Podcast: Five Feasibility Study Myths That Hold Campaigns Back
Season 5, Episode 18
In this episode, Andrea Kihlstedt and Capital Campaign Pro’s Vice President and Chief Happiness Officer, Sarah Plimpton, take a close look at five common myths surrounding feasibility studies and shed light on a more effective approach: the Guided Feasibility Study Model. Drawing from years of collective experience and more than one hundred guided studies, they share why early donor conversations strengthen your case, sharpen your direction, and build the kind of relationships that fuel successful campaigns.
If your organization is preparing for a major project or exploring the first steps of campaign planning, this episode offers guidance that will help you build stronger relationships and clearer direction from the start.
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Andrea Kihlstedt:
Busting five feasibility study myths. Don’t you love myth busting? Well, that’s what we’re going to do today. And I am here with my very special friend and colleague, Sarah Plimpton. Sarah is the Vice President and Chief Happiness Officer of Capital Campaign Pro.
I’m Andrea Kilstead, and you may notice that my friend and colleague Amy Eisenstein is not here with me today. She will be back for our next session. So welcome. We’re happy you’re with us today, Sarah.
Sarah Plimpton:
Hello, Andrea. Thank you. It’s wonderful to be with you.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, so nice to see you. Let me set the stage here. Today, we’re talking about not any old feasibility study pattern, but what we’ve developed with Capital Campaign Pro is a model called the Guided Feasibility Study model. It’s a model that I started about eight years ago when Capital Campaign Pro was just new, actually, or maybe even before Capital Campaign Pro. And I had the sense that the traditional feasibility study model, where you hired a consultant and the consultant went out and talked to your largest donors, and then they came back with a report for your board.
Now, I did a lot of those traditional models of feasibility studies, and I always had this sense that a number of things were wrong with them. So I started to work creating a new model of feasibility study, this Guided Feasibility Study.
One of the primary differences in it is that in this model, the leadership of the organization that is planning for a capital campaign actually interviews their largest donors in the context of the study instead of having a consultant interview. the donors. It’s a big switch, a big shift. And over the last eight years, working with Sarah and with Amy and with a bunch of our other staff, we really have codified and tested this model to very great ends.
We have now done about 100 of these. maybe a few more even. And we’ve fine-tuned the model so that it really is no longer an idea, but it is really a codified way of doing this feasibility study work. And we have found without doubt that it’s incredibly successful, that it works way better than the traditional model where you hire a consultant and they go and do that and then they come back to you with a report.
5 Feasibility Study Myths That Hold Campaigns Back
Sarah and I are here today to talk about five myths, five things that people often believe to be true about feasibility studies and the way they work, and how, using this particular Guided Feasibility Study model, we have found that these myths simply aren’t true, and we’ve found a model that works better. Did that get it right, Sarah?
Sarah Plimpton:
I think it does, Andrea.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Excellent. So for this session, I’m going to give Sarah the myths one after another, and she’s going to help us bust them. So, Sarah, here’s your first myth.
Myth #1: You Need to Have Perfect Campaign Materials and Plans Before Talking to Donors
The first myth, and I think it’s widely held, is that an organization should not go and talk to its largest donors until their plans are pretty near perfect. You shouldn’t just go and be kind of halfway about this. That you better have a brochure and fancy material and everything needs to be perfectly in place. And then you can go and talk to your largest donors. Now, that’s a hell of a myth, if you ask me. And what have we learned about that, Sarah?
Sarah Plimpton:
Yeah. So we’ve learned a lot, Andrea, on this subject, namely that donors are very welcoming of organizations that come to them with plans that are well thought out. Right? I think the thinking needs to be thorough, but where there are still some holes to be determined. And I think donors want to be part of the thinking and part of the figuring out. If you invite somebody to put their fingerprints all over your early ideas, there’s a much higher likelihood that they’re going to continue to pay attention to those ideas and want to be part of helping you bring those ideas to fruition.
So we’ve found really that if you go with everything perfect and final and all figured out, there’s always going to be something that you haven’t thought of. And your donors are going to have some advice for you that you maybe wished you’d had a lot earlier.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Or you wish that they hadn’t given you, that you wish that they hadn’t been criticizing you because your ideas are already set, right? That’s problematic also.
Sarah Plimpton:
Yeah.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
You know, it’s so counterintuitive for many people that with your largest donors, you should go talk to them before your ideas are fully formed. People are so afraid of that. They’re so afraid to talk to their donors that they might look like they haven’t done their work, that they might look like they don’t know what they’re doing, that the donors are going to be critical of them if they come to them with any loose ends. And really, the opposite is just what people need to know.
One way of thinking about this is that when you go to a donor and all of your plans are set in stone, that you really tied everything down, then your conversation with the donor is about money. But if you’ve gone to your donor before everything is tied down, while things are still in the state of some flux, then your conversation is about your mission and the plans and how the organization should move forward. And then about money. It’s a big difference.
