Fundraising Feasibility Study Guide: 5 Steps & Options
If you’re thinking about planning a capital campaign, you’ve likely heard that you need to do a feasibility study first. While not always necessary, these in-depth studies can help you gauge how much support your organization can expect and provide tailored strategies for accomplishing your campaign goals.
At Donorly, we take a unique approach to fundraising feasibility studies. We focus on building community and moving forward with your capital campaign rather than providing a yes or no answer to the question, “Is the campaign feasible?” However, some boards still want the green light from a traditional feasibility study before they approve large-scale campaigns.
To help you evaluate your options and successfully conduct a feasibility study if you choose to do so, this guide will cover:
Let’s explore the basics of fundraising feasibility studies and the different approaches you can take to propel your campaign forward.
What is a fundraising feasibility study?
Traditionally, a formal fundraising feasibility study involves conducting research, interviewing stakeholders, and analyzing fundraising data to assess your organization’s capacity and readiness for starting a large project like a capital campaign.
Because of the sheer scale of projects like these, many nonprofits seek out feasibility studies to help them determine if they’re ready to launch a campaign and how they can improve their strategies for success. Effective feasibility studies provide organizations with detailed feedback and recommendations they can use to inform their campaign approach.
Do you really need a fundraising feasibility study?
While many nonprofits believe that feasibility studies are essential, this isn’t always the case. The traditional nonprofit feasibility study is not the best fit for every organization, and some nonprofits may not need to conduct one at all.
For instance, you may choose not to do a feasibility study if:
You’re a small nonprofit that already knows who all your major donors are.
You’re committed to moving forward with the campaign and are confident you have the resources to succeed.
You want to conduct an internal assessment instead of a full-blown feasibility study.
In these cases, your nonprofit may conduct internal research to verify that you have what you need for a capital campaign, or you might hire consultants like those at Donorly who take a unique approach to feasibility studies (we’ll explain more about our innovative approach below!).
Why You Should Hire a Consultant for Your Fundraising Feasibility Study
If you do choose to move forward with a feasibility study, you’ll likely need a consultant on your team. Fundraising consultants are experts in the nonprofit sector who have the experience and resources to help your organization start fundraising beyond its size. They can be especially helpful for capital campaign feasibility studies for these reasons:
Even before you start conducting a feasibility study, consultants can help you with prospect research. They’ll help you identify who has the affinity and capacity to be a major donor of your organization, which can translate into support for a future capital campaign.
They can conduct or guide interviews with your key stakeholders. Many consultants do this anonymously, assuming that stakeholders will be more honest talking to an outside expert. However, other consultants opt for a more transparent approach and guide your staff through leading interviews yourselves.
Your capital campaign consultant can help you determine your next steps after your feasibility study is complete. No matter the results of the feasibility study, you’ll have insights to work with, and a consultant can guide you on your next steps.
To find the right consultant for your organization, work with your team to define your fundraising goals and needs. Research several options, then send requests for proposals (RFPs) to your top contenders so they can develop a proposed plan for your feasibility study. Finally, read through each one and meet with your chosen consultant to talk through the plan and discuss working together.
How the Consultants at Donorly Can Transform Your Feasibility Study
Every fundraising consultant conducts feasibility studies differently based on their experience and philosophy. That’s why it’s crucial to thoroughly evaluate your options and choose a consultant who aligns with your nonprofit’s vision for the campaign.
If your nonprofit team is excited to move forward with a capital campaign and wants to streamline the planning process, consider partnering with Donorly.
Our team of expert consultants transforms the traditional feasibility study process into one that’s more transparent, community-focused, and actionable. We’ll work with you to evaluate your resources and strengthen key stakeholder relationships while we move forward with other campaign activities. The result is a stronger inner circle, more engaged community, and solid foundation for a successful capital campaign.
Steps to Conducting a Traditional Feasibility Study
After you’ve selected the right consultant for your organization, it’s time to start working with them on your fundraising feasibility study. There are five major steps for conducting a successful feasibility study—let’s start with step number one.
1. Identify Key Supporters
Before you dive into creating a case for support and conducting interviews, do some prospect research to identify the major supporters that can help back your campaign. After all, you don’t want to spend too much time cultivating a supporter if they don’t have the funds or the interest to get involved with your project.
