Planning for a Successful Capital Campaign: Do You Have a Strategic Plan?

Let’s discuss your organization’s strategic plan. If you’ve gone through the strategic planning process recently, the following components are probably in place. If not, you might need to work on your strategic plan. Carefully review the following list and determine what you need to have in place in your organization before you can start to plan a campaign:

• We need to update our mission statement.
• We need to develop or update our vision statement.
• We need to develop or update our values statement.
• We need to create or update a strategic plan.
• We need a marketing plan.
• We need a development plan.
• We need to obtain architectural drawings and costs for our project.
• We need to develop a preliminary case for support.
• We need to conduct a planning (feasibility) study.

Often a good exercise to help refine your mission is to review websites or other sources of mission statements for other nonprofits. Once you’ve reviewed some other mission statements, which ones stand out as being well written? What do you like about these mission statements? What do you like about your mission statement? What don’t you like about your mission statement?

Our Vision Statement

As with the mission statement, a good exercise to help refine your vision is to review websites or other sources of vision statements for other nonprofits. Once you’ve reviewed some other vision statements, which ones stand out as being well written?

What do you like about these vision statements? What do you like about your vision statement? What don’t you like about your vision statement?

Our Values Statement

Often, a good exercise to help refine your values is to review a list of ideals. Use the following list as a starting point for your organization to develop its values statement.

Sample Values:

Authenticity

Accountability

Balance

Caring

Credentials

Compassion

Confidence

Conviction

Dependability

Diversity

Daring

Efficiency

Effectiveness

Fairness

Freedom

Honesty

Originality

Integrity

Initiative

Listening

Natural

Pride

Responsibility

Security

Trustworthiness

Truth

Uniqueness

Wellness

Once you’ve reviewed the list of values, which ones seem appropriate for your organization? What do you like about these new values? What do you like about your current values statement? What don’t you like about your current values statement?

Planning

Organizational planning is critical. If you don’t have solid plans, it will be difficult to attract funders. Remember that while emotion can draw donors to your organization, serious donors want to know that you can deliver on your promises and that your plan clearly makes sense for your organization and for the community. I generally recommended that you have outside facilitators help with strategic planning and sometimes other plans, as well.

If your campaign involves new construction, expansion of existing facilities, or renovation of an existing building(s), you will need to do an architectural study of your existing facilities or have an architect draw up plans for the new building.

If you need to purchase land, you should work with a real estate agent to help with this process. If you are in the market for land, do you have a professionally developed plan for how much land you need and what your requirements for this land are (i.e., proximity to bus lines, number of acres, convenient location)?

Developing Your Case for Support

You will want to develop a preliminary case for support to test before launching your capital campaign with a fully developed case statement. Sometimes what you might think is important is not what community members feel is important. Based on feedback, your case might need to be modified after it’s been tested. Goals might need to be adjusted if the community does not think your goal is realistic. Is your organization ready to test your case?

To learn more about capital campaigns and the planning required, take my course, Capital Campaigns: Yes, You CAN Do It. Sign up here