How to Eliminate the Possibility of Capital Campaign Failure

Queen Victoria famously said:

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.

I suggest that you take the same approach to your capital campaign. Once you recruit powerful volunteers to serve in leadership positions of your capital campaign, you have an obligation to make sure they succeed.

The leaders and philanthropists of your community put their reputations on the line when they agree to serve on your campaign committees or in leadership positions. To let them down and embarrass them by letting a campaign fail will have serious negative consequences for years to come.

So follow Queen Victoria’s lead — don’t make failure an option.

4 Ways to Eliminate the Possibility of Capital Campaign Failure

Here are four things you can do to eliminate the possibilities of failure.

1. Prepare for your Campaign Thoroughly

Don’t start a campaign on a wing and prayer. Develop a thorough campaign plan for what you want to accomplish.

Make sure that you get reasonable cost estimates for your projects so that once the money is raised you’ll be able to complete the project. Raising the money and then finding out that you haven’t raised enough to cover the costs is even a worse defeat than not being able to raise the money.

You also need to be sure that your board knows about and endorses the plans. The board must be able and willing to take the risk and bear the responsibility for the success of your project.

2. Make Sure Your Largest Donors are on Board

Every successful campaign depends on a very few large gifts. You should consider the prospective donors for those gifts to be partners in the project. Be sure you have shared your plans with them long before your campaign takes full shape.

One key is to have early conversations with them about their likely commitment. This might be done through a feasibility study or through direct conversations with your donors. While you may not be able to tie down the specifics of the gifts, you should be able to get a pretty good indication of them.

3. Don’t Announce Your Final Goal Too Soon

During the planning and “quiet” phases of your campaign, you should use a “working goal” that allows for some flexibility before you announce it publicly. You may do better or worse in the early phases of your campaign than you imagined. A “working goal” allows you to raise or lower the public goal once you have a clear sense of how you’ve done with the top donors.

Then, do some careful analysis of where the rest of the money will come from. Don’t announce publicly until you are quite sure that you can reach the goal.

4. Be Flexible and Creative

As the realities of your campaign take shape, you may find that you have to rethink some of your plans. There’s no sin in doing that. You might lower the goal before you announce and rethink the financing and/or the timetable so that the project is successful.

Use these four strategies and your campaign is likely to succeed.

3 Simple Solutions if Your Capital Campaign is Failing

But sometimes, despite your best efforts, your campaign falls into a hole. Here are four simple and straightforward solutions:

1. Break your project into phases and announce the success of the first phase.
2. Ask one of your leaders for a challenge grant and celebrate the success of reaching that challenge goal.
3. If you must, extend the timeline. But be sure to set a specific deadline. Don’t let it drag out indefinitely — that can be deadly.

Check out this post for some additional ideas for how to address a campaign slump or stall.

Final Thoughts

According to our latest benchmark study, 96% of nonprofits surveyed were satisfied with the result of their campaigns (even if they came in slightly lower than 100% of goal). While success isn’t automatic, it seems as though many fundraisers set themselves up for success from the start. And if you need help on that front, we’re here for you!