Is a feasibility study really needed for a nonprofit capital campaign? (Section 2, part of the Q&A series)
By Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru
Here’s why it is important to do a feasibility study before a campaign and why most fundraising consultants refer to the study process as “philanthropic market research.”
To prepare for the leadership briefings (focus groups) requires that an outline case statement be prepared. This forces the organization’s leadership to think through campaign priorities and to practice presenting it to a friendly audience. We generally recommend 4 to 6 briefing sessions to involve your best 50 to 100 donors. For one group we ended up having 22 leadership briefings involving more than 300 people all over the state of
Another great study technique is the use of an engagement survey. This is a simple way to reach out to the next level of prospects. We generally ask organizations to send the engagement survey to the top 5% to 10% of their donor file. This is a much larger group of people than the 40 being interviewed or the 100 in the leadership briefings. You send out the case outline used in the leadership briefings with a one-page (front and back) survey form and a return envelope. We’ve used both regular mail and email. It’s fun to see who pops out of the woodwork. For one organization we sent 16,000 emails and got nearly 2,000 responses. Another group discovered a $500,000 donor that wasn’t on anybody’s radar screen.
One of the most important questions we ask during the interviews is: “Will you work on the campaign in some way?” This helps us to recruit campaign leadership throughout the study process and to present a volunteer organization based upon findings of the study.
We also use the study interactions with a client to help determine what resources the organization will need to win the campaign. One of the major reasons for campaign failure is over-reaching on the goal and under-resourcing the staff. Your organization must play to win.
The final study report, the campaign plan, is also a great educational tool for your volunteers and administrators. An outside voice is helping show the path to campaign success.
The other value of this campaign process is the outside, independence of the consulting team. If the emperor has no clothes, they’ll tell this to the consultant where they may hesitate to tell the staff. It’s a giant listening exercise.
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