Capital Campaigns: A Success Guide for Small Nonprofits
Growing your nonprofit means more than simply expanding your programming. Real, sustainable growth requires a strong infrastructure, an increased fundraising capacity, and a clear vision for your organization’s future. But such substantial development often requires a big jump start—which is where a capital campaign can come into play.
Large-scale capital campaigns enable organizations like yours to raise the funds necessary for growth. Their goals are often to invest in new facilities, equipment, or endowment funds. Capital campaigns are extensive and can feel overwhelming for any nonprofit, but they’re extremely worthwhile. This crash course will give you everything you need to know to get started, including:
Today’s technology, prospecting resources, and professional support have made capital campaigns more accessible than ever before to organizations of all sizes. With the right strategy and expert support, your nonprofit can kickstart your next major phase of growth and help you better serve your community.
FAQ: What is a Capital Campaign?
A capital campaign is a highly strategic fundraising effort that aims to raise a large amount of money over a set period of time. These campaigns often span multiple years and are designed to fund a specific growth-related project, like building new facilities or purchasing expensive equipment. Major campaigns can also be executed with the goal of growing your organization’s staff and programming or building an endowment fund.
In any case, these major campaigns grow a nonprofit’s fundraising capacity, unlocking development opportunities for the future. Check out the following frequently asked questions to learn more.
What are the benefits of capital campaigns?
While the main goal of a capital campaign is to raise the funds necessary for an intended project, there are a variety of other benefits that can also result from these campaigns, such as:
Strengthening your nonprofit’s internal infrastructure. Capital campaigns are a major undertaking and require strong internal operations, marketing strategies, and stewardship approaches. The process of planning and conducting a capital campaign involves thoroughly reviewing and updating your entire internal infrastructure.
Building a strong, invested community. Successful capital campaigns aren’t just about donors—they’re about your entire community. With the right strategies and outreach, you can use your campaign to increase awareness of your organization, source new donors, and build lasting relationships that will support your work for years to come.
Engaging volunteers, board members, and staff. These campaigns are all-hands-on-deck efforts. A full range of team members will be engaged in and energized by different aspects and phases of the campaign. Plus, reaching your goals will be a massive morale and energy booster for your staff, board members, volunteers, and community.
In order to capture these benefits, careful planning, tracking, and transparent communication are essential throughout a capital campaign.
How much money do capital campaigns raise?
The amount of funding that capital campaigns raise can vary widely from organization to organization since every campaign funds a different project. Typically, your campaign’s topline revenue goal will be determined by the cost of the building you’re constructing or the major project you aim to fund.
For smaller nonprofits, capital campaign goals can range from $250,000 to several million dollars, while larger nonprofits may aim to raise up to hundreds of millions. We’ll discuss effective goal-setting later in this guide to give you an idea of how to set one for your campaign.
What types of organizations conduct capital campaigns?
Any organization that wants to strengthen its infrastructure or fund a major project can launch a capital campaign. This includes:
Nonprofits of all sizes
Universities, private schools, and other educational institutions
Hospitals and healthcare institutions
Churches and other faith-based organizations
Community organizations
Museums, theaters, and other cultural organizations
In particular, universities and large nonprofits tend to run capital campaigns most often, but any organization can launch one with the right support.
Can small nonprofits launch capital campaigns?
Yes! It is entirely possible for small and mid-sized nonprofits to conduct successful capital campaigns, even if they’ve never run one before. The strategy, planning, and support you’ll need to drive your campaign to success are more accessible than ever, meaning anyone can tackle them with the right amount of dedication.
Traditional Phases of a Capital Campaign
The traditional capital campaign approach involves four core phases: the planning, quiet, kick-off, and public phases, capped off with a few critical follow-up tasks.
While many nonprofits benefit from following this structure, it’s not the right approach for every organization. Sticking to the traditional phases has some drawbacks, such as a lengthy planning period and delayed community engagement. At Donorly, we believe capital campaigns can generate more lasting support when you layer the work of these phases and add in community building (we’ll explain this philosophy in more detail below!).
But before we discuss our approach, let’s walk through each of the traditional phases to give you an idea of what many capital campaigns look like.
