Capital Campaigns: A Groundbreaking Guide to Success
Every nonprofit organization reaches a point where its vision outgrows its current capacity. Perhaps you need a new state-of-the-art facility, a substantial permanent endowment, or the resources to launch a massive program expansion that will transform your community. This moment, the leap from your current reality to your boldest future, is powered by a Capital Campaign.
A capital campaign is not just another annual appeal; it is the most ambitious and strategic fundraising effort a nonprofit can undertake. Successfully executed, it can permanently reshape your organization’s financial stability and physical infrastructure.
But where do you start? How do you ensure your multi-million dollar vision doesn’t turn into a multi-year headache?
In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through every critical phase of the capital campaign process. From assessing readiness and securing your first major gifts in the quiet phase, to selecting the right consulting support and executing a flawless public launch, we’ll provide the roadmap you need to turn your organization’s biggest dreams into reality. This includes:
- Capital Campaign FAQs
- The Capital Campaign Process
- Essentials for a Successful Capital Campaign
- How to Use Challenge Grants as a Capital Campaign Multiplier
- What to Know About Capital Campaign Consultants
- Unique Capital Campaign Ideas
Let’s begin by answering a few frequently asked questions by nonprofits such as yours.
Capital Campaign FAQs
What Is a Capital Campaign?
At its core, a capital campaign is an extensive, drawn-out fundraiser.
But at a more complex level, a capital campaign is a concerted effort to raise substantial funds for a specific project or undertaking. According to Capital Campaign Pro, these campaigns typically take 2-3 years from start to finish, and most organizations conduct them every 10-15 years.
Because these are the most significant fundraising campaigns your nonprofit will ever take on, capital campaigns require coordination and cooperation from your entire organization and community. Without the support of board members, staff, and individuals who are dedicated to your cause, a capital campaign has little to no chance of succeeding.
Why Do Nonprofits Use Capital Campaigns?
As stated before, nonprofits generally use capital campaigns for large projects that require substantial financial backing. More often than not, capital campaigns are used to raise money for a new building or renovations to an existing building. But they can also be for:
Purchasing Lands or Buildings
The main reason many organizations wish to acquire land is the possibility of future expansion. Capital campaigns are thus used to help organizations raise enough funds to finance land purchases. Organizations may also campaign to buy a building they’ve rented for a long time when the space goes up for sale, to secure a safe future without rent increases.
Expanding an Existing Building
Large organizations such as hospitals and schools often need to regularly expand their facilities to accommodate a growing patient or student population. Such projects are massive undertakings that require substantial financial resources, which is why they are mostly funded through capital campaigns.
Funding New Programs or Increasing Staffing
Sometimes, in order to get a new program or initiative off the ground, your nonprofit needs an influx of funds to secure the necessary resources. You may even need funding to grow your team, ensuring your organization has the capacity to do more for its beneficiaries.
Building an Endowment
An endowment helps secure a bright future for your nonprofit, but it can be difficult to encourage giving to a capital campaign focused solely on an endowment, since the impact of that giving may not be immediate. This is why many organizations choose to include endowment funding as one element of a multifaceted capital campaign.
Purchasing Equipment or Supplies
Nonprofits sometimes need large-scale purchases to further their missions. A hospital, for example, may need to upgrade existing radiology equipment, or a university may require a high-powered telescope for the astronomy department. Capital campaigns can help fund these major purchases.
What Types of Organizations Run Capital Campaigns?
Any type of organization can run a capital campaign! Let’s highlight a few examples:
Hospitals
Many hospitals and healthcare nonprofits launch capital campaigns to raise funds for new wings or buildings, purchase new equipment, replace or repair outdated machines, or fund groundbreaking medical research.
Schools and Universities
Schools, colleges, and universities are another type of organization that frequently uses capital campaigns as a fundraising method. Education-related organizations use capital campaigns to raise funds for new buildings, scholarship programs, or equipment.
Community Organizations
These organizations often launch campaigns to build or expand physical centers that serve local residents, such as new food banks, youth centers, or recreational facilities. Their campaigns focus on scaling essential programs and infrastructure that directly improve the quality of life within a specific geographic area.
Civic Organizations
Civic groups often run capital campaigns to renovate or restore historical landmarks, establish memorials, or fund large-scale public works projects like parks and libraries. Their goals are usually tied to enhancing the public good and preserving shared community assets.
