Imagine this: You’ve been saving for years to build your dream home. You have a clear vision of what you want, including a sleek, modern kitchen and a cozy library. Finally, you’re ready to begin building. You hire a contractor who is eager to get started, and soon, you’re on your way to OK the blueprints for your house. But when you arrive at the construction site, you see that they’re already building your home—and it doesn’t look like what you imagined at all! You learn that your contractor didn’t bother with blueprints. Instead, they simply decided to “wing it.”
If you’re horrified by this story, you’re in good company. You would never let a contractor begin building your dream home without a plan, right?
Well, the same principle applies to nonprofits launching capital campaigns. Capital campaigns are enormous undertakings and require major investments of a nonprofit’s resources. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re embarking on your first or you have successfully conducted one before. If, like a contractor “winging it” on someone’s dream house, you go into a capital campaign with no plan, your efforts to bring your vision and goals to life will likely result in major negative consequences for your organization.
That’s where this capital campaign plan guide comes in. In it, we’ll outline everything you need to know and do during the planning phase of your capital campaign to get your organization started off on the right foot. Specifically, we’ll cover:
Extensive 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.
As you begin planning your own nonprofit’s capital campaign, it’s helpful to review some capital campaign basics. In this section, we’ll cover what a capital campaign is, a typical capital campaign timeline, and the key players you’ll need on your team. To create a thorough and useful capital campaign plan, you’ll need to know these basics like the back of your hand so that you can ensure you’re checking all of the boxes.
Put simply, a capital campaign is a strategic fundraising effort that aims to raise a large amount of money over a set period of time, usually multiple years. Most capital campaigns are geared toward funding some type of growth-related project, such as:
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.
Thus, capital campaigns can (and should!) take a lot of time, attention, and strategy to plan, because they’re such big investments of your nonprofit’s finite resources. You have to do your due diligence with effective planning before committing to such a major undertaking.
Divvying up the hundreds of tasks a capital campaign requires into specific phases can help you stay organized and on track to meet your goal. Typically, capital campaigns are comprised of four distinct phases:
How long each phase will last often breaks down like this:
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.
In addition to these phases, capital campaigns usually require a few follow-up tasks after they’re over, like thanking your donors, collecting pledged donations, reporting on the final standing of your campaign, and recognizing your team’s hard work.
Run-of-the-mill fundraising projects might fare well with just a few members of your team working on them and taking on multiple responsibilities. But a capital campaign will require full engagement from your staff members, volunteers, and board members, and everyone will be taking on distinct roles. Here are the typical key players you’ll need in order to make a capital campaign successful:
With a full team that is ready to take on each of the responsibilities listed above, your capital campaign will have a great chance of succeeding. As you recruit people for various roles, make sure they are committed to your goals, making them aware of the time commitments you’re asking for, placing them in positions where they can use their strengths, and encouraging them to be enthusiastic about the exciting journey that lies ahead.
This quick review of capital campaign basics should set you up to take on the capital campaign planning process and be as thorough as possible in defining your goals, timeline, and key players. Use this section as a touchpoint to refer back to as you dive into the template below.
A capital campaign plan is a written-out document that covers all of the essential information, tasks, and big-picture plans that will guide you through the course of your capital campaign. Your plan should be as detailed as possible so that it can serve as a roadmap for your team to reference, helping you to focus on your ultimate goals.
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. Assemble your plan in a way that makes sense for you and your team. You should also ensure it’s accessible to every member of your team at all times.
Creating a thorough capital campaign plan will take some time and effort, but it’s essential for success. In addition to setting your campaign up for success and safeguarding all your hard work, diligent planning now will lead to a number of additional benefits down the line. Let’s take a closer look at some of those benefits:
The importance of a thorough capital campaign plan cannot be understated. Think back to the story of the contractor and the dream house. If the contractor had instead taken a few weeks to plan out the home beforehand, the dream house would have been much more cohesive and everyone involved would likely be much more satisfied with the entire building experience. Your staff, volunteers, board members, and donors are the same way. Though it may take a little more time and effort, a capital campaign plan that includes as much detail as possible is essential for demonstrating that your nonprofit has a clear vision for its project and is ready for everyone to jump in and help make it happen.