1. Planning Phase
Before diving into your capital campaign, you’ll need to spend plenty of time strategically planning it. Since these campaigns are major investments of your time and attention, it’s crucial to be prepared.
Traditionally, the planning phase includes these key tasks:
Assessing your resources. To understand what your capital campaign will look like and where you should focus your fundraising efforts, conduct an assessment of your nonprofit’s community support. Many organizations opt for feasibility studies, during which a consultant conducts anonymous interviews with major donors to gauge whether the campaign is feasible. However, the Donorly team takes a unique approach to these assessments, focusing on building transparent relationships with community members.
Discussing the campaign with your board. You’ll want to secure buy-in from your nonprofit’s leadership immediately and work together to complete the essential planning tasks during this phase.
Conducting initial donor research. Conduct prospect research to identify potential major donors and create a stewardship plan to guide your interactions with your top prospects. Major gift solicitation should be ongoing throughout the entire duration of your campaign, so getting a headstart on research will be invaluable.
Creating a gift pyramid. Also called a gift range chart or gift table, this document outlines the required gifts you’ll need to reach your goal. It should include multiple giving “tiers” and state how many gifts or pledges are needed at each tier. This chart will become an essential guiding resource throughout the entire campaign. Take a look at the example below to see how it works.
Outlining a general timeline. Include overall start and end dates, estimated dates for the completion of each phase, and benchmarks for team members to check in and report on their progress. For campaigns tied to construction or other physical projects, the timeline should account for them and leave some flexibility in case they get delayed.
Drafting a case for support. Also called a case statement, this comprehensive document outlines what your campaign hopes to accomplish and why donors should support it. Some nonprofits create a physical document and present it to donors, while others outline general reasons to support the campaign and tweak them as they go. The second approach allows you to iterate on your messaging throughout the campaign.
Assembling your team. Capital campaigns require a strong team that’s excited about the road ahead. We’ll review the team members and committees you’ll likely want to recruit later.
2. Quiet Phase
The quiet phase of your capital campaign takes place before you announce it broadly to your full base of support. This doesn’t mean it’s a secret, just that you’re not yet widely broadcasting it or seeking broad support.
Traditionally, nonprofits start soliciting major gifts (often beginning with board members) after they’ve completed a feasibility study and planned the campaign. During this early solicitation stage, you’ll identify and steward major donors to secure the largest gifts for your campaign.
Major gift solicitation will continue through the entire duration of your campaign, but the purpose of a traditional quiet phase is to focus your efforts solely on the intensive research, cultivation, and solicitation work required for major gift fundraising. When you work with Donorly, however, we’ll also use this time to build and engage the wider community—helping you generate long-term, future-focused relationships that sustain your nonprofit beyond the capital campaign.
No matter how you approach it, this period is when you should solicit 60-75% of the total financing for your campaign. In fact, it’s often recommended that you don’t take the campaign public until you’ve done so!
3. Kick-Off
After the quiet phase comes the kick-off phase. This is when your campaign and finalized fundraising goal is announced to the public to garner general support.
A campaign kick-off is often accompanied by an event or celebration of some sort to generate excitement. However, what that celebration looks like could vary greatly across organizations. For example, you might host:
A virtual kick-off to announce the campaign and explain what it will do for your mission.
A formal gala or press conference, either virtual or in-person, to kick-start fundraising.
A family-friendly picnic or carnival to bring your community together and remind them of your important work.
A groundbreaking ceremony to kick off the construction of your new facility, funded by the initial surge of support secured during the quiet phase.
The exact kick-off celebration you plan will vary greatly depending on your goals, community, and the overall tone of your campaign. The goal here is to transition from the quiet phase to the public phase in a manner that is genuine to your nonprofit and resonates with your supporters.
4. Public Phase
This is the portion of your campaign in which your team publicly raises gifts of all sizes from your broader community.
The key here is to maintain the momentum generated by your kick-off celebration to secure the final donations needed to reach your fundraising goal (which is much easier to do if you’ve already been building up community support through the early stages). This stage is fairly similar to a more typical fundraising campaign, involving any number of different strategies, such as:
Holding fundraising events specifically for your campaign.