Sarah Plimpton:
And it also, you know, a finalized brochure and all the details in place signals to your donors, we’ve got this. We don’t necessarily need you or your advice or your expertise or wisdom or input. Whereas if you go to them early, you’re signaling, we need your advice. We need you to help us figure out how to do this. And there are so many rich, wonderful conversations that you can have along the journey of figuring it out. We’ve really learned at Capital Campaign Pro that engagement is what leads to investment, not having everything figured out. Yeah.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
And of course, who should have those conversations? Some kind of a strange consultant?
Sarah Plimpton:
No.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right? The executive director, the board chair, the leaders of the organization can have these amazing conversations that aren’t about asking. They’re really about their ideas and about mission and about the plans for your organization. And what power is in those conversations? It’s amazing.
Sarah Plimpton:
You know, in fact, Andrea, you mentioned earlier that you’ve done a number of feasibility studies in the traditional format. I have as well. And I think back on many of those conversations where I was the first or you were the first points of contact with a donor regarding an organization’s aspirations. And You know, I always tried to learn as much as I could about the planning and the rationale and the why. But invariably, I was never as deeply immersed in the ideas and the thinking as the leaders of the organization themselves. And in that regard, I will say in hindsight, I don’t think I should have been the person sitting in that seat.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right.
Sarah Plimpton:
Answering those early questions about the plans and the thinking and the rationale. It wasn’t my place.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, and you know, of course, that’s exactly what led to this new way of doing feasibility studies, of doing these Guided Feasibility Studies. That any [campaign] consultant, if they’re really thoughtful and sitting there with our largest, with the organization’s largest donors, and the organization’s largest donors are starting to ask questions that you know as a consultant that you shouldn’t, you aren’t the person who should be there. that the executive director, the board chair, the people in leadership positions in the organization should be sitting there. And that’s what led us to this new approach.
Myth #2: You Don’t Have the Time to Talk to Donors
Sarah, myth number two, and we hear this with some frequency when we talk to organizations about whether they should do a Guided Feasibility Study where they go and talk to their donors. The myth is, I don’t have time. We don’t have time to go and talk to 30, 40 donors. What do you say to that, Sarah?
Sarah Plimpton:
Well, I say first and foremost that I understand. Nobody has time. However, if you are seriously contemplating entering into a capital campaign, you better make time. Because whether it’s through the feasibility study process that you don’t have time or in the quiet phase that you don’t have time… You have to have time, right?
What is more important than engaging face to face with your closest, largest, most significant supporters and potential supporters? And I think, you know, we’ve seen over the past several years that many organizations have come to us and said, I really love your model and I believe in it and I want to do it. And I don’t have time. And I want to figure out how to have time, how to make time. And we have very successfully worked with those organizations to delegate, to stop doing certain things that maybe are not as important. And I think that’s a hard thing sometimes for people to delegate, you know, wrap their arms around that there are things you’re doing that maybe you can stop doing. Or maybe it’s, you know, bringing on additional staff or, you know, putting things to the side for a period of time. I think the myth that executive directors and development directors don’t have time to do this kind of work, you know, our past experience with clients shows that when clients want to make time and want to figure out how to do this work, they can do it.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, that’s always fascinated me, Sarah, that we work with so many organizations where the executive director, for example, is so busy and so productively busy. And all of a sudden you realize that when they cotton on to the power of actually building relationships with their top donors, all of a sudden they continue to be as busy, but the busyness shifts into this really important work of their going and talking to their largest donors. And it does it almost magically. They have other people confirming meetings, scheduling meetings, doing the things that they actually didn’t have to do, but somebody else could be brought in to do them.
So nobody has time for anything. People make time for what’s important. And this is critically important.
Myth #3: Your Donors Won’t Be Honest with You
All right, Sarah, myth number three. People are consistently afraid that if the executive director or board chair or leaders of the organization go and talk to their largest donors, that the donors won’t be honest with them about their hesitations or criticisms of the organization. Now, Sarah, have you found that to be true?
Sarah Plimpton:
Not at all, Andrea. We’ve gotten lots of honesty in our Guided Feasibility Studies.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
I love that we’ve gotten lots of honesty.
Sarah Plimpton:
We really have. And it’s all for the benefit of the organizations that we’re working with. You know, I think people are remarkably willing to share feedback if they are asked and invited to do so. This notion that… consultants are needed as intermediaries to get the truth from donors is just ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Donors will absolutely tell you what they think.
I can think about one client I worked with or that we worked with, Capital Campaign Pro worked with in the past couple of years. It was an all-girls school, and they were testing a case for support that included, among other things, a girls’ leadership hub, right? And it was this vision of the head of school, and it was a compelling vision, but there was a lot about it that was still a little bit murky. right, that hadn’t quite been fleshed out yet.
