Creating a Capital Campaign Plan: Complete Guide & Template
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.
Let’s begin!
A Review of Capital Campaign Basics
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.
What is a capital campaign?
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:
Building a new facility
Purchasing expensive equipment
Scaling up your organization’s programming and staff
Building an endowment fund
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.
The Four Phases of a Capital Campaign
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:
The Planning Phase: During the planning phase, your organization should determine your objective and goals; conduct a feasibility study and write your case for support; create a gift pyramid, timeline, and budget; assemble your team; and come up with some initial donor recognition strategies. The rest of this guide will help you create a plan that will ensure you’ve accomplished each of these tasks.
The Quiet Phase: During the quiet phase, your organization begins soliciting gifts from major donors, usually securing 50-70% of the total funding your campaign is aiming for.
The Campaign Kick-Off: During the kick-off phase, you announce your campaign to the public and start to solicit general support for your finalized campaign goal. Usually, nonprofits plan an event to get their supporters excited about their project, like a groundbreaking ceremony or a gala.
The Public Phase: During the public phase, you raise donations of all sizes to help you cross the finish line and meet your campaign goal.
How long each phase will last often breaks down like this:
Several months to up to a year for the planning phase
One or more years for the quiet phase
One month for the campaign kick-off
Several months for the public phase
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.
Capital Campaign Key Players
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:
Campaign Chair: Your campaign chair will be the leader of your capital campaign and will be responsible for overseeing campaign committees and championing the campaign in your community.
Board Members: Your board members will need to approve all the major decisions related to your capital campaign, but they will also be instrumental in helping you secure major gifts. They are likely to give a large gift themselves.
Committee Members: You’ll typically need a planning and steering committee for a capital campaign. The planning committee will determine the capital campaign goals, strategy, and timeline. (In other words, your planning committee will benefit greatly from this article!) Your steering committee will step in during the main phases of the campaign to ensure that you’re staying on track with every task that needs to be completed.
Volunteers: Your volunteers will play a vital role in helping you secure donations, especially during the public phase as you’re soliciting many small to medium-sized donations, running events, and more. Give yourself ample time to recruit your volunteers and train them in what they’ll be responsible for.
Fundraising Consultant: Most nonprofits find it helpful to have an expert guide them through the capital campaign process. A fundraising consultant can step in and help you with everything from your feasibility study to designing a donor recognition strategy during the campaign follow-up process. We’ll take a closer look at a fundraising consultant’s role in the process later in this article.
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 you’re 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.
The Benefits of a Thorough Capital Campaign Plan
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:
A thorough plan can boost your confidence as you head into your campaign. You can think of your capital campaign plan as a flashlight. Just as a flashlight helps you to move forward with confidence through the dark, a thorough plan can help you move forward with confidence through your capital campaign. Knowing exactly where you are and what you need to do next will help you complete tasks efficiently and free up your headspace to focus on items that matter most instead of the minutiae.
A thorough plan can be a resource to turn back to when your campaign gets off track. If your campaign does get derailed in some way, you can turn to your capital campaign plan to learn how to get back on course. For example, if a prospect’s gift comes in at a lower amount than expected, you can use the fundraising planning documents of your plan to quickly identify how and where that money can be made up. Or, if you learn your kickoff event is going to cost more money to set up than you intended, you can return to the campaign budget in your plan to see how to adapt that budget for your new expenses.
A thorough plan will help you build trust with your entire campaign team. Everyone on your team—from board members to volunteers—will appreciate a detailed plan. A plan enables you to provide clear and accurate information on all aspects of your campaign, provide thorough training for various duties, and quickly delegate critical tasks. This will build trust with everyone who pitches in to help with your campaign, as they’ll see your nonprofit as prepared for the project and ready for them to lend their support.
A thorough plan will serve as the foundation of your case for support. Before you can really launch a capital campaign, you’ll need to evaluate the support you have from your major donors, and a case for support document will be an important part of doing so. You can use your capital campaign plan to guide the information you include in your case for support, which will demonstrate to your donors that your organization is ready to move forward with the proposed project. More on this below!
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.
8 Essential Elements of a Capital Campaign Plan
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.
1. Campaign Objective and Goals
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.
2. Feasibility Study and Case for Support
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:
Why your mission matters
The improvement or investment you want to make (the campaign objective)
The difference the objective will make for your mission
How much support you need to achieve your objective
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.
