[This post is an excerpt from Greg Gibbs' book, Capital Campaign Playbook. Greg has successfully led close to 200 capital campaigns in his career and is proud to work with the team at ministryengine. If you are looking ahead to a Capital Campaign, schedule your free consulting call today.]
Who are the parties you need to get ready for a Capital Campaign?
Understanding readiness is like a four-legged table. Without each of these professional advisors weighing in, there may be a missing and critical component of leading the church well.
- Architects can answer, “How will we design something to meet our needs primarily and our wants secondarily?”
- Builders can answer, “When can we start, how long will it take and what will it likely cost?”
- Bankers can answer, “What will a financial institution lend us for this project should we choose to borrow either short or long term?”
- Fundraising experts can answer, “How much will the congregation likely give to a project like this and what is the best approach to engaging and motivating people?”
People often ask: Don’t you have to design the project before you know the cost and whether or not it matches the congregation’s willingness to give?
Answer: Not really. No matter what you design, it is against the odds that your congregation will defy the norm and go much beyond 3 times giving even if we were in the pre-2008 economy. So that becomes the top border (or highest level possible) if it were a cash only project. As we mentioned earlier, starting with 1.5 times income (in a three-year campaign) plus whatever lending the church is willing to service is a more fruitful conversation.
Questions to Consider:
Do we have the most helpful and necessary information and feedback from the four advisors mentioned above? What do we know so far?
Are we willing to borrow money for our projects? Have we considered the gap between our project cost and our likely giving amount?
Have we estimated the cash flow projection and how that may impact borrowing, start and end times, and more? In other words, when the congregation pledges X, it comes in over time – sometimes two or three years – and not in a lump sum.
Another frequently asked question is “How much of the pledged amount can we expect to be fulfilled?” This is another statistic that doesn’t seem to be going in the right direction. When I first started coaching campaigns two decades ago, we would regularly see 90-95% of pledges fulfilled. Much of the industry talk these days is much more conservative and churches are encouraged to budget for 80-85% of total pledges unless a robust follow up process is executed.
Chapter 17 highlights the effort that can be made in the post-pledge era of the campaign as a follow-up or follow-through on campaign promises and pledges. One way or the other, it is recommended that a cash flow projection be made to help with financial strategy and project completion timelines.
For this post, I wanted to help you see that there multiple parties needed to have a successful Capital Campaign. In subsequent posts we will continue to unpack each of these three phases - Discover, Design, & Disciple - to help you think through how God might lead you to steward the resources in your congregation.
