Posts by Andrea Kihlstedt
5 Capital Campaign Tips You Should Never, Ever Forget
These five capital campaign tips keep your focus where it needs to be -- on impact. The bigger and more exciting the impact, the more inclined your donors will be to make extraordinary gifts. 1. Capacity, Not Capital,...
Energize Capital Campaign Volunteers With One Simple Exercise
Plain and simple -- you can’t have a successful capital campaign without volunteers. Your campaign volunteers bring vitality to your campaign. They're in the weeds doing the work. They're making connections. And if...
Two Must-Have Skills for a Successful Capital Campaign
A capital campaign is a long rollercoaster ride. It’s likely to take two or three years. You can be the most prepared organization around and still, you, your staff and your board will be pushed beyond what’s...
Ready for a Capital Campaign? That Depends on Your Top Donors
Are You Ready for a Campaign? Test Yourself! Open a blank document. Without looking at your CRM or other donor lists make a list of the ten people who are likely to make the lead gifts to your campaign. They might be...
5 Capacity Building Opportunities for Your Capital Campaign
Raising money year in, year out for on-going operations feels like a slog. I get it. Every year, you raise your goal by the deadline and then, the next day you start again back at 0. It's essentially starting from...
What’s in a Capital Campaign Plan? 11 Essential Elements to Consider
If your boss asked you to put together a plan for your organization’s upcoming capital campaign, would you know what to include? Probably not. Why? For decades, organizations have relied on capital campaign consultants...
How to Recruit Volunteers to Help with Your Capital Campaign
Successful capital campaigns use lots of volunteers. Volunteers serve as campaign chairs, on the steering committee and on a host of other ad hoc committees that help with specific aspects of the campaign. Yesterday,...
Making Sense of Endowment Funding and Capital Campaigns
Let’s get this clear right off the bat... most money that goes into endowment comes from planned gifts. And most of that is in the form of simple bequests rather than complex financial instruments. If you want to build...
Capital Campaign Communications: More Than the Case for Support
The first thing you probably think you need for your campaign is the case for support. If you’re like many people, you think your case is a glossy brochure. In fact, you may fervently hope that you can create a...
Want a Complete Roadmap for Your Capital Campaign?
The Capital Campaign Toolkit gives you access to an innovative online platform that provides all the tools, templates, resources and support you need at every stage of your campaign.
