So, You’re Not Ready for a Capital Campaign: What to Do Next

The scale of capital campaigns means that they shouldn’t be undertaken casually. They are major investments of an organization’s time and resources. You must be prepared for a capital campaign before formally launching one.

Otherwise, your fundraising ultimately won’t be sustainable. You’ll open your organization to risks—wasted time and money, damaged relationships, strategic drift, loss of energy and motivation among donors and staff, and more.

This is why evaluating campaign readiness is the most critical pre-planning step you can take.

During this process, you’ll closely evaluate your organization’s current state and plans. You’ll define concrete objectives and a preliminary fundraising goal for the campaign. The goal is to gain a complete view of whether your nonprofit is currently equipped to accomplish the campaign plans.

And in many cases, the answer may be that your organization is not ready for a capital campaign, or at least not the one that you’ve planned so far.

So what do you do? How do you move forward productively? Can your vision for a campaign be salvaged?

Pre-Campaign Planning to Assess Campaign Readiness

It’s a common misconception that a feasibility study is the primary driver of whether an organization is ready for a capital campaign or not. After all, it does have “feasible” in the name.

The truth is that properly preparing for a feasibility study should alert you to reasons why your organization isn’t ready for a campaign.

You absolutely do not want to get in front of your strongest supporters and stakeholders without all of your ducks in a row.

While a feasibility study ostensibly is about testing your goal and case for support, pre-campaign planning is where the rubber hits the road in terms of campaign readiness.

These are bad and good reasons to hold off on a capital campaign:

• Bad reasons to delay a campaign. These issues usually come down to nervousness or misconceptions about what makes a campaign successful.
  • Your board isn’t wealthy
  • You’re uneasy about external headwinds (economy, politics, etc.).
  • You’ve never done a campaign before.
  • You think the annual fund will suffer.
  • You think you’re too small.
• Good reasons to delay a campaign. These issues are more fundamental, and, in many cases, moving forward in spite of them will sap your campaign of its direction and effectiveness.
  • You have little-to-no philanthropic annual support.
  • You can’t identify a lead donor and/or at least 20 leadership-level givers
  • You don’t have enough staff for the campaign.
  • You don’t have a clear plan or vision for the campaign.
  • Your team is in deep disagreement about the plan.
  • You have no buy-in from organizational leadership.

Remember, every campaign has its issues to overcome. Conducting a readiness assessment and getting serious about pre-campaign planning will help you identify them as early as possible, giving you a chance to pause and evaluate. Realistically consider the depth of the problems you find and whether addressing them would be feasible.

Capital Campaign Pro offers a free readiness assessment that you and your team can take to see if you’re ready for a capital campaign.

Choosing to hold off on your campaign is not a bad thing—it just means you’re not quite ready. Take it as a sign that the best investments you can make in your organization right now are more structural. Moving forward in this direction is still forward movement!

1. Strengthen your organization internally.

So you’ve decided to hold off on a campaign. What next?

You should now take steps to bolster your organization internally, focusing on its capacity, productivity, fundraising abilities, and more. Action items to consider include:

• Audit and evaluate your resources. How deeply do you understand the current state of your operations and capacity? A comprehensive audit of your finances, technology, and human resources will give you a much clearer picture of where you can and should improve to strengthen your organization. This is a worthwhile exercise regardless of whether a campaign is near the horizon.
• Address and fill strategic gaps. Does your organization have a formal strategic plan that defines its long-term goals and outlines how you’ll pursue them? Are you continually constrained by the size of your staff? Growth takes people power, and while you shouldn’t hire in an unsustainable way, expanding your nonprofit’s team may give you the extra hands and work hours you need to focus on improvements rather than just day-to-day necessities.
• Invest in training. What kind of learning curve would your organization have faced if you had moved ahead with a campaign? Are you already aware of big gaps in your shared know-how that you’ve been neglecting in order to get on with business as normal? Address them! Nonprofit teams need effective management, financial, prospect research, and relationship-building skills to grow sustainably (regardless of whether a campaign is coming in the near future or not).
• Boost your board and governance practices. How well does your nonprofit run on a logistical level? Do you have all the necessary policies and internal practices in place for smooth operations? Capital campaigns and the growth they fuel bring complexity—a lot of it. Address governance and logistical hindrances now. Also, consider the makeup and culture of your board. Unfortunately, disengaged or ineffective boards are common stumbling blocks for growing nonprofits. Refreshing your board and building a more engaged culture will pay dividends later.

2. Build and engage your donor base.

Aside from internal capacity, the size and depth of your nonprofit’s donor base are the other major limiting factors for growth and campaign readiness. Both building and engaging your community of supporters should be a top priority.