Marketing your campaign with articles, interviews, direct mailings, and digital outreach.
Increasing anticipation with tools such as fundraising thermometers and peer-to-peer challenges.
Providing regular reports about the progress of the campaign.
These final gifts are raised most often through mid-sized and smaller donations and are a direct result of your broader marketing efforts to promote the campaign. These are the gifts that will ideally drive your campaign across the finish line!
5. Completion and Follow-Up
It’s important to remember that the campaign doesn’t necessarily end after you’ve reached your overall fundraising goal. There are still a few essential tasks to complete that are technically part of the public phase. These include:
Following through on any promises made during the campaign. It’s important that the task you raised funds for—such as purchasing new equipment—is well underway and that donors can follow the progress of the project.
Sharing reports on the final standing of the campaign. How much was raised in donations? How many people were involved in the campaign overall? Your supporters will enjoy celebrating your success and learning about their impact.
Thanking donors for their support. It’s critical that each and every campaign donor is genuinely thanked for their contribution. They should understand the impact they made on your greater mission and how thankful you are for their involvement.
Thanking staff, board members, and volunteers for their hard work. During the campaign, your staff, board members, and volunteers had to operate at their absolute maximum capacity to ensure you reached the goal. Make sure they know how grateful you are for their effort.
This final wrap-up does more than provide a clean end to your campaign—it also sets you up for success with future fundraising. Your team, donors, and community will have watched this successful campaign come to an end and be more likely to support a similar endeavor in the future.
The Donorly Approach to Capital Campaigns
The Donorly team is made up of experienced nonprofit consultants who’ve seen it all when it comes to capital campaigns. Through our time working with over 100 nonprofit clients, we’ve learned that the traditional approach could use a refresh. While it works for some nonprofits, we’ve discovered that organizations can achieve better, longer-lasting results when they take a community activation approach to capital campaigns.
Focusing more on engaging the community and less on long, drawn-out fundraising feasibility studies enables you to kickstart your nonprofit’s long-term growth. Specifically, this approach helps you:
Cultivate deeper relationships with stakeholders at all giving levels.
Expand your inner circle by creating a pipeline for new major donors.
Build momentum from the beginning in the full community, not just among leadership donors.
But what does it look like to launch a campaign that truly activates your nonprofit’s community? Our philosophy and capital campaign services involve planning campaigns with the following elements:
Open, Transparent Planning Process
Traditional feasibility studies involve anonymous interviews with stakeholders and a black-and-white report created by your consultant to assess your campaign readiness. We’re moving away from this process and taking a new approach to feasibility studies that’s infused with what stakeholders really want from your nonprofit: transparency, teamwork, and trust.
Our team guides you through open, transparent conversations with key stakeholders where you can learn from each other. By talking about the capital campaign openly and asking for major donors' and community leaders’ thoughts, you’ll strengthen these relationships and get valuable insight into their potential support.
Regular Community Engagement Events
From the very beginning of your capital campaign, well before you ask for any major gifts, we’ll start engaging your community. We do this by helping you plan and host a series of accessible, low-stakes community events designed to build relationships without asking for money.
These are regularly scheduled, mission-aligned, casual events that are easy for any community member to join. Think after-school picnics at the park or weekly wellness yoga classes—activities that bring people together and provide a no-pressure introduction to your nonprofit.
Community engagement events spread awareness of your nonprofit ahead of the campaign’s public phase, strengthen relationships with current supporters, and build a pipeline for potential new major donors. We’ll help you identify, research, and cultivate these relationships to prepare them for major gift solicitation down the road.
Accelerated Start to Your Campaign
Instead of following a traditional capital campaign timeline, the Donorly team offers an accelerated start for nonprofits that know they want to move forward. Don’t wait 3-9 months for a feasibility report to give you the green light—get started now and pivot your strategies later if needed.
Our timeline gets your capital campaign up and running quickly by layering the work of traditional phases. Here’s an overview of year one of your campaign:
Screen & Discover: In place of a traditional feasibility study, our consultants will spend 1-3 months analyzing your nonprofit’s data, wealth screens, and past campaign results to assess your campaign resources.