While you can conduct prospect research on your own, it’s best to work with your fundraising consultant, who has the tools and experience to help you identify and begin cultivating your prospects. Those prospects might come from the following groups:
Major donors
Board members
Longtime volunteers
Community stakeholders
Business owners
To conduct prospect research, your consultant will use the following prospect research tools to learn more about these potential supporters:
Donor data in your CRM
Search engines
Social media platforms
Gift matching eligibility
Government records like investment records and political contribution information
Prospect generator tools that give you lists of donors that contribute to organizations like yours
Prospect research databases
With tools like these, you can start looking at the available data for each prospect. You’ll need to look for prospects with three different kinds of markers:
Capacity (wealth) markers like high-income careers, real estate ownership, stock holdings, and business affiliations
Affinity (warmth) markers such as political contributions, past donations and involvement, and personal connections to your board members or current major donors
Propensity (habit) markers, including donations to other nonprofits, board membership, and fundraising event attendance
In addition to identifying these markers, you’ll need to learn about your prospects’ backgrounds to help you nurture genuine relationships with them.
Cultivating these relationships will likely include face-to-face meetings, phone calls, event invitations, and, eventually, donation appeals and feasibility study interviews. This means solid prospect research will take some time, but don’t be discouraged. With the help of a well-trained fundraising consultant, you’ll be able to find and secure the right prospects for your capital campaign.
2. Develop a Case Statement
A case statement (or case for support) is a set of arguments for why your campaign is important and why supporters should help you push it forward.
This may be a formal, persuasive document, or general messaging guidelines that you iterate on throughout your stakeholder interviews. Either way, your case statement should develop and change as you learn more about supporters’ opinions and adjust your fundraising strategy.
Here are some key elements you should include in your case statement:
Your nonprofit’s mission, story, and goals
Why the project/campaign is necessary and what benefits it will provide to you and your beneficiaries
Projected costs and timelines
Reasons why your key supporters should back the project
Take your case statement to the next level by including graphics, logos, relevant photos, and testimonials that match your organization’s brand. This will make your case statement look more professional and official, as well as help your supporters feel more connected to your cause.
If you create a written document, send it to your key supporters before the interview phase of your feasibility study. This will give them the chance to go into the interview process informed about your project and prepared to provide feedback on it.
3. Conduct Interviews and Data Analysis
Interviewing and data analysis are the core parts of any fundraising feasibility study. This is where you learn how your key stakeholders perceive your proposed project and how much support they see themselves giving to the campaign.
Let’s first examine the interview process. Here’s how you and your fundraising consultant should prepare for interviewing the key supporters you’ve found through prospect research:
Prepare thoughtful interview questions. You might ask questions like, “What excites you about our organization’s vision for the future?” and “What are your philanthropic priorities, and where does our organization fall in that list?”
Personalize the experience for each stakeholder. Make sure you come prepared not only with interview questions and information about the project but also with talking points based on supporters' backgrounds and values.
Find out how they feel about the proposed project. Ask your stakeholders how relevant they feel this project is to your nonprofit’s larger mission and how achievable they think the goal is based on the tentative timeline in your case statement.
Get feedback on your case statement. Since your case statement is meant to evolve, take the opportunity to find out how stakeholders react. Find out whether the campaign messaging resonates with them and which elements excite them the most.
Ask how they could see themselves being involved in the campaign. Boost excitement about the campaign and ask them how they envision themselves personally contributing to the project. Make sure to focus on them, not your organization, for this portion of the interview.
Thank every supporter for their time and participation. No matter what they say about your proposed project or whether they commit to donating, make sure you thank everyone you interview for their time and willingness to provide feedback.
When you conduct interviews as open conversations between your nonprofit and the stakeholder, this process becomes an opportunity to not only collect information but also deepen key relationships. Well-thought-out questions and a focus on the supporter can help them feel more connected to your organization, particularly as you demonstrate how much you value their input and contributions to your mission.
The data analysis process will come next. Your fundraising consultant will analyze the interview results and your donor data to help you assess how feasible your capital campaign project is. This is where you’ll take an even more in-depth look at donor capacity and prospects you can prioritize during the campaign. From there, your consultant will typically draft a report your team can use in conversations with board members and leadership staff to determine whether you move forward with your capital campaign.
4. Evaluate Results
Once you have all of the information gathered from your prospect research, interviews, and data analysis, work together as an organization to decide how to proceed with the proposed campaign.
Traditionally, your feasibility study may give you a yes or no answer about whether you should launch your campaign. However, effective feasibility studies are more likely to provide an overview of your resources and support base. These reports offer detailed insight into how you can make your campaign successful if you choose to move forward.
5. Determine Next Steps for Your Capital Campaign
Use your feasibility study results to outline what steps you should take to improve your processes and guide the campaign’s strategy as you begin. You may need to adjust your fundraising plans, update your case for support, or alter your timeline.
Then, present the details of your campaign's next steps to your nonprofit leadership and board members. When preparing your presentation, make sure to focus on the budget!
The Donorly Approach to Fundraising Feasibility Studies
While the traditional feasibility study approach we discussed works for some nonprofits, it’s not the right fit for everyone. That’s why the team of fundraising consultants at Donorly takes a unique approach.
