For many nonprofits, 2020 brought a wide range of highs and lows: tightened resources, drastically increased needs for their services, and (hopefully) surging support from their communities.
These forces would strain the operations of even the largest, most structurally-sound organization, so if your own nonprofit is feeling stretched a bit thin, you’re not alone.
Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond, organizations should start exploring ways to capitalize on the support they received in the past year. If you have a specific project or initiative in mind for your organization, the answer might be to plan and conduct a capital campaign. By growing your fundraising capacity, doubling down on donor relationships, and making important investments in your growth, a campaign can scale up your operations and keep you growing sustainably.
For growing nonprofits, a well-planned capital campaign can be a game-changer to help you raise more support, reach wider audiences, and drive your mission further than ever. If you’ve conducted one in the past, you likely already know what a campaign will entail, but it’s never a bad idea to brush up on how things have changed, specifically in terms of technology.
Complex campaigns in the digital era naturally require more tech than they did ten or twenty years ago. This is especially true today, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact nonprofits’ abilities to meet donors in person. Let’s walk through four key categories of tools that nonprofits will need to consider when gearing up to plan a modern, compelling capital campaign:
If your nonprofit is new to major campaigns or you want a refresher on their essentials, this complete Capital Campaign Toolkit guide can give you a solid foundation. For now, let’s zero-in on how these types of tools can (and should) help drive your campaigns to success.
1. Data Management
Your nonprofit’s database or constituent relationship management (CRM) platform is the most important tool at your disposal when planning and hosting a capital campaign. The data that it contains should anchor your entire strategy from start to finish. Specifically, you can use your CRM to:
- Study past campaign performance. How successful have your previous fundraising initiatives been, and why? Study your data to find the specific tactics that led to shortcomings or successes. Understanding how much you’ve historically been able to raise through different types of fundraising will be important when setting benchmarks and developing a gift range chart for your capital campaign.
- Filter and identify prospects. Your records of past interactions with individual donors, supplemented with wealth and philanthropic data, will be essential for identifying prospective major gifts and crafting personalized cultivation and stewardship plans during the initial quiet phase of your capital campaign.
- Create donor segments for targeted communication. Not every donor should receive the same messages and donation appeals, so use your CRM to create segmented lists based on engagement history and historical donation amount. This is an easy way to give your donation appeals a leg up during the public phase in which you’ll broadcast your campaign to a broader audience of supporters at all giving levels.
- Track incoming donations and campaign progress. Logistically, you need a solid infrastructure for accurately tracking incoming donations during your campaign. With data on donations and prospect interactions seamlessly collected and stored in your database, you’ll be able to track your campaign’s progress down to a granular level.
Insights from your data will be invaluable for shaping your capital campaign, ensuring it’s built around appropriate goals and targeting the right donors. For instance, once you outline your campaign’s core objective, begin setting goals, and conduct a feasibility study to test your plan, your data can show you the best ways to adjust your strategies. A concrete plan of action rooted in data will always be a smarter choice than making loose inferences about what will or won’t work!
This is why integrated data management systems are so valuable for nonprofit organizations. When your donor-facing tools automatically report data to your CRM, you’ll develop a more comprehensive database that doesn’t require overwhelming amounts of manual data entry. Platforms like Salesforce that offer full ecosystems of integrated apps and tools are becoming increasingly popular choices for the nonprofit sector for this reason.
If you’re considering conducting a capital campaign, take some time early in the process to review your current data infrastructure and whether there are improvements or upgrades you can make. Your data can (and should) support your capital campaign, so make sure you’re in a strong position to leverage it.
2. Website Creation
In many ways, your nonprofit’s website has become its public face for your broader audience of current and potential supporters alike. Your capital campaign definitely deserves its own digital space to keep supporters updated on its progress and to ask them to get involved.
Creating a dedicated page or microsite just for your capital campaign will help centralize all of your communication and marketing efforts. Make sure it includes essentials like:
- An integrated donation tool. During the public phase, you’ll need an easily accessible way for anyone to donate specifically to your capital campaign. Your donation tool should ideally integrate with your CRM, meaning all contact information and transaction data gets automatically reported to your database for follow-up and future analysis.
- Impactful design. Use engaging visuals like photos, infographics, and project renderings to catch the eye and communicate your campaign’s purpose. Split your campaign information out into designated sections or pages to prevent overwhelming readers. These top examples of nonprofit sites from Cornershop Creative can give you an idea of the visual quality and types of layouts that help maximize engagement.
