5 top FAQs about capital campaign feasibility studies

If your organization has decided to launch a capital campaign, you’re likely excited and a little apprehensive about the road ahead. After all, capital campaigns are incredible opportunities to reach ambitious goals, engage your entire community, and increase your organization’s capacity. 

At the same time, capital campaigns are huge undertakings that can lead to burnout and embarrassing results without a solid, tested campaign goal and plan.

That’s where a capital campaign feasibility study comes into play. A feasibility study is the process of testing your plan and goals for your campaign by having conversations with your prospective major donors and other stakeholders. This can help you determine whether your campaign’s current plan is realistic and achievable. 

In this guide, we’ll help you prepare for a thorough and insightful capital campaign feasibility study by tackling five frequently asked questions. Let’s begin.

1. Why is a feasibility study important for a capital campaign?

Research shows that conducting a feasibility study will have a positive impact on your capital campaign. 94% of organizations that conducted a feasibility study strengthened their major donor relationships (as opposed to 66% for organizations that did not), and those organizations raised 115% of their original campaign goals. 

Let’s look closer at the specific benefits of conducting a feasibility study: 

• You get the chance to validate your campaign goal. Though you take great care to set your campaign’s objectives and fundraising goal, it’s important to test that goal and assess the potential of your campaign by seeking feedback from the people who will be funding and championing it. Then you can make informed adjustments to your goal as needed.   

• You gain a deeper understanding of top donors’ giving potential and begin engaging them in the campaign. A small percentage of donors will give your campaign its largest gifts. By meeting with major donor prospects early on in the campaign process, you can learn about their perceptions of your organization and the campaign and see how willing they are to give and at what level. Then, you can take the necessary next steps to keep them engaged as the campaign gets started.

2. What does a feasibility study entail?

The process of conducting a feasibility study involves the following tasks:

Clarifying and articulating campaign goals and objectives

Before you can present them to your stakeholders, your internal team should be aligned on the overarching goals and objectives for the campaign. 

Creating a draft of your case for support

The case for support is a document that literally “makes a case” for your campaign, highlighting what you plan to achieve with the campaign or the challenge you want to overcome and what positive impacts those achievements will have. It will also cover core details about your organization and how supporters can get involved. Though it will be drafted prior to the feasibility study, view it as a living document that will evolve as you conduct your study and finalize your campaign plan.

Identifying and interviewing leadership-level donors and other key stakeholders

Interviews are at the heart of the feasibility study process and allow you to get a candid view of what your stakeholders think of your organization and your campaign plan.

3. Who should conduct the feasibility study?

There are two ways to conduct a capital campaign feasibility study, and the method you choose will depend on your organization’s priorities, budget, and internal capacity. 

Let’s take a look at both options: 

The traditional approach

With this method, your nonprofit hires an experienced fundraising consultant to take the reins on the feasibility study process and conduct interviews with your stakeholders for you. Some organizations feel this approach is best, as having their stakeholders interviewed by an objective third party yields more candid and useful responses to the campaign plan. 

After the interview stage, the consultant collates the findings from the feasibility study and presents them to the organization. Typically the consultant will stay on and assist with the rest of the campaign.

The guided model

According to Capital Campaign Pro, which pioneered this approach, a guided feasibility study involves your organization getting guidance from an experienced campaign advisor but conducting the study interviews yourself. 

This method keeps your organization at the helm during the feasibility study while also providing the support you need to conduct it successfully. By conducting the feasibility study interviews yourself, the conversations become opportunities to actively build relationships with your key donors. 

Plus, instead of getting the pared-down report on the feasibility study from a consultant, you’ll instead get the full view of your stakeholders’ thoughts on your campaign and the full context for their comments and suggestions. 

Which approach is best?

Either approach can lead to a successful, insightful feasibility study that helps you refine your campaign goal and plan, but only one leads to direct relationship building and an opportunity to deepen in-house skill sets. 

Take into account your budget, your organization’s internal capacity, and your priorities for the campaign to help you decide which approach best suits your nonprofit. 

4. Who should be interviewed in a feasibility study?

You should interview potential leadership-level donors and other individuals who will be majorly involved, such as: 

• Potential major donors
• Long-term supporters with a proven track record of involvement
• Current and past board members
• Leaders of local corporations that support your mission 
• Prominent community members 

Each individual you interview should be someone you trust to give you their honest opinion and thoughtful feedback.

5. How do you use the results of a feasibility study?

After interviews, you can pull together all the insights from your feasibility study and look at your results. There are typically two ways the results could pan out: 

• The results are generally positive: This means you are likely ready to move ahead with your campaign after incorporating your stakeholders’ feedback into your campaign plan and refining your campaign goal. 

• The results are mixed or somewhat negative: Typically, this means your organization has some work it needs to do to adjust its fundraising plan before launching the capital campaign. 

Though it can be disheartening to get negative results from your feasibility study, you can think of it as a safety net for catching your fall. You don’t want to get far into a capital campaign that your organization can’t sustainably execute and complete. Instead, getting the heads up beforehand that you need to adjust the scope of your campaign gives you the chance to prepare for success down the line. 

Conclusion

Conducting a feasibility study is essential for preparing for a successful capital campaign. It allows you to test the waters before getting too far into your campaign and gives you the chance to refine your campaign plans before diving into fundraising work. 

Review the questions and answers above to determine how you want to proceed with your own feasibility study, and remember that no matter what your results show, it will be a worthwhile process to undergo.