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.
As you plan, remember to be thorough but flexible. Your capital campaign will evolve as you get deeper into the planning process, and even in the early stages of the campaign as you’re gathering feedback and donations from major donors. Be prepared to adjust your plan to make it the best it can be, but be as detailed as you can right now. Striking this balance will pay off in the end as you develop a clear picture of everything you’ll need to do to make your campaign a success.
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.
Your campaign goals (the dollar amounts that the project will require) will be built around this objective. As you work out these goals, you’ll budget out the costs of the objective and sometimes add a bit of a buffer to help offset the costs of the campaign itself.
Then, you’ll test your topline revenue goal by reviewing your prospect data and major giving program, developing a case for support, and conducting a feasibility study. From there, you’ll know if the goal is realistically achievable or if you should scale the campaign down or even cancel it for now.
This means goal-setting is an elastic process for capital campaigns—you’ll determine an initial goal but then test and refine it as you enter the quiet phase.
Let’s look at an example of a goal. Say your nonprofit’s mission is to lift and empower homeless individuals in your community by providing food and shelter and life skills classes. It makes sense, then, that a campaign objective to build a new facility would help to move that work forward. Here’s an example of what your topline revenue goal might look like written out:
“Our nonprofit’s mission is to lift and empower individuals in our community by providing food and shelter and life skills classes. By December 2025, we will raise $5,000,000 to build a new facility, which will expand our capability to deliver vital services to our constituents. We will measure our progress toward this goal by collecting data on donations gathered each week, which will allow us to monitor our progress toward the topline revenue goal of $5,000,000.”
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.
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.
A feasibility study will look at your current pool of major donors, funders, and other stakeholders and analyze their support. This will involve one-on-one conversations with these individuals, usually conducted by a fundraising consultant and sometimes the nonprofit’s executive director. During these conversations, your organization will be able to gauge your stakeholders’ thoughts on the campaign objective and goals, your organization’s leadership and capabilities, and the stakeholders’ interest in supporting the project.
In these conversations, you’ll also test out your initial case for support. The case for support (also known as a case statement) is a set of arguments and plans. It will explain:
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. Think of it as a living document you’ll use now to gauge your stakeholders’ perceptions of your campaign and to help articulate your goals and vision for your campaign to the public later.
Even if you’re working with a fundraising consultant, you’ll be mainly responsible for writing your case for support. 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.
At this point, you can begin the ongoing process of prospect research. Prospect research allows you to identify potential new major supporters for your campaign by assessing prospects’ capacity (wealth) and affinity (warmth) markers. To learn more about this process, check out our Donorly guide to prospect research.
After you’ve conducted some initial prospect research (note that this work will be ongoing throughout your campaign, but especially during the quiet phase), you should compile your research findings in your capital campaign plan. This will help you get a jumpstart on the donor stewardship and gift solicitation processes once your campaign is truly underway.
Many nonprofits don’t have the time or resources to conduct prospect research and wealth screening on their own, and many decide to turn to a third-party expert like a prospect research consultant to take on the process for them. 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.
A gift pyramid, sometimes referred to as a gift range chart or a gift table, identifies how many major gifts of certain amounts you’ll need in order to reach your campaign goal. You should create your gift pyramid after you know your working campaign goal and have tested its feasibility. This will be important for guiding the rest of your campaign planning and the quiet phase of your campaign, where you’ll solicit the majority of donations needed for your overall revenue goal (typically 50-70%).
Once you know how much you’ll need in major gifts and whom you can solicit those major gifts from, you can create a gift pyramid to figure out how many gifts you’ll need from each tier and how many prospects you have that might be able to provide gifts at those levels. Here’s an example of a fully-outlined gift pyramid:
In this example gift pyramid, the total needed from major gifts is 2,400,000 (80% of the total needed, which is $3,000,000). The gift pyramid has set gift tiers and shows the number of gifts needed and the number of possible prospects for those gifts at each tier. For example, the gift pyramid shows that one gift of $360,000 dollars is needed and that there are three prospects that could be asked to give that gift. Similarly, two gifts of $20,000 are needed, with 30 prospects available to solicit for those gifts.