- Interactive or real-time features. Boost engagement on your campaign’s page or site even further by embedding tools that will actively keep visitors excited. Real-time progress trackers, integrated social media feeds, and scrolling donor shout-outs work well for showing visitors the buzz of energy your campaign is generating.
If your nonprofit already uses an industry-standard website builder like WordPress or Squarespace, it should be easy to create and customize a dedicated campaign page. For more technical integrations and custom-built features, working with a nonprofit web designer might be your best bet.
Whatever approach you take, don’t neglect to create your campaign’s page or site early in the process. A well-designed, informative page will anchor your marketing and communication strategies. This makes it a valuable asset at every stage of your campaign, whether you’re showing prospects your case for support or asking for smaller donations from a broader audience.
3. Communication
While your campaign’s web page serves as a vital part of your communication strategy, don’t forget about the other critical outlets you’ll need to reach and engage supporters. As you plan your campaign, make sure your team is up-to-date and comfortable using a variety of digital communication outlets, including:
- Email. Take some time early in your campaign to develop email streams specifically for updating different segments of your donors on your capital campaign’s progress. Also, review best practices for email etiquette with your team and ensure that your development staff are accurately recording their interactions with prospects.
- Video conferencing tools. Never before has a tool become a mainstay quite as quickly as Zoom! Check that your entire team is comfortable using Zoom (or similar software) and knows how to make the most of virtual meetings. Joining meetings a few minutes early, recording important conversations, and following clear agendas are all useful best practices to establish, especially for one-on-one meetings with prospects.
- Social media. Your nonprofit’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles can all play essential roles in your campaign marketing efforts, particularly during the kick-off and public phases. Give your social media strategies some thought in advance, and take the time to develop and refine your campaign’s digital materials and graphics so that you can start using them from the get-go.
Remember, multichannel digital communication is the new norm, especially during times of social distancing. By engaging your audience across multiple platforms and proactively directing them to new places where they can learn about your campaign, you’ll foster more engagement and energy, leading to stronger results.
Plus, supporting your communication strategies with a team-wide understanding of how and why you’re using each outlet will help prevent missteps down the line. This is particularly important if your team hasn’t yet conducted a complex campaign in the virtual era.
4. Design
Finally, consider how you’ll create the compelling digital materials and collateral that you’ll leverage on your campaign web page and other communication outlets. Capital campaigns have always required well-designed mailers, brochures, and project renderings, but don’t forget that these assets must translate well digitally, too.
Consider these types of digital materials you’ll need at your disposal:
- Assets for social media posts and other marketing outlets, including graphics, one-pagers, and renderings. If you’ll be sharing any of these elements on social media, it’s a good idea to create multiple versions of different sizes. This will ensure readers can easily see and engage with your graphics on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Well-designed direct mailers and email templates that highlight your project visually and provide easy instructions for getting involved. Design your direct mail resources with a digital audience in mind and vice-versa. A well-designed digital brochure can pull double duty when printed and physically shared.
- Your case for support, both to be printed and shared online as a .pdf file. This campaign document will play a critical role when you’re ready to begin talking with prospective major donors, so it pays to give it plenty of attention.
Work with a skilled graphic designer and professional-grade design tools like the Adobe software suite when developing these marketing materials.
As with your campaign web page and broader communication prep work, getting started on this collateral as early as possible will serve your campaign well. Plus, having these resources on hand early gives you plenty of time to refine them and will help represent your organization well from your very first interactions with prospects.
Capital campaigns are important rites of passage for growing nonprofits, but to succeed in today’s modern world, they’ll need to be supported from the very start of the planning process with the right tools and tech strategies. This is especially critical in today’s digital-first environment.
Start by reviewing your organization’s data infrastructure. Then, consider the tools you’ll need to effectively communicate with donors on your website and through other outlets. Capital campaigns are all about preparation and communication, so by prioritizing these elements in your arsenal and prep work, you’ll be ready to tackle your next campaign head-on.
Step-by-Step Campaign Checklist & Guide
This intuitive guide breaks down each step of your campaign, and the timeline allows you to visualize your whole campaign, from start to finish! Download this free campaign checklist now!
Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, and Andrea Kihlstedt are co-founders 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.
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