Environmental Nonprofits
Environmental organizations rely on capital campaigns to secure large tracts of land for conservation, establish permanent endowments for long-term stewardship, or build interpretive and educational facilities. These campaigns aim to protect natural resources and fund significant, enduring ecological projects.
Animal-Related Organizations
These nonprofits frequently seek capital funding to construct new shelters with modern veterinary facilities, establish sanctuaries for rescued animals, or expand kennel capacity. Their campaigns are often driven by the urgent need to upgrade facilities that provide direct animal care and housing.
Arts and Culture Nonprofits
Museums, theaters, symphonies, and galleries run capital campaigns to fund the construction of new performance halls, the acquisition or preservation of significant collections, or the renovation of historical venues. These efforts are crucial for expanding programming space and ensuring the long-term viability of cultural institutions.
Churches and Religious Organizations
Religious organizations commonly use capital campaigns to raise funds for major building projects, such as renovating or constructing new places of worship, expanding classrooms for faith-based education, or creating community outreach centers. These campaigns often tie the fundraising goal directly to the organization’s spiritual and community mission.
Who Can Help You Conduct a Capital Campaign?
Capital campaigns are significant undertakings, so nonprofits usually turn to professional fundraising consultants to help plan and execute them. A consultant or advisor can help with campaign planning, feasibility studies, prospect research, fundraising and solicitation, event planning, and more.
Our recommendation:
We suggest taking a hands-on approach to your capital campaign with our preferred expert: Capital Campaign Pro.
This innovative campaign support system gives you everything you need to plan and run your capital campaign: resources, expert guidance, templates, hands-on experience, and access to a community of other nonprofits also conducting campaigns.
The traditional consulting approach, while often effective, can be quite expensive and opaque, meaning your team won’t have access to all of the campaign tools or learn how all the pieces of the campaign fit together. Capital Campaign Pro offers an alternative approach that can yield immense benefits for your team, even long after your capital campaign comes to a successful end.
How Can You Market Your Capital Campaign?
A well-marketed capital campaign can launch big projects for your mission. Before entering the public phase of your campaign, make sure you have a well-thought-out marketing plan. Here are some core considerations as you brainstorm marketing strategies with your team.
Your Website
Your nonprofit’s website should serve as the single most critical communications hub for your entire capital campaign. For this reason, we suggest dedicating a prominent section or a separate landing page to the campaign, ensuring it clearly features the Case for Support, the running campaign total, a direct donation form, and compelling visuals of the project’s future impact.
Furthermore, for your top-tier major donors, it should be easy to launch challenge matches in support of your capital campaign straight from your website. Making this high-level participation seamless signals that you are prepared for transformational gifts and empowers leadership donors to instantly amplify the campaign’s public momentum.
Google Ads
Once your capital campaign information is live on your website, paid advertising is a wonderful way to get that content in front of potential prospects. Using the Google Grants program, you can receive up to $10,000 to spend on Google Ads for free each month. With careful keyword research, you can amplify your campaign’s landing page on Google Search and drive more traffic to it.
For the best results, we recommend working with a Google Grants consultant to create inspiring ads that target the right users on Google.
Brochures
A brochure gives you plenty of space to cover the key details of your capital campaign.
The most compelling brochures feature what your project will accomplish and who it’ll benefit, whether that’s building a shelter for the homeless, an animal sanctuary for endangered species, or something else. Paint a picture with words and images about how your work will create a difference. Then provide details on how to get involved, such as visiting your campaign page’s URL.
Email has the highest ROI of any marketing channel, so include it in your outreach!
When you move into the public phase of your campaign, send regular emails to announce it. Then, provide updates along the way. You have seconds to get your point across, so keep your emails short and include a clear call to action in each one, giving the reader their exact next step. Then, top it all off with a subject line that encourages recipients to open the email.
What Does The Research Say About Capital Campaigns?
The Capital Campaign Process
Planning a Capital Campaign
Your nonprofit needs to carefully plan its capital campaign before it begins fundraising to ensure the implementation process goes as smoothly as possible. Without a thorough plan in place, your team may not successfully anticipate issues before they arise and may realize too late that your fundraising strategy needs revision. Some tasks that should be completed in the planning phase include:
Determining objectives & working financial goal
The objectives of your campaign are the reasons you’re conducting your campaign. For instance, you may want to purchase new supplies and equipment or renovate your facility. Your financial goal will depend on the scope and size of the project your organization is undertaking. You should arrive at this number after careful calculation and accounting for hidden costs.