Our team found that traditional fundraising feasibility studies slow many nonprofits down and limit their ability to learn from and strengthen relationships with stakeholders. We saw an opportunity to refresh this traditional process in a way that empowers nonprofits to launch community-focused capital campaigns that position organizations for long-term growth—and that’s exactly what we did.
For nonprofits that are ready to move forward and want to use their capital campaign to bolster their entire community, Donorly’s feasibility studies and capital campaign services offer:
More transparency and donor trust throughout the process
The ability to learn from your stakeholders firsthand, rather than getting a report with secondhand insights
Additional relationship-building opportunities, both with major donors and community members
A faster start to your campaign
How do we make this happen? Compared to traditional feasibility studies, the Donorly approach differs in three main ways:
Transparent, Nonprofit-Led Stakeholder Interviews
Our consultants don’t conduct anonymous stakeholder interviews and deliver a single report that condenses their findings. Instead, we empower your team to lead these conversations yourselves with professional guidance.
This way, you get the benefit of hearing the perspectives of stakeholders like major donors, community leaders, and board members firsthand. In addition to gathering stakeholder feedback, you can test out and iterate on campaign messaging, strengthen your most important relationships, and get stakeholders excited about the campaign.
To facilitate this process of conducting transparent stakeholder interviews, Donorly consultants will:
Assess your donor landscape and fundraising history
Help you identify and research key stakeholders
Provide you with a questionnaire you can ask them
Guide you through the interview process
Support you in analyzing stakeholder feedback
In the end, having open conversations instead of private, anonymous interviews will cultivate more trust in your nonprofit and engage donors right from the start of your campaign.
Intent to Move Forward with the Campaign
Our fundraising feasibility studies are ideally suited for organizations that are sure they want to move forward with a capital campaign, but they still need to assess and deepen the commitment of lead donors and analyze the donor potential for the full community in order to set a timeline to achieve their goals.
Delaying the early stages of the campaign delays the full project. That’s why we shifted the focus of our feasibility studies from answering the question “Should we launch a capital campaign?” to “How can we make our capital campaign a success that jumpstarts our long-term growth?”
We work with nonprofits that plan to move forward with capital campaigns but want to ensure that they can launch the best campaign possible. This means that instead of asking donors and other stakeholders if they think the campaign is a good idea, you ask whether they’ll support it, how so, and how you could change your campaign plan to boost their support.
Working with the intent to move forward, while still building out the later stages of the campaign plan, helps you get started faster.
Layered Work to Get Started Faster
With Donorly’s help, you’ll make the most of your campaign’s first year and maximize your campaign’s potential. Instead of waiting 3-9 months for a feasibility report before you begin the work, our team layers the feasibility study on top of other important work to propel your campaign forward.
For instance, we’ll start building community support for your nonprofit while we interview stakeholders and work to expand your inner circle of leadership donors. Starting in the second month, we’ll help you collect commitments for major gifts, giving you a firm foundation early on.
Here’s how the first year of working with Donorly on a capital campaign shakes out:
Screen & Discover (Months 1-3): Our team of fundraising experts analyzes your nonprofit’s donor base, reviews past campaigns, and conducts prospect research to identify potential major donors.
Energize & Expand Inner Circle (Months 1-4): We guide your team through leading open conversations with key stakeholders about the campaign and their potential support.
Build a Movement (Months 2-12): Our consultants work with you to plan and host regular, accessible community events that will expand and strengthen your nonprofit’s community of supporters.
Collect Commitments (Months 2-12): Your team begins collecting pledges from major donors and cultivating those relationships with our team’s help.
Streamline Fundraising Team Capacity (Months 6-12): Behind the scenes, the Donorly team works with your team to streamline your processes.
With this timeline for the first year of your campaign, the information you normally get from a fundraising feasibility study is gathered in the first four months—and you don’t have to sit around and wait during that time. The result is an informed, effective fundraising team and an excited community, both of which will help you reach your goals for this campaign and beyond.
Wrapping Up
A fundraising feasibility study requires a lot of work from your team and your chosen fundraising consultant, but it can provide a wealth of insights to guide large-scale projects like capital campaigns.
As you choose an approach and get started with a feasibility study, remember to look for patterns and trends in your data and interview results that can inform your organization’s actions going forward. And if you’re looking for additional information about how to get your fundraising off the ground, check out these additional resources:
Capital Campaigns: A Success Guide for Small Nonprofits. Fundraising feasibility studies are only the beginning of capital campaigns. Learn what to do next and how to run a successful campaign from this guide.
Creating a Capital Campaign Plan: Complete Guide & Template. You’ll need a thorough plan to guide you through your feasibility study and the rest of your campaign. Use our template and explore planning tips here.
How to Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant to Help You Thrive. Explore the consultant hiring process to prepare your team to find and partner with the best consultant for your nonprofit’s needs.