Energize & Expand Inner Circle: At the same time, in months 1-4, we’ll help you guide open conversations with key stakeholders to get your inner circle excited about the capital campaign.
Build a Movement: This is where community engagement events come in—from months 2-12 of your capital campaign, we’ll work with you to build a strong, passionate supporter community.
Collect Commitments: Beginning in month 2, you can start talking to major donors and collecting commitments for your largest gifts. This way, you’ll secure support without putting your nonprofit at risk if you decide not to move forward later.
Streamline Fundraising Team Capacity: Throughout the first year of your capital campaign, we’ll work in the background to strengthen your team’s fundraising processes for long-term success.
While your full campaign will likely take much longer than a year, this accelerated start puts you in a position to achieve your fundraising goals faster.
Key Capital Campaign Team Members
Capital campaigns are large endeavors that require all hands on deck. Early in the planning process, determine who you’ll need for each job and what they’ll do. Then, start recruiting.
Successful capital campaigns typically require hard work from the following team members:
Campaign Chair: This is the team member in charge of overseeing capital campaign committees and advocating for your campaign in your community. Your campaign chair should have a proven track record of leading successful, complex team efforts.
Board Members: Your board must approve all major strategic decisions and will play a key role in securing essential major gifts. It’s also common for board members to make donations to the campaign itself. Make sure your board is fully on board with the campaign and feels like an integral part of your campaign’s success.
Committee Members: There are two main committees often involved in a capital campaign—planning and steering. These are typically groups of board members but may also include staff. The planning committee lays out the campaign’s plans, strategy, and timeline. The steering committee helps with ongoing maintenance of the campaign during the quiet, kick-off, and public phases.
Volunteers: Capital campaigns are a lot of work, so it’s a good idea to have a group of volunteers ready to support any internal and donor-facing tasks that emerge, especially during the public phase. This is particularly true for small and mid-sized nonprofits that may be working with a smaller staff to begin with.
Fundraising Consultant: Many nonprofits choose to work with an expert fundraising consultant from outside their organization to conduct their campaigns. This team member can act as a capacity-building force and strategic partner, as well as help conduct feasibility studies and course-correct once the campaign is in progress.
Most importantly, all of your team members should be excited about the campaign, understand its goals, and believe that those goals are achievable with hard work. A strong team will keep your campaign from derailing and help you overcome any obstacles, so it’s crucial that you assemble the group carefully.
How to Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant
Capital campaign consultants can be some of the most important members of your capital campaign team, so it’s worth taking time to find the right one. If you’ve never worked with a consultant before, follow these steps to navigate the process:
Define what your organization needs from a consultant, such as conducting a feasibility study, guiding campaign strategy, or performing prospect research.
Create a Request for Proposals (RFP) that outlines your needs, expectations, and information about your campaign.
Research qualified consultants online, paying special attention to their fundraising philosophies and examples of their past work.
Contact consultants and submit RFPs, giving them a few weeks to respond.
Review proposals and choose your consultant based on their expertise and how they would approach your campaign.
For more details on this process and the services capital campaign consultants can provide, check out our in-depth guide to hiring a capital campaign consultant.
7 Steps for a Successful Capital Campaign
While these campaigns are a major undertaking, we believe that nonprofits can (and should!) make the move to invest in their growth when the timing is right. We’ve seen small and mid-size organizations successfully kick-start their next stages of growth with capital campaigns.
To find success with yours, follow these seven steps.
1. Set a working goal.
To start strong with a capital campaign, you have to know what you’re aiming for. Set a campaign goal early. It doesn’t need to be set in stone at this point, but you should have a fairly accurate idea of the scale and scope of your campaign.
Having an idea of what you’re working toward will shape your strategy. For example, if your campaign will fund a construction project, you’ll need to ensure you have the land to build on and an accurate estimate of how much the building will cost. You might even start thinking about donors or prospects who would be willing to back the project and brainstorming event ideas for your campaign kick-off.
