The Worst Time to Plan a Capital Campaign for Your Nonprofit

Nonprofit GrowthDevelopment
Written By Sherry Quam Taylor
Image of two nonprofit leaders on a computer and planning the organization's capital campaign

Q: When’s the worst time to plan a Capital Campaign?

A: When you don’t already have a strong Annual Fund of donors giving their best gift, every year.

 

Really.

 

If your donors aren’t already giving their best gift, every year….why would they give a large above-and-beyond gift to your Capital Campaign?

 

If your team isn’t intentionally leading your donors to 1:1 solicitations for their best gift, every year....how would their asks be different during a Capital Campaign?

 

(By solicitations, I mean 1:1 meetings...not emails, letters, or campaigns).

 

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but you might need to pump the breaks on your Capital Campaign. 

 

👉 Your first priority is to lead your donors to each give their best gift, every year. When that occurs, then they will give above and beyond to your campaigns when the time is right.

 

Too many do these in the wrong order and wonder why their campaigns aren’t successful.

 

This is how you build a sustainable organization.

Whenever you’re ready, here are THREE things you can do next:

👣 Follow me on LinkedIn where I share insider info daily — the same lessons I teach my clients about attracting larger gen-ops dollars and diversifying revenue. 

🍎 Grab FREE Guides + White Papers — download robust resources you can use to push against the sector’s misconceptions, equip your board, and shift your team into High-ROI fundraising.

📈 Work with me to diversify revenue & secure the gen-ops gifts you need to grow. If you’re a business-minded nonprofit CEO with big growth plans but need to make charitable revenue from investment-level donors a bigger part of your budget, you can apply to work with me here.

Sherry Quam Taylor

Sherry Quam Taylor works with business-minded Nonprofit CEOs whose Strategic Plans require expansive budgets and larger amounts of general-operating revenue for growth. To become investment-level ready, Sherry helps leaders see their revenue potential and helps them see what may be blocking donors from giving in this way. Sherry’s clients know how to attract larger donors by solving the funding challenges at the root of the issue.

As a result of learning her methodology, Sherry’s clients become sustainable, diversify revenue, and know how to add significant amounts gen-ops revenue to their budgets. But mostly, their development departments and board have transformed into high-ROI revenue generators – aligning their hours with relational dollars and set free from the limitations of transactional fundraising.

Sherry attributes the success of her business to her passion for modeling radical confidence to the future CEOs in her house - her two college-aged daughters.

https://www.QuamTaylor.com
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Nonprofit Leaders: Make the Organizational Shift from Fundraising Activities to Attracting Investment-Level Donors