Capital Campaigns

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...

Chances are good that most of your board members have only a vague notion of what will be expected of them in your capital campaign. Board members who know they can’t make big gifts to the campaign may be especially concerned, since they may not even know many people who could. They may even be quietly wondering if they should resign from the board...

As major campaigns near their ends, often there is a tendency to lessen the focus on best practices and the campaign discipline that has been key to your success. I believe that campaign goals should be met with major gifts. This strategy always should include plans to maintain and increase your ongoing annual support...

The theme of this year’s IFC is asking the right questions. So here is my question: What is fundraising success? The answer is obvious surely. It’s how much money we raise. Success is based on getting from X amount of money to Y, where Y is greater than X. Look at any fundraising award citation…

Capital campaigns—those big, scary fundraising events that happen every once in awhile—embody some of the essential lessons of great fundraising. Capital campaigns raise money to springboard your organization to the next level. They are not your day-in, day-out slog. They’re inspiring, energizing and occasionally terrifying...

Duke University has reached its fundraising goal nearly a year early, hitting the $3.25 billion mark this week. University officials, saying there’s more work to do, emphasized that the “Duke Forward” campaign will continue until the middle of 2017, about the same time that Duke's President Richard Brodhead retires. “We are thrilled to have achieved…

When discussing a pending major campaign, it is not uncommon for boards—at organizations of all sizes—to get nervous and to be uncertain. Many board members have not been through a campaign before. Some have been through successful campaigns. Some have had encountered campaign experiences...

Recently, my hubster Otis Fulton, Turnkey’s psychological expert, read Tom Ahern’s book, “Seeing Through a Donor’s Eyes: How to Make a Persuasive Case for Everything From Your Annual Drive to Your Planned Giving Program to Your Capital Campaign.” As promised, Otis said, the book covers a lot of ground. Ahern focuses on writing a “case for support” directed at various types of donors...

Perhaps the greatest fear for the fundraiser is being told "no" in response to a request for a gift. We’ve all felt it. Why? It’s not because the refusal is an indictment of the worthiness of our cause. It’s because we’ve made it personal. We’ve made it about us. Making it about us is the…

Strategic planning is a passion of mine. It is energizing and rewarding to provide the tools and resources for a client to determine his or her future. My first foray into strategic planning was when I was leading a capital campaign that would hit goal and had the ability to overachieve it by far...