Conducting a feasibility study or report
We’ll go over the details of a feasibility report in a later section, but it’s vital to the success of your capital campaign. A feasibility report is essentially “product-testing” your campaign. You want to ensure the community will support your project, and a feasibility report helps you do just that.
Creating a gift range chart
Once you’ve tested the feasibility of your campaign and have a more solid financial goal, create a gift range chart. This visualization shows how many gifts your nonprofit needs to secure at different levels. You can take this a step further by developing a depth chart, which attaches specific prospect and donor names to each gift.
Establishing your communications strategy
Determine how you’ll get the word out about your campaign during both the quiet and the public phases. Review the strategies listed above, like using Google Ad Grants or creating a brochure, while also considering what you know about your community and the communications they’ve responded to in the past.
Developing your budget
Capital campaigns are used to raise money for large projects, but they also cost money to prepare and launch. You’ll need to account for marketing materials, event costs, and other fundraising expenses that may arise.
Setting a deadline
Your deadline will largely depend on your financial target and the pool of donors you expect to donate. You don’t want to make your deadline too soon and risk not reaching your goal. On the other hand, you don’t want to set a deadline that’s five years from now when it would only take two years to raise the money.
Implementing a Capital Campaign
After all of the hard work in the planning phase, it’s time to implement your capital campaign! There are two main segments within the implementation process:
The Quiet Phase
The quiet phase is not open to the public; instead, it relies on contributions from your major donors. During this stage, your committee members will reach out to your major donors and local businesses to solicit large donations. Usually, capital campaigns raise 50-70% of their total during the quiet phase, and it’s a great opportunity to kick off the prospect research and appending processes to learn more about your target donors.
The Public Phase
The public phase begins with a kickoff event, sometimes at the building site (when applicable). Once the public phase begins, donors can give as much as they want. Your committee can still solicit major gifts, but the focus should be on broad marketing to as many donors as possible.
Once you reach your goal in the public phase, it’s time to celebrate! However, don’t neglect important donor stewardship tasks, such as thanking your donors and continuing to communicate with them. Capitalize on the relationships you strengthened during your campaign in order to secure future engagement and support.
Essentials for a Successful Capital Campaign
A Feasibility Study
Feasibility studies are crucial to the success of any capital campaign. They essentially determine whether or not your donors and the community will be willing to support your organization’s project.
Think of your feasibility study as a critical must-have instead of an optional step. It will help you get a leg up on your campaign from the get-go. In fact, Capital Campaign Pro found that organizations that conducted a feasibility study raised, on average, 115% of their original campaign goal, compared with 101% for those that did not.
During a feasibility study, your organization’s leaders or an outside consultant will sit down and interview 30 to 40 individuals from the community. The experts at Capital Campaign Pro recommend taking a hands-on, guided approach in which your nonprofit’s leaders conduct the interviews personally with the support of a campaign advisor. You’ll then work together to distill insights and recommendations.
We recommend interviewing a combination of:
- Community leaders: Mayors, local representatives, and company board members will have valuable insight into the feasibility of your capital campaign. Test the waters by talking to the movers and shakers of your local community. Make sure to get leaders from a variety of industries and sectors.
- Current and past board members: Your current and past board members can offer valuable perspectives and opinions on whether the capital campaign will be successful. Previous board members can do the same, and they may also be able to offer good advice if they have experience with capital campaigns during their tenure.
- Staff members: It’s important to gather their thoughts on your capital campaign before you launch it. They might have insights or reservations that you hadn’t thought of before. Depending on the size of your nonprofit, you might not be able to interview every single staff member. Instead, grab a leader from each department to talk to during your feasibility study.
- Major donors: These donors will contribute the most to your capital campaign. It makes sense to interview them to get their input about your fundraising efforts. Talk to previous major gift donors as well as any prospects in your community who you think might want to donate to your capital campaign.
Questions to ask your interviewees during a feasibility study will range from personal (“What is your connection to the organization?”) to more broad (“Do you think this organization can raise the money for this project?”).