Of course, your gift pyramid will look a little different based on a myriad of factors, from the project you’re taking on and the size of your budget to the strength of the relationships you have with your current donors, so be ready to determine the tiers and prospect numbers that make the most sense for your situation. 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.
This gift pyramid will be an invaluable resource for your major gift officers to use during the quiet phase as they initiate conversations with current donors and prospects, and can guide them in seeking those gifts in a strategic order. For example, it might make the most sense to spend the most time seeking the largest gift needed, since that large gift will give your campaign more security upfront.
Once you have your gift pyramid, you can also create a depth range chart. In a depth range chart, you start attaching prospect names to giving levels, allowing you to see where you have enough qualified prospects and where you need to do more development work. If you run out of prospects once you’re knee-deep in the quiet phase, a depth range chart will help you find where gifts can be made up. In addition, a gift pyramid can also be used to illustrate to your board the importance of their engagement and investment in the major gift solicitation process. Being able to visualize how much effort major gifts are going to require can help encourage them to be proactive in assisting your team with solicitations.
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.
Your timeline should be based on the four phases of a capital campaign: the planning phase, the quiet phase, the kickoff, and the public phase. (And don’t forget the campaign follow-up tasks that will need to follow the public phase.)
Here is a sample timeline of a typical capital campaign, as featured in Donorly’s capital campaign guide:
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.
When you’re just starting to plan your campaign, you’ll need to know your preliminary goal, where and how you will raise the money for that goal across the duration of the campaign (via a gift pyramid), and what your initial budget is to get started, especially for hiring more development staff and a fundraising consultant.
When planning that campaign budget, your objective and its associated goal will be the guiding stars. Everything will flow from that core campaign objective, its cost, and the findings of your feasibility study. Like your feasibility study, your budget will evolve as the campaign goes on and specific phases come into better focus, so it will be helpful to start by asking yourself, “What funding do we know we can count on?” and “What expenses do we still need to cover?” In other words, take a look at your inputs and outputs.
Inputs:
The inputs for your campaign will be pledged unrestricted gifts, funding from foundations and government bodies that can be put toward the campaign, and other funds you’ve saved that can be safely put toward a multi-year campaign.
Outputs:
The outputs will be all the expenses associated with your campaign, including staffing, consulting, necessary upfront technology investments, and eventually the marketing and events that will be part of the public phase.
As with all nonprofit work, having a thorough idea of how money will be flowing in and out of your organization during the capital campaign will be extremely helpful when it comes to securing support from your board. Being able to demonstrate that you’ve already accounted for all of your estimated expenses, labor time, and revenue will show your board that your campaign is truly a feasible undertaking that will contribute to the furthering of your cause. A well-thought-out budget will also be a great tool for course-correcting once your campaign is in full swing.
As explained in the review of capital campaign basics above, your capital campaign team will typically consist of a campaign chair, board members, planning and steering committee members, volunteers, and a fundraising consultant. 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.
For example, say you have a staff member who is extremely reliable and organized. You might invite them to serve on your steering committee because you recognize they would be a great asset in helping your organization stay on track with your campaign. Or, you might secure a major gift from a new donor who also wants to be involved in a volunteer capacity in some way. You could then assign them to lead a group of volunteers in event planning, social media content creation, or donation solicitation.
To ensure you’re assigning responsibilities to the best people for the job, employ these strategies:
These strategies will be especially helpful if you have a large staff and a full team of volunteers to work with. However, not all nonprofits have this luxury, and you may need to instead thoroughly onboard different individuals into their assignments, especially if they have no prior experience in that area. For example, say you have three volunteers who are willing to solicit donations on behalf of your organization but aren’t well-versed in fundraising. You’d likely want to spend a few training sessions going over the basics of building donor relationships and making solid fundraising asks. If you will need to train your team in their various duties, make sure to allow for ample time to do so. This will ensure that they’re ready to spring into action once the campaign is in full swing!