We recommend thinking through your working goal using the SMART acronym. Your goal should be:
Specific: Narrow your goal and specify what you really want to achieve with your capital campaign. Focus on one big project or initiative you want to complete and clearly outline all associated expenses, not only for the project’s development but also its sustainability.
Measurable: Make sure your goal can be tracked. When you can monitor your progress, you’ll have an easier time course-correcting when needed and be able to know for certain when you’ve met your goal.
Attainable: Set a goal rooted in data and research that you think your organization can reach. You can be ambitious and challenge yourself to reach a stretch goal, but first, make sure you can see a clear path (or paths!) toward the original goal’s success.
Relevant: It probably wouldn’t make sense for a nonprofit focused on helping the homeless to begin a capital campaign to build a horse training facility. Choose a goal that is tightly tied to your cause so that your supporters will see just how important it is for them to help you meet it.
Time-Bound: Deadlines keep everyone on your team on track. Set a few dates, including dates for when you want to finish your feasibility study, host your campaign kick-off event, and complete the campaign.
Remember, as you’re starting out, your goal is a working goal. This means that as you learn more about your project and your support base, you should go back and fine-tune your objectives as needed. Also, be sure to discuss your ideas for your working goal with your organization’s leaders and board. Having everyone on the same page from the start will be invaluable as you begin hammering out the details of your campaign.
2. Emphasize research throughout the entire process.
Effective prospect and donor research can make or break a capital campaign and help smaller organizations fundraise beyond their size. Prospect research is the process of identifying and analyzing potential major donors both within your existing database and in the broader community. Creating a ranked shortlist of prospective donors early in the capital campaign process helps you save time and guides your efforts once the campaign is fully underway.
Research and data are extremely powerful assets, and there are plenty of success stories that highlight the powerful role that research can play in generating transformational gifts for campaigns.
Consider this success story: A board member at a small organization was able to secure a million-dollar gift from a new prospect because of careful prospect research. Starting with little to no information about the prospect’s giving capacity, the board member leaned on prospect research to learn about this individual’s substantial giving capacity and recorded history of making $1 million+ gifts. With this information, the trustee was able to cultivate the relationship and secure the substantial gift.
3. Set a clear timeline from the start.
Regardless of exactly how long your campaign takes, having a clear understanding of its timeline and breaking it down into discrete phases early in the process is vital for keeping the campaign on track. Plus, a solid timeline of activities and deliverables will make it easy for your steering committee and development team to check in on progress and course-correct immediately when needed.
The exact process and timeline of your capital campaign will naturally vary based on the approach you’re taking and what project you need to fund. If you choose the traditional route, your capital campaign timeline might look something like this:
Planning phase: If you opt for a traditional feasibility study and planning process, you might spend 6-8 months conducting the study, setting goals, securing board buy-in, and hiring a consultant to begin prospect research.
Quiet phase: The quiet phase could involve up to 2 years of ongoing major gift solicitation. At this time, you’ll continue prospect research, solicit major contributions, refine your strategies, and steward existing major donors.
Kick-off: Kick off your public campaign with a fun event, celebration, or groundbreaking ceremony. This is a short phase that serves as the transition between your quiet and public campaigns.
Public phase: Once your campaign is open to the public, you can solicit mid-range and smaller gifts and focus on marketing and promotion. This phase could last up to 1-2 years.
Follow-up: After the campaign ends and you reach your fundraising goal, it’s time to celebrate your success, thank donors, and share final announcements and reports.
Remember that this traditional capital campaign approach is only one option. Refer back to the accelerated timeline we discussed earlier to see what your plans might look like if you partner with the Donorly team to jumpstart your campaign.
4. Discuss the campaign with key stakeholders early on.
Many nonprofits use fundraising feasibility studies to gauge how much support they might receive before they move forward with a capital campaign. Whether you go this route or choose a more open, transparent process, it’s critical to discuss your campaign in some capacity with key stakeholders like past major donors, community leaders, board members, corporate sponsors, and local philanthropists.
Introduce the capital campaign to these stakeholders and ask for their opinions through one-on-one conversations. In a traditional feasibility study, this happens anonymously through interviews with your consultant, but we recommend leading these “interviews” yourself.