So this is going back to myth number one, that everything has to be perfect and final. It doesn’t, right? You know, when this organization went out and tested this aspect of their case, their donors did not hold back in saying, well, what is this exactly? Is it a program? Is it a staff position? Is it space within the school? Is it all three? What actually is this? And the head of school had some pretty good answers to that, but it was really clear that donors were not quite there yet. They needed more flushing, if you will, and they didn’t hold back in telling the head, like, listen, I love the concept here, but the there there needs more work. It needs more there. It needs more there. Yeah.
And, you know, it was, you know, in some ways this was, you know, there were questions that we and the staff had asked, you know, the head about this vision that, you know, she hadn’t really been able to answer just yet. But when she heard it from donors, it sort of clicked for her. She really was able to sort of understand, okay, aha. These are the kinds of answers I need to have. And this is the kind of thinking that I need to do in order to continue on in this journey of figuring out this piece of our case. So in that case, the donors were very honest.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah. People like to be asked for their opinions. And if you ask them in a way that gives them permission to tell you what they really think, they will tell you what they think. Now, if you say to them, listen, we have put together this perfect plan. And how do you like it? That’s going to be one thing. But if you say to them, we’re working on this plan, it still has a ways to go. And we’re so interested in your thoughts. What works about this for you? What doesn’t work about this for you? They will tell you both sides of that. So you have to invite them in to an honest conversation. And if you do it right, not only will they share it with you, but they will then be interested to see what happens as you develop the plans more fully, which, of course, is a wonderful thing for your relationship with them going forward. Indeed.
Myth #4: A Guided Feasibility Study Slows the Campaign Process
All right, so myth four, and I’m going to review all these myths at the end, so don’t panic. Myth four, though, is that a feasibility study, particularly one of these Guided Feasibility Studies where the executive director and development director board chair have to do all the interviews, slows down the campaign process. I mean, why do you need to do this? Why don’t you just go in and start asking for money?
Sarah Plimpton:
Just to add on to that myth, sometimes people say, well, we know we have to raise this money anyway, so we don’t need to do a feasibility study. This has to be feasible, right? And I think increasingly we are thinking about feasibility studies as planning studies more than feasibility studies because it’s not… It’s often not a question of if something is possible, but how, right? How are we going to do this? What’s the right way to move this idea forward?
But, you know, to think about, you know, the notion that it slows your campaign down. Well, when you get out of a feasibility study, you’ve done a great deal of cultivation already. And one of the things that we’ve found is that during the guided model where your leaders have been in front of your top potential supporters and partners in the project, that the quiet phase actually speeds up some because a lot of that sort of early relational engagement and cultivation happens in the feasibility study. And you are much more prepared to go in and ask for gifts after your feasibility study happens. Your Guided Feasibility Study.
Whereas in a traditional model, your consultant goes out, has all these conversations, you get a report, tells you what your goal is and what your case should be and how to move forward. You then have to go out and have cultivation conversations with your donors before you ask them anyway, right?
Andrea Kihlstedt:
So that actually does slow down the process. But the Guided Feasibility Study, it’s almost as though the feasibility study process is a part of the campaign. You’re already moving in your campaign. with these early conversations that you’re having with your largest donors, right? That that’s already moving the process forward. So quite separate or quite distinct from it’s going to slow us down, the Guided Feasibility Study process actually speeds you up. Which isn’t what we set out to do, but it turns out that that’s what happens. And many of these guided conversations just roll right into a solicitation.
Sometimes, in fact, in the process of having a conversation, having the feasibility study conversation, a donor will make a commitment, an early commitment right there and then. I mean, I did a feasibility, Guided Feasibility Study some time ago where… In the report, we could say that nearly half of the money had already been committed through the feasibility study process. Now, that doesn’t always happen, but sometimes you get some significant commitments right up front, even though you hadn’t set out to be soliciting those gifts in that process. So it moves you into a campaign earlier than it would otherwise.
Myth #5: A Campaign Consultant Is Unnecessary
All right, Sarah, myth number five. Myth number five goes like this. Ok, if we, the executive director of the leadership, is going to go and do these interviews, what do we need a consultant for anyway? Why don’t we just go ahead and do them?
Sarah Plimpton:
Well, I would say, why would any organization not want to learn from all of the mistakes that we have made over our careers in the seat of feasibility study leader, right? As the consultant doing these feasibility studies. There are a lot of mistakes that an organization can, you know, unknowingly make in a feasibility study that our team is very equipped at helping organizations avoid. There are a lot of details to wrangle and pay attention to and make meaning of. There’s a real process here that we have, you know, dare I say, perfected here at Capital Campaign Pro.