Here are a few questions to consider:
- How do you feel about our case for support?
- How do you feel about the project as a whole?
- Do you think our goal and deadline are attainable and reasonable?
- How do you think the community will respond to the project and campaign?
- Who do you think will be the biggest supporters of this campaign?
By the end of the feasibility study, your organization should be able to determine whether or not you have the support needed to raise money for your capital campaign.
Powering your feasibility study with employment data
Modern fundraising best practices recognize that wealth indicators and philanthropic connections go hand in hand with professional background. Powering your feasibility study and quiet-phase outreach with up-to-date donor employment data is key to identifying top prospects and accurately assessing their capacity. Traditional wealth screening may only capture real estate or stock holdings, but sophisticated data tools, often powered by workplace giving providers, can pinpoint a prospect’s current employer, workplace giving potential, and more. This information is invaluable because it not only confirms their financial capacity but also reveals their eligibility for matching gifts and volunteer grants.
By combining internal giving history with comprehensive employment data, your team can prioritize outreach to individuals with the greatest capacity to make a transformational gift and simultaneously unlock matching funds from their employers.
A Capital Campaign Committee
Before you begin planning your capital campaign, you’ll first want to gather a committee of dedicated individuals around you to help with its planning and execution. People you should consider for your capital campaign committee include:
- Board Members
- Staff Members
- Major Gift Donors
- Challenge Match Leaders
- Volunteer Leaders
- Community Leaders
Don’t feel obligated to create a massive capital campaign committee that includes every board member, staff member, and major donor in your organization’s history. The committee should be big enough to handle the particulars of the capital campaign but small enough to give everyone an opportunity to voice their opinion.
Prospect Research
As a valuable tool you can leverage to better understand your donor base, prospect research can help you learn more about your donors. This includes their:
- Past giving history to your organization
- Previous donations to other nonprofits and political campaigns
- Business connections
- Employment information
- Basic data like name, email address, and phone number
Having this information will help guide you toward your major donors. Because major gifts are going to drive the first half to two-thirds of your capital campaign, you’ll need to be well prepared to make those donation appeals.
With prospect research on your side, you’ll be more than ready to solicit those major donations from your supporters.
A Case for Support
A case for support is a document that outlines your nonprofit’s justification for hosting a capital campaign. It is useful for both your feasibility study and the quiet and public phases of the campaign.
For that reason, your case for support must be airtight and convincing! Convey a sense of urgency as concisely and clearly as possible. After all, donors want to know why they should support you and how they can help. Your case for support should include:
- Your nonprofit’s background
- Your cause and services
- Your future goals
- The reason for the capital campaign
- An explanation of the capital campaign
A great case for support will be branded to your organization. Just take a look at this example from St. Ursula’s Academy.
As this example from Aly Sterling’s Capital Campaign guide demonstrates, nonprofits can creatively showcase their financial goals while capturing the spirit of their cause! Specifically, the branded colors, the heartfelt text, and the easy-to-understand fundraising goals make this case for support tangible.
The Right Tools + Technology
The complexity and scale of a modern capital campaign require specialized technology to manage donor data, automate outreach, and capture every available dollar. While human relationship building is always paramount, smart technology ensures that no opportunity is left on the table, especially when dealing with thousands of donors and a high financial goal. The good news? The right tools help you move faster and raise more by streamlining complex tasks.
One of the most critical and often overlooked components of a capital campaign is the potential revenue stream from corporate matching gifts, which can easily amount to a multi-million-dollar mistake if ignored. This is where a tool like Double the Donation becomes a non-negotiable part of your campaign technology stack. Not to mention, the platform serves a dual strategic purpose. First, it automatically identifies matching gift eligibility on your donation forms and thank you pages, ensuring donors can easily double their contributions toward your capital goal.
Second, Double the Donation’s data-appending capabilities can power your major gift prospect research by identifying an individual’s employer and associated corporate giving potential. This workplace data is key to calculating capacity, finding corporate grant connections, and confirming eligibility for those high-value matching gifts, giving your team the essential intelligence they need for successful solicitations.
How to Use Challenge Grants as a Capital Campaign Multiplier
Challenge grants offer a core strategy for maximizing campaign success and urgency in a way that just about no other fundraising vehicle can match. A challenge grant is a type of funding awarded by a grant-making entity, often a foundation or wealthy individual, typically after a nonprofit completes a specific fiscal challenge. This challenge typically involves raising a specific amount of money from other sources within a defined period.
