The Audiences of a Capital Campaign: Who to Target and When

Amy Eisenstein • May 10, 2021

Capital campaigns are multi-year undertakings that can completely reshape how your nonprofit operates. By giving you the support you need to complete a major expansion project or otherwise grow your capacity, a well-planned campaign can unlock new levels of growth while also strengthening ties with supporters.


Traditionally, capital campaigns are broken down into seven phases:


  1. Pre-Campaign Planning - Defining your campaign’s core objectives and determining a working revenue goal.
  2. Feasibility Study - Testing your initial plans through stakeholder interviews.
  3. Campaign Planning - Outlining a complete campaign plan, budget, and timeline.
  4. The Quiet Phase - Identifying prospective major donors, developing those relationships, and securing roughly 65% of your total revenue goal.
  5. Kick-Off - Announcing your campaign to the broader community to celebrate and explain its purpose.
  6. The Public Phase - Spreading the word far and wide to secure the smaller donations that will help you exceed your goal.
  7. Post-Campaign Activities - Following up on any loose ends, reporting on your success, and thanking each and every donor and volunteer.


At each of these phases, understanding exactly who your audience is and how you should connect with them will be essential, especially after a year of pandemic challenges and distractions. For a capital campaign, there are three main audiences you’ll need to speak to at different phases of your campaign:


  • Your organization’s leaders and stakeholders.
  • A small segment of major and mid-level donors.
  • Your broader community of supporters and donors.


Let’s walk through each of these audiences, when you’ll need to connect with them, and a few tips for making those connections as impactful as possible.


Your Organization’s Leaders and Stakeholders


When to Target This Audience:

The pre-planning, feasibility study, and planning phases of your campaign.


The earliest parts of a capital campaign involve first defining the exact objectives you’ll aim to accomplish. From there, you’ll need to begin securing buy-in from your leadership and key stakeholders, including board members, staff, major donors, and other key partners.


Leaders and stakeholders may have different understandings of your organization’s need for a capital campaign or what the ultimate end goal will even be, so your main priority at this point is to get everyone on the same page. To get those conversations going, lay out a few core campaign guidelines, like your objective, working fundraising goal, timeframe, and overarching vision.


Readiness assessments and feasibility studies will be invaluable for gauging your team’s thoughts and crafting your message accordingly. This is the stage at which many nonprofits recruit a capital campaign expert to help guide their feasibility studies and to bring their strategies into focus.


How to Target This Audience:


  • Include leaders and stakeholders in your feasibility study. Feasibility studies occur at the start of a capital campaign and involve interviewing key stakeholders to get a sense of their interest in and understanding of your campaign’s plans and primary objective. As discussed in this guide to feasibility studies, talking directly with the stakeholders who’ll help push your efforts forward can lay a strong foundation for your campaign and show them that you truly value their input.


  • Draft clear, concise, and emotionally-compelling explanations. This early stage is the perfect time to get a head-start crafting the messages you’ll rely on to solicit donations later! As you present your campaign ideas to your board, try to clearly explain the need for your campaign, what its concrete impact will be (on both your operational capacity and your constituents), and how you’ll get there.


  • Use data to strengthen your message. Stakeholders’ emotional connections to your nonprofit and its mission are powerful, but don’t forget to backup your ideas with data. Use statistics and trends to illustrate elements of your campaign like:
  • Your organization’s need for increased capacity.
  • The impact of the past year’s challenges on your ability to serve your community effectively and efficiently.
  • Overarching changes or developments in your community that support your case for increasing capacity.


Major and Mid-Level Donors


When to Target This Audience:

Primarily during the quiet phase, but these donors should be stewarded and thanked throughout the entire campaign.


Once you’ve worked with your team to plan your capital campaign, it’s time to shift focus. The majority of your campaign’s funding will come from a relatively small group of major and mid-tier donors, so you’ll need to first identify them and then start building relationships.


This should be a highly personalized process, so your team should actively tailor your

messaging to each individual throughout the entire quiet phase and beyond.


Use your organization’s connections in the community and donor research tools to identify a working list of prospects. Breaking your prospecting goals down into a gift range chart is an effective way to keep your efforts focused from the very beginning of the quiet phase. With a clear idea of how many gifts of which sizes you’ll need to reach your goal, your development team can better prioritize and refine their messaging along the way.


