
Capital Campaigns

Michael Govan is spearheading the Los Angeles County Museums of Art's massive $600 million capital campaign. This campaign has been recurring subject at Inside Philanthropy, replete with dramatic headlines ("Fundraising on a Tightrope") and questions surrounding the wisdom of such ambitious projects. Each project, of course, is unique. Risk is relative. On paper, the Crystal Bridges…
Whatever you do, don’t assume that your board members know what they are doing. Chance are high that they don’t. Your capital campaign gives you a wonderful opportunity to train them. The stakes are high, and you can develop a small training program just for them. Consider this three-part approach...
Are you worried that your capital campaign is going to fall short of its goal? Here are two stories about campaigns that had goal problems, along with some troubleshooting tips...
Even if you’re not in the middle of a capital campaign, fundraising boosts your adrenaline. And if you are in capital campaign mode, the stress is even higher. Here are 10 suggestions for taking care of yourself. These are things you can do to boost your energy and morale, even as you live through the everyday anxiety of fundraising...
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…