Capital Campaign vs. Major Gift Program: Which Fundraising Strategy is Right for Your Nonprofit

By Peter Heller

Campaigns are all about shaping a dream for a better future for the community your organization serves—growing the positive impact you can have on the world. When your donors understand and connect with that dream, they are often inspired to make the largest philanthropic gifts they’ve ever made.

Major Gift Programs are an imperative part of every fundraising effort (show me a nonprofit that would benefit from NOT having one!?). If your organization is not considering a building project, endowment growth, and/or program expansion, then a Major Gift Program is the right next move for you. It allows you to focus on relationships with your most capable donors who can be engaged, cultivated and solicited over time.

Your job—whether it’s for a targeted capital campaign or developing a strategy for a Major Gift Program—is to be the chief inspiration officer.

To do that, you need to take a critical look at the tools and tactics available to you. A Capital Campaign can be an effective way to bring donors into a shared vision over a short period of time, but you can’t lose sight of the long game.

 Here are a few things we encourage our clients to think about when considering a campaign:

Capital Campaign vs. Major Gift Program: which is right for you?

As stated above, Campaigns are almost always for something you need to do above and beyond your regular budget. Often, it’s for a building, a program, or an endowment. You’re still going out week after week, doing the same things you would for major gift fundraising, but with a different story.

You can do it without calling it a campaign, but creating that structure enables everyone to focus their attention on raising that big, often scary, amount of money.

Don’t be afraid to take your time.

A campaign can speed up the process with donors by adding a heightened level of urgency. Instead of spending months stewarding the relationship to build up to the ask, donors go into the meeting expecting it—and they’re prepared to answer.

At the same time, you can’t let donors leapfrog the conversation and miss out on an even bigger commitment. It takes a lot of guts to tell a donor to wait, but at the Heller Fundraising Group, we help our clients create the relaxed feeling of a long-term relationship within the pressurized environment of a campaign.

Consider your annual fund.

People often assume that a campaign is going to jeopardize annual giving—but if it’s done well, that doesn’t happen. You can make your ask comprehensive, combining a donor’s history of annual giving with a bigger campaign commitment. Sometimes you need to be willing to let go of the annual fund gift. And in some cases, you need to drop smaller gifts from your campaign plan to make sure your annual fund is still serving your budget needs.

Keep the momentum going.

So many organizations finish their campaign and then stop fundraising. But you’ve just built all these internal muscles. You worked hard to get your volunteers involved. Your donors are more excited and made multi-year commitments. Don’t let them off the hook! Keep talking to them and keep investing in the team you’ve built.

I recently spoke with Brian Saber of Asking Matters about the art of asking during a campaign. We touched on these and other topics, like when to bring in your executive director for an ask, and whether Zoom is still an effective setting for solicitation meetings (the answer: it depends).

Be sure to check out my conversation with Brian.

Peter Heller is the Founder of the Heller Fundraising Group, a New York City-based fundraising consulting firm that works with local, national and international nonprofits on capital campaigns, campaign feasibility studies, major gift programs, and hands-on training.