Capital Campaign Feasibility Study: The Basics
The capital campaign feasibility study is the process that prepares your organization for a capital campaign and should result in an executable campaign plan. It allows you to test your assumptions and prepare a solid plan before moving forward with a capital campaign.
The study assesses the interest of your leadership and how helpful they will be during a campaign. It evaluates the capacity of your staff and your systems to conduct a campaign. It uncovers potential challenges that might impede a campaign's success so that they can be addressed before launching. It also gauges the interest of major-gift donors in the particular project you’re proposing while educating them in preparation for an eventual ask.
Interviews live at the heart of the feasibility study process. Some consultants conduct confidential interviews during feasibility studies. We don’t. We share with you everything we learn from those we speak with about your organization.
Stripped down to its basic elements, the study looks to define your image, case for support, leaders, donors and plan.
Organizational Image
During the feasibility studies we lead, we first interview your staff, board and sometimes volunteers to learn how you view yourself as an organization. We explore with you your mission and vision and how your current capital project fulfills them. We discover what makes you as individuals passionate about the work of the nonprofit and how that translates to the services you provide.
Then we move into the community, meeting one-on-one with current donors, civic and nonprofit leaders, local philanthropists and foundation directors to investigate how your internal image aligns with the community’s view of the nonprofit. What do these prospective donors feel is the most important service you provide? Are they confident in your leadership? Are you vital to the community in their eyes?
These detailed findings illuminate how your image will help or hinder a campaign.
A newly-established friends group of a nature preserve reached out to us to assess the feasibility of their capital campaign. We began our work and quickly discovered that the nature preserve and its friends group were so new that they had no image in the community. Outside of their immediate neighborhood, very few community members and leaders knew who they were or why they existed. They had work to do to establish themselves as a vital community service provider before they could realistically begin a multimillion-dollar capital campaign. Without the insight our team gained during interviews, they may have launched a campaign that couldn’t succeed and pushed their status from having no image to having a negative one.
Case for Support
Your case for support is a long, internal document that lays out your background, your challenge and your solution. It’s used to craft all your donor messaging, solicitation materials, grant applications, and community communications during your campaign.
Feasibility study interviews allow us to refine your case into one that is “donor approved.” While your organization will have a general idea of why the project is necessary and why prospective donors will support it, presenting it to community leaders and asking for their honest feedback before launching a campaign gives us first-hand knowledge of what resonates with them. We learn which aspects of your capital project meet with enthusiasm, and which don’t. Is there confusion about the new or expanded needs you’re trying to address? If so, how can the case make things clear?
We worked with a food pantry that needed to move out of its church parish hall and into dedicated space. We learned during interviews that a nonprofit serving the homeless had taken a group of community leaders on field trip to another city to tour a “one-stop shop” for human service needs. While the housing group had no intention of become a one-stop shop and were planning to rely on the food pantry for its clients’ food needs, the community leaders mistakenly believed the one-stop shop concept was on the table and questioned the expansion of the food pantry. If the pantry hadn’t asked its community for feedback, the case may not have included an explanation of how the two nonprofits would work together and why both were vital to serving the various needs of the community.
Campaign Leaders
Before your campaign begins, it’s vital to identify the internal and external leaders who are willing to champion your project. You may have some idea of staff and board members who might serve on a campaign committee, but to personally reach all the major-gift donors who will make your campaign a success, you need the right people with the right networks on your committee.
The initial candidates will come from your feasibility study interviews. They are the people who light up when discussing your organization and your project. They are connected throughout the community. They are quick to offer gifts when the discussion turns towards financial support. And the wheels in their mind are immediately turning on how they can help. Those folks get a star by their name and go on a list of potential leaders. Once the campaign begins, they will be the first to be asked to give to the campaign. After giving, they will be asked to join the committee.
If you skip the opportunity to identify these important champions, your campaign risks stalling. When asked to help reignite a stalled museum campaign, we found that while dedicated committee members had done everything possible to solicit all the donors they could personally connect with, they simply didn’t have the reach they needed to complete the campaign. They needed to identify new members with new networks to move forward.
Finding people to champion your campaign throughout all its phases is important , but starting with a solid list that your consultant helps develop ensures that your campaign momentum and credibility builds quickly.
Campaign Donors
Beginning your campaign with a list of key donors – individuals, corporations and foundations – who are capable and willing to make leadership gifts of $25,000 and higher leads to campaign confidence, momentum and success.
How do you identify those donors? We ask during the feasibility study interviews, “If the organization proceeds with a capital campaign, will you support them and at what level?” About a third of them point to a range on the gift chart and say, “I’d do something like that.” Another third say, “I usually give to projects like this an amount like X.”
Those answers give us figures to build a plan around. If we can’t find enough people to voice major-gift level support, we can’t recommend immediately moving into a campaign. There may be other work to do to find or inspire those donors. If we do find that support, your campaign has a place to start and the likelihood of being successful.
There are highs and lows during feasibility study interviews and they can be tiring. During the food pantry study, I went into my seventh and last interview of the day not expecting much. The pleasant woman greeted me at her home, and we had a nice conversation about her life in the community and the pantry. When I reached the question about support, she said, “I just received an inheritance. I would consider a $100,000 gift to the project.” Without asking the questions, we may not have uncovered that gift in a timely way and that woman wouldn’t have later become a star on the campaign committee.
Campaign Goal and Plan
The gathering of all this information during the study should result in an achievable goal and the best plan for reaching it. The detailed strategic campaign plan combines the study findings with your consultant’s knowledge and expertise.
Our plans outline month-by-month and phase-by-phase how we expect a campaign will unfold. We include a full disclosure of potential donors and suggested gift amounts and motivations. We also provide a synopsis of the availability of key leaders, costs for the campaign, a timetable, and a communications plan. This plan works to identify the conditions and steps needed to maximize the campaign’s chances for success. This roadmap for your fundraising strategy is unique to your organization and your community.
Timeline and Deliverables
We find most feasibility studies take four to six months to complete. They typically result in the following deliverables:
An assessment of fundraising, board, staff and system capacity
An examination of the image of the organization and the project
A review of prospective campaign leaders and donors
A summary of each interview
A recommended campaign goal
A draft case for support
A proposed campaign plan and timeline
Importantly, organizations should plan to move forward within six to 12 months after completing a feasibility study. If too much time passes between the study and campaign launch, donor feedback and leadership commitments may lose momentum.
Use your consultant’s time and expertise during your feasibility study to test your project and your goals, along with the interest and philanthropic reach of your board, staff, donors and community. Taking this strategic step will best prepare you to embark on a successful capital campaign.
If you’d like to learn more about how a feasibility study can benefit your campaign project, contact us. We’re always happy to chat.
Melissa Sais is vice president and partner with Campaign Counsel.