Here’s how it works:
Creating Capital Campaign Urgency and Momentum
The primary advantage of a challenge grant is the instant urgency it creates for a capital campaign. The concept is simple yet profoundly effective: the challenge only exists for a limited time, and the matching funds are often framed in a “use it or lose it” way. This structure transforms a general plea for support into a time-sensitive opportunity for donors to double the impact of their gift.
For the public phase of a campaign, announcing a $1 million challenge grant, for instance, provides a massive, irresistible hook for all communications, galvanizing lower- and mid-level donors to participate right away.
Framing the Ask: Leveraging Major Gifts for Broader Participation
Challenge grants do not just pull in general donors; they also leverage the major gifts already secured during the quiet phase. As discussed previously, asking a lead donor to be the source of the challenge match is a powerful framing tool. The initial major gift is then publicly announced as the Challenge Match, inspiring others to follow suit. This strategy ensures that the quiet-phase gifts do double duty: they serve as the foundational funding and the motivational fuel for the rest of the campaign.
A challenge grant will sometimes match the challenge amount at a ratio of 0.5:1 to 2:1, meaning your nonprofit could stand to more than double the funds that you raise during your campaign simply by strategically applying this leverage. Do some research to find out whether there are any challenge grants available in your local area, or whether you have major donors with challenge match potential, to help your campaign reach its goal!
Here’s an example:
Did You Know? The challenge grant model is a psychological tool as much as a fiscal one. It reduces donors’ perceived risk because they see that a major gift has already been committed (the match), and it activates a sense of community achievement by requiring collective action to unlock the larger prize.
What to Know About Capital Campaign Consultants
How to Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant
Capital campaign consultants bring valuable expertise and a refreshing outside perspective to help you plan and execute your capital campaign. However, hiring a consultant can be rather involved. After all, you’re building a partnership and a long-lasting relationship with someone who can understand your mission, meet your needs, and get along well with your existing staff.
Here are some tips for making sure you get the right fit:
1. Determine your nonprofit’s needs.
Do you need a consultant to conduct a feasibility study, or to support your efforts throughout the campaign?
2. Do your research.
Look online for consultants who offer the specialty services that you need. Consider their location, cost, and core values. Ask other nonprofits in your network for recommendations.
3. Start a conversation with your top choices.
Speak with your top consultants on the phone or in person. Get a feel for their personalities and how they’d mesh with your nonprofit.
4. Request a proposal.
Request a proposal from your top choices. Look for a consultant who understands your nonprofit’s unique needs and brings new ideas to the table.
5. Check your consultant’s references.
Ask for former clients that you can speak with to better understand how each consultant can serve your nonprofit.
6. Finalize the details.
Once you’ve selected a consultant, you can discuss changes to their proposal and the engagement. Then, sign a contract that you’re both happy with and get to work!
Top Capital Campaign Consultants
The good news is that there are a ton of capital campaign consultants available to assist your organization with its upcoming campaign. Here are a few of our recommended firms and resources:
Averill Fundraising Solutions
For organizations seeking comprehensive, on-the-ground support, Averill Fundraising Solutions provides a highly experienced consulting model. Averill focuses on maximizing campaign potential through proven strategies and professional execution, offering a partnership that guides your team from the early feasibility study through final gift closing.
Averill’s approach emphasizes rigorous planning, tailored case development, and personalized coaching for your leadership and staff. Their consultants integrate directly with your internal teams, lending expertise in major donor identification, volunteer training, and meticulous campaign timeline management.
Aly Sterling Philanthropy
Organizations that require strategic guidance across various stages of growth often turn to Aly Sterling Philanthropy. While offering comprehensive capital campaign consulting, their focus is on building long-term organizational health that supports fundraising success. They work with nonprofits to ensure the capital campaign is not just a temporary project, but a launchpad for sustained major giving.
Aly Sterling Philanthropy’s campaign services begin with a deep dive into organizational readiness, ensuring your board, staff, and major gift pipeline are robust enough to support a large-scale campaign. Their consultants provide tailored advice on board engagement, case-for-support development, and integrating campaign goals with the nonprofit’s long-term strategic plan.
