Why Capital Campaigns Fail

Potential Train Wrecks

Money is fuel for vision. On the other side of a successful capital campaign is tremendous gain. But in too many cases, the campaigns were not carried out successfully. The results were disappointing and the carnage has been appalling – senior pastors lacking credibility, wasted resources, burned-out staff, and frustrated congregants. A lot of this could have been avoided. There are a lot of errors that were the result of poor planning and weak leadership. I have listed eight potential reasons why your capital campaigns will fail.

1. ALLOWING TOO MUCH COMPLACENCY. This is the biggest mistake of all and the most common. It is a train wreck waiting to happen to plunge ahead into a capital campaign without establishing a high sense of urgency. The senior pastor, staff, elders, opinion leaders in the congregation needs to be on board. There needs to be a sense of urgency that communicates that this passage is the most important journey our congregation will take together. If we fail to take this gate, we will shrink back into insignificance and a slow process of death. Without a sense of urgency, people won’t give to the campaign and your leaders won’t give that extra effort. They won’t make needed sacrifices. Instead they’ll cling to the status quo and become a roadblock saying, “Bless God, what we’ve got is good enough.” At the same time, there are several things that you need to keep in check:
1. Don’t overestimate how much you can force big changes on your congregation.
2. Don’t underestimate how hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones.
3. Recognize how your own actions, or lack of action, can inadvertently reinforce the status quo.
4. Pray for patience and don’t launch the capital campaign before it’s time.
2. FAILING TO CREATE A SUFFICIENTLY POWERFUL GUIDING COALITION. Leading a major capital campaign will fail unless you can get all your staff pulling in the same direction, and another five, fifteen, or fifty people with a passionate commitment to pull together as a team and make a successful capital campaign happen. Individuals alone do not have enough assets to overcome inertia. Your critical mass is developed here. Without this guiding coalition, you won’t achieve the tipping point, and the congregation won’t be moved off the dime.
3. UNDERESTIMATING THE POWER OF VISION. Creating a sense of urgency and building a guiding coalition are critical to the success of your campaign, but if you fail to cast vision, if you underestimate the power of doing this, if your vision doesn’t make sense to the congregation, the campaign will ultimately fail. Here’s a rule of thumb: If it takes you more than five minutes to describe the vision driving this capital campaign initiative; and if after those five minutes the person you are talking to still has that deer in the headlights look on his face, you are in trouble.
4. UNDER COMMUNICATING THE VISION BY A FACTOR OF 10 (0R 100 OR 1,000). Don’t skimp on your communications. Just talking about the campaign won’t be enough. Without credible communications, e.g., inside signage, direct mail, interstitial video ads, banquets, coffees, meetings, telephone conversations, and a lot more communications, the hearts and minds of the donors in the congregation will not be captured. You have to make the potential benefits of the other side of the campaign attractive and believable, or your efforts won’t gather enough momentum to succeed. This is really important: Nothing will undermine your efforts more than behavior by mavens that is inconsistent with all the other communications. The pastor has to take the lead in sacrificial giving or the congregation won’t follow.
5. LETTING OBSTACLES BLOCK THE NEW VISION. It’s going to take twenty-five people to make the campaign happen. All it will take is five blockers, people or structures, to make the campaign fail. These obstacles, either making organizational changes or confronting well-intentioned people, must be identified and dealt with for the organization to achieve success.
6. FAILING TO CREATE SHORT-TERM WINS. It’s going to take two or three years to raise $1 million. Church leaders often make the mistake of letting the capital campaign slip from the view of the congregation. When they do this, they risk losing momentum. The best way to confront this challenge is to set short-term goals and intentionally celebrating when they are achieved. You have to show the people, especially in the first six to eighteen months, that their efforts are producing results. Without short-term wins, too many donors give up or join the resistance.
7. DECLARING VICTORY TOO SOON. After the “shock and awe” part of the military campaign in Iraq, President George W. Bush appeared on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier with a banner carefully framed in the background which said, “Mission Accomplished”. That was before the long, drawn out years of the Iraqi insurgency. His mistake is a common one that pastors make. After six months of hard work trying to accomplish a capital campaign, they get tempted to declare victory with the first major donor performance improvement. This premature victory celebration stops all momentum. And then powerful forces associated with the old guard start to take over and the insurgency gains strength.
8. NEGLECTING TO ANCHOR THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN IN THE CULTURE. The campaign will work, in the final analysis, when it becomes “the way we do things around here.” I worked with one church that had been doing capital campaigns for 19 or the last 20 years. Capital campaigns were all part of the culture, and firmly embedded in the fabric of the organization. When you neglect to anchor the capital campaign in the culture, this may be your last campaign.

Steeple provides fund raising and organizational development services to faith-based and community-based organizations of the nonprofit sector. Our efforts are dedicated to putting nonprofit managers and trustees in touch with the tools and resources they need to develop their organizations and to conduct successful capital campaigns. Our work with clients is for the long-term—to build internal capacity, to create brand equity, and to attract and retain funding. Since 2007, we’ve helped nonprofit organizations like yours raise more than $14 million.

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