Convergent Note: The following is a brief excerpt from an article written by Principal Mark Bergethon and published in the Mar/Apr 2017 issue of AmeriDisability, “Florida’s leading publication for individuals, businesses, and nonprofits supporting our disabled community.” To read the full article, follow the link at the bottom of the excerpt.
Nonprofits are constantly in fundraising mode. It’s just the nature of the beast. For and away the best bang for your buck in the fundraising arena is to conduct a capital campaign. By “capital campaign” I don’t necessarily mean raising money for bricks and mortar. I’m referring to a major fundraising campaign above and beyond the normal development activities that is focused on funding specific programs, projects, and special initiatives. These campaigns might fund facilities, operations, endowments, new programs, organizational expansion—or all of the above (and more). We counsel our clients to develop a strategic plan that packages together everything they would like to do over a multi-year period (five-year plans are the most common) that would require additional funding, establish what that would cost and accomplish, and launch a capital campaign designed to secure multi-year pledge commitments from top stakeholders and significant potential funding sources.
The traditional capital campaign process (which has been successfully implemented by thousands of nonprofits nationwide for decades) is broken into three distinct steps.