3. Gift Pyramid
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.
4. Timeline
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 Planning Phase (6-8 months): You’ll start with your objective and goals. Then you’ll conduct a feasibility study. This will help you determine if your campaign is viable and give you the chance to interview key stakeholders. Next, you’ll refine your objectives and goals, begin major donor outreach and prospect research, and secure board buy-in. From there, you’ll engage in initial solicitations, recruit your team, and choose a fundraising consultant to work with.
The Quiet Phase (Ongoing Major Gift Solicitation for 6-24 months): During the quiet phase, you’ll continue with prospect research and soliciting major contributions. As you gather new information, you’ll refine your goals and strategies. You’ll also work to build relationships with all of your existing donors. The quiet phase shouldn’t end until you’ve secured 50-70% of your total goal or more from major donors, organizational leaders, and other funders.
The Public Phase (Kick-Off Event and Public Gift Solicitation for 1-2 Years): Your public phase will begin with a kick-off event. From there, you’ll solicit mid-range and smaller gifts and focus on marketing and promotion as you work hard to make it to the finish line with your topline revenue goal.
Follow-Up: After your campaign is over, you still have work to do. You’ll need to thank your donors (perhaps through donor recognition displays) and share final announcements and reports with your community. Then, you can celebrate a successful capital campaign!
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.
5. Budget
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.
6. Team Assignments
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:
Review what you know about each person, such as their skills and track record of engagement with your cause.
Survey your team to find out what assignments each person would prefer to have.
Especially for volunteers, consider the time commitments you’ll be asking each person for and if they’ll be able to fulfill those commitments.
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.
7. Communications and Marketing
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:
How you’ll provide the team with updates on campaign progress: When your campaign hits a major milestone or encounters a hurdle, how will you get that information to your team? You might plan to have weekly or bi-weekly team meetings to keep everyone on the same page or to send out a weekly progress report via email.
The tools you’ll use to communicate: You might already have a great tool for team communication and project management. As you’re recruiting the help of more and more volunteers, you’ll want to show them how to use that tool. And if you want to use something new, consider some of the popular tools out there, like Slack, Monday, and Trello. Remember to include your communication tools cost in your budget!
Individual teams’ reporting order: When a team member has a question, concern, or update on a project they’re working on, who do they report to? To keep your communications organized, you’ll need to establish a clear reporting order. For example, individual team members might report to a manager or committee chairperson, who then reports to the campaign chair.
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:
Physical marketing materials like posters, flyers, and postcards
Email newsletters
Social media posts and personal messages
Text messaging
Capital campaign website and event landing pages
TV and radio advertisements
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.
8. Donor Recognition Strategies
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:
Personalize your thank-you messages. An impersonal thank-you note or letter can feel like getting a birthday card with nothing written on the inside—a little disappointing. With each message you write, make sure you personalize it with details you know about the donor, like their name, donation amount, and donation date.
Send gifts to show your appreciation. Sometimes a small gift can make all the difference in how your donor feels about having donated to your capital campaign. You might send a gift basket or free tickets to a campaign event.
Host donor appreciation events. Everyone enjoys a good party, especially when it’s a party to shout out their contributions to something meaningful. Try hosting a donor appreciation event like a luncheon or gala where you provide food and entertainment.
Honor donors with a recognition wall. For nonprofits who are building or expanding a facility with their capital campaign, a donor recognition wall is an excellent option for showing donor appreciation. A donor recognition wall stands as a physical reminder of those who made your project possible, which can be fun for donors and their loved ones to visit. This option can get pricey, so make sure you budget for it!
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 Donorly Capital Campaign Plan Template
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.
How a Fundraising Consultant Can Help with Capital Campaign Planning
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.
Wrapping Up
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:
Capital Campaigns: A Crash Course for Your Nonprofit Team. Want a deeper dive into the mechanics of capital campaigns? This is the perfect crash course for you!
Creating a Fundraising Strategy: 12 Steps for Your Nonprofit. Need to re-evaluate your larger fundraising strategy and identify how your capital campaign fits in? Leverage this guide!
Step-by-Step Fundraising Plan Template for Nonprofits. Looking to take on another type of campaign? Check out this all-purpose fundraising plan template.
