As noted in my post Capital Campaigns – Consultant or DIY?, I indicated sometimes it just makes sense to do it yourself.
Here are some situations where an internally-conducted campaign may be the best option:
- Smaller goals. If need to raise less than $150,000 or so a year…The ROI is much smaller.
- There is little to no potential for large capacity givers. Of course, this takes an objective look at your givers and history by giver.
- Economic Uncertainty
- Sometimes when coming out of an External Campaign, in uncertain economic times, you may want to do a 1 year bridge internally.
- This is where God is leading and Leadership confirms
- You have Staff and Lay Leaders that have experience and are willing to commit.
- If you’ve never been involved in a successful external or internal one before, I’d caution you. Attend Capital Campaign University (up to 3 staff members) at Injoy Stewardship Solutions
- You have a solid, spiritually mature and generous giving base
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve done internally conducted campaigns also. The last two we did were 1-year “bridge” campaigns. Here’s what we had “going for” us when we decided to do a one year DIY:
- We were coming out of our 3rd back to back external campaign
- We had a strong, mature, generous giving base. Which is what we we should have as a result of the previous Capital Campaigns. A good campaign is more about Transformation than Transaction. [see this post by Brian Dodd]
- We had a strong Finance Chair, Pastor and Business Admin with campaign experience
- Segments in our body were going thru job loss or stagnation
The results were very good. We ended up raising only 14% less compared to the last external campaign we did. (Relative to the 50% average difference mentioned in this post).