How to Target This Audience:


  • Take an extremely individualized approach. As mentioned above, your major and mid-level donors will provide the bulk of your campaign’s funding. They want to feel like valued partners, not just ATMs, so personalize all of your communication strategies with this audience. One-on-one conversations and emails will be your best bet to ensure prospects ultimately feel involved and invested in your campaign’s success.


  • Rely heavily on your prospect research findings. As you learn more about your prospects as unique individuals, use those findings to tailor your approach towards each one. Use information like past campaigns that they’ve supported, other nonprofits they’ve worked with, and their philanthropic and personal interests to speak to prospects as individuals. Be sure to record these findings and track all of your interactions and touchpoints with prospects over the course of the quiet phase.


  • Refine a clear, compelling case for support. Your campaign’s case for support is its guiding rationale, explaining why your campaign matters and the difference that completing it will make for your organization and community. Before the quiet phase, you should distill your case for support into one or more documents that your development team can easily leverage during conversations with prospects.


  • Host personal meetings to discuss your campaign with prospects one-on-one. Again, personalization and relationship-building are critical when approaching this audience. If in-person meetings aren’t feasible or if your prospect lives far away, virtual meetings have proven just as effective (and in many cases more convenient and efficient) ways to make connections and discuss your campaign. If you’ve hosted one or more virtual fundraising events, you likely already have a reliable tech infrastructure in place to shift your prospect meetings to the virtual sphere.


Your Broader Community of Supporters and Donors


When to Target This Audience:

From the kick-off of your public phase through the end of your campaign.


Once you’ve secured at least 65% of your campaign’s total funding from major and mid-level donors, it’s time to broaden your scope. Bring your capital campaign to the community as a whole to get them excited and help push you over the finish line!


This broader audience will consist of your entire base of smaller donors, volunteers, community partners, and other organizations in your area. The exact strategies you use during the public phase will vary based on your unique context and goals, but there are a few core tips to keep in mind when communicating with this audience.


How to Target This Audience:


  • Outline the different aspects or activities of your public phase. This will give you plenty of time to craft your messaging for your audience. These elements might include your initial kickoff announcement, event invites, email campaigns, direct mailings, and social media posts. For some of these activities, you’ll want to cast a wide net and promote them far and wide, while others may need a more targeted approach. In both cases, make sure you have the right tools in place, especially an easy-to-use campaign site and online donation tools that match your campaign’s branding.


  • Segment your audience to take a more targeted approach as needed. For some types of outreach during the public phase, like email and direct mail, you’ll see better results if you target your messages to particular segments of your audience. For example, you might develop email streams for different supporter segments based on what you know about them and how they’ve engaged with your work in the past. Your database or CRM should make this process fairly easy, but as Dataro explains in their guide to AI, more advanced tools that take the guesswork out of segmentation are becoming increasingly feasible for smaller nonprofits. New data tools may make a smart long-term investment to build into your capital campaign’s budget.


  • Offer multiple ways to get involved. While smaller donations from this audience are an important part of a capital campaigns public phase, don’t forget to give everyone the chance to take part in the excitement. Virtual events and social media-based awareness and peer-to-peer campaigns can all be valuable ways to boost engagement. The help of volunteers can be invaluable during the earlier parts of your campaign, but don’t forget that you may have other supporters who’d love to lend a helping hand to your public phase events and marketing efforts.

Through each of its phases, you’ll need to convince multiple audiences of the importance and impact of your capital campaign.


With a solid understanding of these audiences and how to approach them, you’ll be well equipped to drive your campaign through to completion. Once you’re done, remember to take some time to celebrate, thank all of your donors for their help, and enjoy watching your nonprofit’s impact grow.


Capital Campaign Readiness Assessment


Is your organization ready for a capital campaign? This simple assessment tool will help you find out. You’ll assess six key areas of your organization. Take this free assessment now and find out if you’re truly ready for a campaign.


About the Author

Amy Eisenstein


Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, is CEO & Co-Founder of the Capital Campaign Toolkit, a virtual support system for nonprofit leaders to run successful campaigns. The Toolkit provides all the tools, templates, and guidance you need - without breaking the bank.


She is a veteran fundraising consultant. With over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, she’s published a number of books, including Major Gift Fundraising for Small Shops. Amy is also an in-demand keynote speaker and an engaging board retreat trainer and facilitator.


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