outside facilitator and let the process work without a leader trying to control it (after all a plan is about the organization, not one person), the results are phenomenal...

If you want to jump-start your annual fundraising using campaign strategies, you’ve got to be willing to try some new things. Here are five capital campaign strategies we think can be very effective for your annual fundraising this year...

It’s easy to get lost in big, complicated projects, like capital campaigns. When you’re on the verge of getting lost and not understanding how your fundraising all fits together, there’s nothing like a clear, simple picture to help you make sense of it all. I've created a simple, attractive image of how capital campaigns work. It lays out the entire process in eight simple segments.

I've coached dozens of clients, helping them draft their cases for support. Quite frankly, it's always frustrating. Everyone finds it challenging to articulate clearly and in compelling terms what their campaigns will raise money for and why it matters...

In the recent article “9 Fundraising Myths Shattered,” published here on NonProfit PRO, one of the myths the author sought to debunk was that you need an outside consultant for your capital campaign. It’s true that not every nonprofit needs to have an outside consultant in order to conduct a successful capital campaign. But many clearly do—and even those who don’t might have good reason to consider using outside counsel...

It’s nice to see one of these scrappy liberal arts schools finally catch a break. With another two years to go, Harvard University’s latest fundraising drive has raked in $7 billion, the college said last week. Launched in 2013 with the goal of reaching $6.5 billion, Harvard’s haul broke the record Stanford previously set in…

The better you get at asking for major gifts before you plan a capital campaign, the more successful your campaign is likely to be. And, of course, the more money you’ll raise year-in and year-out. Here are three tips to keep in mind when approaching a donor for a big gift...

While Baton Rouge, La., nonprofit organizations scramble to help meet the needs of flood victims, they also are grappling with a longer term problem: How to raise the money that is so critical to their sustainability in a community that has been devastated by the recent disaster? So far, there is no clear-cut solution. But…

Alone, needing money to do a new project, without a development director or fundraising systems. No gift history. No fundraising experience. Just a big idea for a music project that promised to do what art does so well: get people thinking differently about an important topic—in this case, war. That describes musician and composer Theresa Wong...

As a capital campaign consultant and coach, I’ve doled out lots of advice over the years. A few tips recur again and again. They always seem fresh, pertinent and important. These tips are more about human nature than they are about fundraising. But then, great fundraising is more about human nature than it is about money...