Time commitment will be a big consideration here and is worth emphasizing. It’s critical that everyone in your organization understands that capital campaign assignments are big, months- or years-long assignments that will change how your organization operates. Everyone, including board members and nonprofit leaders, has to buy into their assignment and be fully committed. Capital campaigns aren’t projects where your team members can simply cherry-pick how and when they want to help. They’re all-hands-on-deck efforts.
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.
This element of your capital campaign plan will help you streamline both your internal operations and your public outreach. With a solid approach to internal communications and marketing, your team will be able to work well together and rely on each other, and your community will know all about your campaign and how to get involved.
Communication:
You already know that internal communication matters when it comes to your nonprofit’s day-to-day operations. But communication becomes even more important when you consider the complexity and sheer scale of a capital campaign. You’ll need an organized system for disseminating information, reporting, and more. Here are a few things to work out in your capital campaign plan to lay the foundation for good internal communication:
Marketing:
Now it’s time to consider how you’ll communicate with your donors. Note that this will really come into play during the public phase down the road, as the quiet phase is completely about one-on-one conversations with donors.
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.
The best way to do so is to segment your donors based on the information you have about their preferred forms of communication. Segmenting your donors allows you to pursue a multichannel marketing strategy. With multichannel marketing, you don’t put your eggs in one basket. Instead, you try to personalize your marketing strategy as much as possible by creating targeted marketing materials for groups of donors. This means you’ll likely employ all or most of the following at some point during your campaign:
Though it isn’t possible to personalize every individual marketing message you send out (especially for organizations with millions of supporters) when you communicate with your donors through their preferred channel, you’ll have an easier time connecting with them and encouraging them to engage with your campaign. Segmentation and targeted multichannel marketing can do wonders in helping you to build and maintain donor relationships throughout your capital campaign (and beyond!).
Effective communication and marketing are essential to the health of your campaign from the start. As you outline your strategy for both internal and external communication in your capital campaign plan, focus on how you can choose channels and strategies that will enable you to create inspiring messaging that calls people to action and will keep people engaged with your campaign until you cross the finish line.
Donor recognition may feel a long way off, especially as you’re just starting to plan your capital campaign. In reality, though, donor recognition will likely come into play for your capital campaign sooner than you might think, especially as you interview major donors during your feasibility study or begin receiving major gifts. It’s never too early to start thinking about how you will say “thank you” when the time comes!
And, when you do begin receiving gifts during the quiet phase, a big part of your recognition efforts will be keeping those donors involved and excited about the campaign. To do so, send them regular updates, invite them to volunteer, and make sure to invite them to kick-off, public phase, and groundbreaking events.
Here are some other suggestions to inspire your general donor recognition planning:
Just like marketing strategies, each donor will respond to your donor recognition strategies in different ways. Use your knowledge of what has worked in the past to shape your donor recognition strategies, and don’t forget to budget for any physical materials (gift baskets, thank-you cards, etc.) that you might need to put your strategy into motion. 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.
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. 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.
A fundraising consultant can be your partner through every part of the capital campaign process, including the creation of your capital campaign plan. A consultant can also help you with strategy development, donor research, feasibility studies, fundraising training, and more. The ultimate goal of working with a fundraising consultant is certainly to complete your capital campaign successfully, but having expert guidance throughout the entire process will also set you up with stronger, sustainable strategies to apply as your organization grows in the future.
For information on partnering with a consultant, check out the Donorly hiring guide.
As you go through the hiring process, prioritize finding a fundraising consultant who is willing to workshop their own ideas and strategies to fit your organization’s vision for your capital campaign. Flexibility and the ability to listen and learn about your organization’s specific needs are two qualities that will show that a consultant would be a great partner and teacher for your entire team.
Your capital campaign plan is the blueprint that will guide you throughout your entire capital campaign. Like a blueprint for a dream home, it should be detailed enough to provide you and your team with clear direction on what your campaign will look like and everything that needs to get done in order for you to reach the finish line. Planning now will save you stress and confusion down the line, and also illustrate your organization’s campaign readiness to your staff, board members, volunteers, and donors.
Use the template in this guide to start planning your capital campaign. And if you’re ready to learn more, here are some resources we recommend:
