A capital campaign is a major, multi-year undertaking that can transform how your nonprofit operates. By giving you the support needed to complete a major expansion project or otherwise grow your capacity, a well-planned and executed campaign can unlock new levels of growth and strengthen your relationships with supporters. 

According to Capital Campaign Pro, capital campaigns are traditionally divided into seven phases: 

1. Pre-Campaign Planning: Defining your campaign’s core objectives and determining a working fundraising goal
2. Feasibility Study: Testing your initial plans through stakeholder interviews
3. Campaign Planning: Finalizing your goal and outlining a complete campaign plan, budget, and timeline
4. The Quiet Phase: Identifying prospective major donors, developing those relationships, and securing roughly 75% of your total goal
5. Kick-Off: Announcing your campaign to your 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 reach (or exceed!) your goal
7. Post-Campaign Activities: Following up on any loose ends, reporting on your success, and thanking all donors and volunteers

Understanding the audience for each phase and knowing how you should connect with them will be essential for the success of your campaign. Let’s walk through three main 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 

You’ll target your organization’s leaders and stakeholders during the pre-planning, feasibility study, and planning phases of your campaign. 

The earliest parts of a capital campaign involve defining the campaign objectives. During those early phases, you’ll need to secure 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 goal will be, so your main priority at this point is to get everyone on the same page. Get those conversations going by laying out a few core campaign guidelines like your objectives, working fundraising goal, timeframe, and overarching vision.

Readiness assessments and feasibility studies will be invaluable for gauging your team’s thoughts and shaping your plan accordingly. This is the stage at which many nonprofits recruit a capital campaign expert to help guide their feasibility studies and 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. They consist of interviews with key stakeholders to get a sense of their interest in and understanding of your campaign’s plans and primary objective. And these studies make a big difference in campaign success. According to a 2023 benchmark study, organizations that conduct a study raise, on average, 115% of their campaign goal. Talking directly with the stakeholders who’ll help push your efforts forward lays a strong foundation for your campaign while also showing your stakeholders you value their input.

• Draft clear, concise, and emotionally compelling explanations. This early stage is the perfect time to get a headstart crafting the messages you’ll rely on to solicit donations later! As you present your campaign ideas to your board, 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 back up 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 any recent challenges on your ability to serve your community
• Overarching changes or developments in your community that support your case for increasing capacity
• The projected quantitative impact of a successful campaign

Major and Mid-Level Donors 

When To Target This Audience 

Target major and mid-level donors primarily during the quiet phase, but continue to steward and thank them 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 you already know, so you’ll need to identify them and then start strengthening your 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 expand your  list of prospects. Breaking your prospecting goals down into a gift range chart is an effective way to keep your efforts focused. Then, 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 its messaging along the way.

How To Target This Audience 

• Take an extremely individualized approach. Your most impactful donors 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 the best way to ensure prospects 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 toward each one. Use information like past campaigns that they’ve supported, other nonprofits they’ve worked with, their philanthropic and personal interests, and their communication preferences to speak to prospects as individuals. 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 to be just as effective (and in many cases more convenient and efficient).

Your Broader Community of Supporters and Donors 



When To Target This Audience 

Target your broader community from the kick-off of your public phase through the end of your campaign. 

Once you’ve secured at least 75% 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 marketing messages 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 advanced AI tools that take the guesswork out of segmentation are becoming increasingly feasible for smaller nonprofits and may make smart long-term investments.

• Offer multiple ways to get involved. While smaller donations from this audience are an important part of a capital campaign's public phase, remember there are other ways your community can take part in the excitement. Events, social media-based awareness, volunteer opportunities, and peer-to-peer campaigns can all be valuable ways to boost engagement.
  

Through each of your capital campaign’s phases, you’ll need to convince multiple audiences of the importance and impact of your 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’ve crossed the finish line, take some time to celebrate, thank your supporters for all of their help, and enjoy watching your nonprofit’s capacity grow as you break ground on newly-funded projects! 

Is your organization ready for a capital campaign? This free assessment tool will help you find out! Take it to assess six key areas of your organization.