And I just think, why would you go it alone? Why wouldn’t you want, you know, someone who has been through this a bajillion times to be in the front seat of your feasibility study car, helping you make the right turns and speed up and slow down and make meaning of what you’re understanding, figure out how to overcome common challenges in a feasibility study and obstacles. We’ve all been through it so many times. There’s, I think, a lot of value that we can bring to organizations.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah, there are also very specific things that a consultant can do that Capital Campaign Pro does for its Guided Feasibility Study clients.
First of all, we know how these conversations should go. So we train the people who are going to have the leadership conversations so that when they go and have conversations with their donors, they do it in the way that is most effective and most productive. And those trainings are really important and people are really hungry for them. These are not just any old conversations that you’re having. They’re very specific conversations and we do terrific trainings so that people will know what they’re doing and how to do it.
Number two, once you’ve had all these conversations, you need to know how to interpret the information. First of all, you need to know what information should you gather so that at the end of this, you’re going to have some clear information. understanding of what you’ve heard. And then once you’ve gathered the information, you need to know, well, how do I parse it? How do I make sense of it? What actually is this information telling us? And we help all of our clients do that.
So we help them know what information to gather during the conversations. And when the conversations are over, we help them make sense of what they’ve heard, and put together a clear, effective report to present to their board that says, here’s how much money this study has indicated we’re likely to be able to raise. Here are the other things that we’ve learned in this study. A consultant with this breadth of experience, as Sarah said, can put this together in a way that makes remarkable sense. Whereas an organization that has just gone and had a few conversations with their donors is going to be at a loss when they’re faced with having, well, what is the report we’re going to write that’s going to actually move us forward? Have I missed something in there, Sarah, of other things that we do?
Sarah Plimpton:
No, I don’t think so. I can just bring it down to an even more granular level and say that one of the trickiest questions to ask in a feasibility study is for a gift indication, right? A lot of our clients initially are maybe a little wary. Some of them aren’t wary. Some of them get it. pretty quickly, but many of our clients are wary or nervous about sitting down with a donor and asking a donor to give us an estimate of where they might land on the gift range chart that we’re testing as part of this campaign. And we’ve developed a lot of scaffolding to help clients and their volunteers who are intimately involved in these feasibility studies find the language and strategies that are going to work for them to get that question on the table in an effective and appropriate way. And I think that that’s an example, Andrea, of one of the things that we have spent a lot of time thinking about and noodling over in order to support our clients in doing this work.
Recap and Final Thoughts
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Sarah, I’m going to go back through each of these myths that we’ve just gone over, all five of them. And I’m going to make a positive statement. Rather than saying, here’s the myth, I’m going to say, well, here’s what we’ve learned from each of these, just so that people have some… sort of reminder about what we’ve learned from doing Guided Feasibility Studies.
- So number one, be sure to talk to your largest donors before your campaign and your campaign plans are fully perfected. So important.
- Number two, Indeed, it’s true that you don’t have time to do a ton more work in conducting interviews with your major donors. But if you’re not willing to make time for that, then you should be rethinking whether you’re going to have a capital campaign because there is nothing more important for you to be doing than making time and going and talking to those largest donors.
- Number three, your donors will be happy to share with you their opinions, their honest opinions, both good and bad, if you only ask them for them. So important.
- Number four, a feasibility study done well, done in this model, doesn’t slow your campaign down. In fact, it’ll jet propel your campaign planning. It’ll get you well on the road to soliciting those largest gifts and will probably move your campaign forward faster than it would with a traditional model.
- And number five, it’s a fool’s errand to go about this feasibility study business without the help of experts, of Capital Campaign Pro, in fact, because we are the experts in Guided Feasibility Studies, right? Sarah, did I get those right?
Sarah Plimpton:
I think you did, Andrea. And can I add one other thing?
We didn’t touch on this, but I think it’s important to say, invariably, about halfway through every Guided Feasibility Study that I’ve been a part of, the client will come on to a meeting with me and say, oh my gosh, Sarah, I had no idea how much fun this would be. I never want this to end. I’m never going to stop. having feasibility-like conversations with my donors.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
Sarah, you know what that does? That strengthens their whole fundraising program going forward. I mean, forever.
If people learn to do that and like doing it, it’s going to build those relationships in ways they had never imagined.
Sarah Plimpton:
Never imagined. Yeah. It’s pretty remarkable.
Andrea Kihlstedt:
My friend, thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you so much for being on this amazing journey of having developed this new way of doing Guided Feasibility Study. This new model.
And if you are listening to this and you’re interested in knowing how a Guided Feasibility Study might work for you, you can go to capitalcampaignpro.com and under the “Resources” tab, Is that right? I should have looked this up. You know, there’s a button that says “start here” or try this or something like that. Just click on that and sign up for a strategy session. And we’ll be happy to talk about doing one of these things with you and your organization.
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