Practices to implement or improve include:

• Create dedicated development workflows. Many smaller organizations might treat fundraising haphazardly, starting from scratch with each campaign. Understanding the complete donor lifecycle, from identification to cultivation, solicitation, and long-term stewardship, gives you a more intentional structure for growth.
• Double down on prospect research. Researching donors’ abilities and inclinations to give larger gifts keeps your insights fresh and ensures you’ll have an accurate picture of your fundraising capacity at any given time. Research prospecting best practices and invest in a new tool if needed.
• Prioritize engagement and retention. Donor retention is the key to sustained growth. How well do you currently retain donors from one campaign or year to the next? Learn more about why your repeat donors choose to give. Create more engagement opportunities, such as simple membership programs, events, volunteer opportunities, and surveys. Actively track engagement touchpoints as they occur and study the trends.
• Diversify your fundraising methods and outreach. Do you host the same types of campaigns and events over and over? Has your outreach grown stale? Try something new by identifying a segment of high-impact donors and carefully considering what kinds of campaigns and messages would interest them. Consider the fundraising methods you offer as well. High-impact donors are increasingly interested in non-cash and planned giving options that can unlock growth once you learn how to suggest them.

3. Develop a strategic fundraising plan.

How intentionally does your organization fundraise? Sure, you likely set goals and lay out plans for each individual campaign or project, but how do these efforts all add up to a bigger picture? Many nonprofits struggle to kickstart growth because they lack a unified vision for what all that work will accomplish as a whole.

If you know that a key goal will be to reach a state of readiness for a capital campaign, try developing a strategic fundraising plan around it.

Based on what you learned during pre-campaign planning, define what will constitute “readiness” for you. Set a timeframe to reach it. Then, delve into specific areas where you need to improve to reach those readiness thresholds. These might include:

• Building your overall base of active donors
• Increasing the size and volume of your donor development pipeline for larger gifts
• Implementing upgraded technology to support fundraising
• Expanding your fundraising staff and modernizing your practices
• Improving your nonprofit’s finances to build a more resilient foundation for growth

Remember, capital campaign plans are long. The preparation process can be winding and messy.

But by blocking out your journey into discrete, addressable chunks, each structured with clear goals, strategies, and timeframes, you’ll make progress. Gradually grow your nonprofit’s fundraising capacity through internal improvements and by expanding your donor base. Prioritize your most urgent needs, communicate the big-picture plan to your team, and get started.

4. Seek outside support.

Finally, remember that you’re not alone before, during, and after a capital campaign. Tons of resources exist that can help you better prepare your organization and team for this kind of undertaking.

You might take these steps:

• Invest in specialized consulting as needed. You’ve identified specific issues or limiting factors holding you back from a campaign; consider whether professional consulting and expert-led training would be a wise investment for any or multiple of them. Third-party consultants can help you lay a stronger foundation in terms of fundraising, communications, logistics, finances, internal culture, and more.
• Keep learning about capital campaigns. Chances are you want to reach readiness for your very first capital campaign. Don’t lose sight of the fact that these are the biggest fundraising and logistical undertakings that most nonprofits ever tackle. Even if you’re not quite ready to launch, you can and should keep learning about how these campaigns work, the strategies that drive success, and more.
• Find a capital campaign mentor. Depending on how close you are to campaign readiness, you might find a coach or mentor who can help you navigate the process and better prepare your organization. Professional campaign coaching services or even trusted peer organizations with successful campaign track records can be helpful resources at this stage to keep you accountable and your preparations on track.
• Find modern campaign resources. Traditional capital campaign consulting services typically have relatively high barriers to entry and involve paying an expert a lot of money to come in, help plan, and then execute a campaign plan once you’ve already reached readiness. Other approaches might be more helpful for your organization, especially in the earliest pre-stages of your campaign. Providers like Capital Campaign Pro offer training, practice, and community to help nonprofits take a more hands-on route, building the skills and experience they’ll need once it’s time to campaign in earnest.

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Deciding to postpone a capital campaign isn’t the end of the world—it’s an opportunity to regroup and generally strengthen your organization. As the steward of your nonprofit’s resources, delaying a campaign is also often the most responsible choice you can make. Remember, this outcome is infinitely better than the alternative—rushing into an overwhelming campaign plan before you’re ready.

If you hold off on a campaign, seize your chance to push your organization in other ways. Understand what’s holding you back, grow your community, develop a roadmap to readiness, and get the help you need. Soon you’ll be closer than ever to launching your nonprofit’s most transformative project yet.