In these conversations, ask questions like:
What excites you about our organization’s vision for the future?
What do you see as our organization’s greatest strengths and challenges?
What are your philanthropic priorities, and where does our organization fall on that list?
Can you see yourself giving to this capital campaign? At what level?
Your stakeholders’ answers will give you insight into their perception of your organization, willingness to support the campaign, and resonance with your current campaign messaging. These open discussions allow you to strengthen relationships with those in your inner circle as you discover ways to iterate on your capital campaign messaging and plans.
5. Prioritize community engagement to cultivate lasting support.
Many nonprofits focus so much on major donors during capital campaigns that they forget about the importance of the wider community. Fundraising is vital, but so is maintaining positive relationships with community members. When your campaign ends, you’ll need a large base of support to see your organization through the following years.
Think about it this way: Who will walk through the doors of your new building once it's built? Which donors will fund maintenance costs in a year? If all your major donors give significant gifts to the capital campaign, who’s donating to expand your annual fund?
Instead of focusing solely on major donors, prioritize engaging your entire community with your capital campaign. The Donorly team helps nonprofits do this by:
Planning regular, accessible community events that fit into supporters’ routines and help your nonprofit build positive relationships.
Boosting awareness and trust in your nonprofit through simple, fun community activities that don’t involve fundraising asks.
Creating a pipeline of prospective donors you can cultivate both during and after the campaign for long-term fundraising growth.
By gearing your capital campaign toward everyone rather than just leadership donors, you can ensure that you have a powerful, loyal support base for years to come.
6. Be prepared for your plans to evolve and change.
Capital campaigns are among the most complex projects that nonprofits take on, so don’t expect your plans to remain unchanged throughout its various spans. Rather than resisting adaptation of your existing plans, stay as flexible as possible while remaining focused on your core goals and objectives.
Strategy adjustments based on prospect research, logistical challenges, and more can all affect the course of your capital campaign. Of course, major disruptions or roadblocks aren’t ideal, but you can take steps at all stages of the campaign to proactively mitigate any challenges that do pop up.
For example, a feasibility study will give you a reliable roadmap to follow, but combining that initial preparation with additional prospect research will help to keep alternate routes open if an expected major contributor falls through. It will be important to ensure your entire team is on board with the project and has the collective enthusiasm and organization that will help you navigate challenges as they come, regardless of their size.
7. Remember to show gratitude after the campaign ends.
Donor recognition is always an important part of growing and retaining community support, but it’s especially critical after a capital campaign. Immediately thank all of your contributors for their support and explain how they’ve helped to further your nonprofit’s mission.
For mid-size and major donors, go even further to show your gratitude. Invite major contributors to your grand finale celebration or building dedication. Or, invest in donor retention by creating a physical or virtual donor recognition wall to highlight the support of the individuals and foundations that drove your campaign to success.
Additionally, don’t forget to create and publicize your final campaign report once fundraising draws to a close. Your stakeholders and contributors will want to see your results and how their gifts were put to work for your mission. Then, make sure to proactively encourage your supporters to engage with your organization in new ways.
Capital campaigns can help your nonprofit form valuable connections with new supporters and reinforce bonds with existing donors. Don’t let those connections and interactions go to waste once your campaign ends!
Wrapping Up
Remember, capital campaigns are marathons, not sprints. By following the information in this guide and unifying your team around your organization’s collective goal, you will not only be able to complete your project, but also make significant strides in your organization’s growth and impact.
For more information on capital campaigns and strategies to help your nonprofit fundraise beyond its size, keep exploring with these additional resources:
Hiring a Fundraising Consultant: 5 Steps & Best Firms. Fundraising is tricky, and some nonprofits benefit from outside help. Learn how to hire a consultant for your capital campaign that can empower you to take your fundraising to the next level.
Fundraising Feasibility Studies: A Comprehensive Guide. Are you ready to start a fundraising feasibility study, but you’re not quite sure how to begin? Use this comprehensive guide to learn everything you need to know.
Creating a Capital Campaign Plan: Complete Guide & Template. Dive deeper into capital campaign planning best practices and use our comprehensive template to streamline the process for your organization.