Capital Campaign Pro
For nonprofit leaders interested in taking a more hands-on approach to planning and running their campaigns, other capital campaign support options are available. For example, Capital Campaign Pro combines online campaign resources with expert advising for budget-friendly support that gives you the best of both worlds. By playing an active, direct role in your capital campaign, your team will learn invaluable skills related to campaign planning, donor stewardship, major gift solicitation, and more.
With Capital Campaign Pro, nonprofits are guided through an organized capital campaign plan. The step-by-step plan, resources and templates, and coaching calls all guide you to campaign success. Further, you’re able to have one-on-one advising with one of their expert capital campaign advisors for additional support.
Unique Capital Campaign Ideas
Capital Campaigns and Fundraising Events
Fundraising events can be a great opportunity for your nonprofit to directly interact with donors and build deeper connections. Because capital campaigns often run for months and even years, there is plenty of time for your nonprofit to host fun events that bring in more donations.
Obviously, the one event you’ll need to plan is the kickoff between the Quiet Phase and the Public Phase. But you can host all sorts of fundraisers to bring your community together and raise money for your campaign.
Check out some of our favorite fundraiser ideas here!
Capital Campaigns and Challenge Grants
A capital campaign committee may elect to apply for a challenge grant to take its fundraising efforts to the next level. Challenge grants are funds released by a grant-making entity after a nonprofit completes a challenge, typically a fiscal one, making them perfect additions to capital campaigns.
A challenge grant will sometimes match the challenge amount at a ratio of 0.5:1 to 2:1. This means that your nonprofit could stand to triple the funds that you raise during your capital campaign with the help of a challenge grant.
Do some research to find out whether there are any challenge grants available in your local area, or whether you have major donors with challenge match potential, to help your capital campaign reach its goal!
Explore our complete guide to challenge match fundraisers here.
Capital Campaigns and Employee Matching Gifts
Matching gifts can speed up your capital campaign by twofold. These corporate giving programs reward employee donations to nonprofits by doubling or, in some cases, tripling employees’ donations to eligible organizations.
Not every donor will work for a company that matches donations, and even if they do, every company has different guidelines and restrictions that must be followed before the matching funds are released. But your organization should still promote matching gifts to all of your capital campaign donors!
Why? Well, since 50-70% of your capital campaign funds will come from major gifts, those donations mean even more when they are doubled. It can’t hurt to remind your donors of matching gift programs.
Download our ultimate guide to matching gifts to learn more!
Capital Campaigns and Other Corporate Donations
Companies, big and small, are often willing to support nonprofit projects, such as capital campaigns. Not only does it allow them to be more philanthropic, but it also provides tax benefits and enables them to form meaningful partnerships with organizations.
Therefore, it’s a smart move for some members of your capital campaign committee to ask businesses for cash and in-kind donations for your capital campaign. Some companies will respond favorably and donate generously, while others will have guidelines on the types of nonprofits and projects they support. The best route to take is to research which companies offer grant programs and regularly donate to nonprofit organizations.
Check out the top companies that donate to nonprofits here!
Wrapping Up & Additional Resources
The journey through a capital campaign is perhaps the most ambitious, rewarding, and transformative endeavor a nonprofit can undertake. It requires meticulous planning, unwavering board commitment, and a willingness to embrace the strategic process.
The ultimate takeaway? Don’t go it alone. Use this guide as your roadmap, commit to thorough preparation, and step confidently into the process. The vision you hold for your organization’s future, that new facility, expanded endowment, or vital program expansion, is within reach.
Now, take this knowledge, choose your path forward, and prepare to make your organization’s boldest dreams a reality.
Interested in learning more with additional fundraising resources and guides? Here’s our recommended further reading:
- Exceptional Capital Campaign Consulting Firms to Consider. Looking to get a capital campaign consultant on board for your upcoming initiative? Explore our list of leading firms to help in your search for the right pick.
- Prospect Research: A Nonprofit’s Key to Better Fundraising. Prospect research can play a key role in capital campaigns and other fundraising successes. Dive into this complete guide to learn how your team can get started today.
- Major Gifts: How to Unlock Your Donors’ Fullest Potential. A successful capital campaign will rely on a number of major gifts to reach its goal. Check out everything you need to know about major donor fundraising in this helpful guide!
