Capital Stewardship Campaigns: More Than Just Raising Money
Capital Stewardship Campaigns can be a significant highlight in the life of the church or organization. But they can also address several issues in the church, such as:
- Hopes and dreams for ministry growth and outreach
- Deferred maintenance or residual debt
- A vision that’s become tired or forgotten
A church capital campaign can be the solution to all these things. But in addition, church stewardship campaigns are also a window of opportunity to deal with much broader issues, such as spiritual commitment, ownership of the vision and helping Christians understand basic biblical principles of stewardship.
Benefits of a Capital Stewardship Program
Churches who do capital stewardship campaigns often experience additional benefits besides just raising the needed funds.
- Renewal – Churches who run capital stewardship campaigns are positive and committed to a vibrant future for their congregation. Your congregation will join in on your passion to grow and engage.
- Ownership of the vision – There is nothing that builds a greater dynamic in a campaign than clarity of purpose. Money follows vision. When the congregation own the church’s vision for ministry, you will get the whole person, not just the cheque or the money.
- Engagement – Campaigns can involve a significant number of volunteers who will often continue their service and engagement after the campaign concludes. The overall level of commitment will increase as a result of the campaign.
- Growth – Almost all campaigns will facilitate church growth. When exciting things are happening in a local congregation…that’s contagious and people want to be a part of it.
- Increased overall giving – It will significantly increase short and long-term revenue. When campaigns focus on holistic stewardship to prepare the donor to respond, it means that there will be an increase in giving both on the budget and the project side.
Once a Generation
Churches do capital stewardship programs only about once in a generation, meaning that leaders need to extrapolate ahead ensuring what is achieved will serve the ministry for more than the next few years. So, you need to answer the question, “Where is our current philosophy of ministry taking us and where do we want to be in the future?” This unfortunately is not an exact science but, it is important to attempt to arrive at some conclusions as to where the current and future ministry needs are going to be met.
Capital stewardship campaigns to raise money for ministry and facility expansion are a very exciting time in church life. Full financial potential, however, is not achieved by a simple ask based on the assumption that people are ready to respond. Successful campaigns need to have good planning, a clear vision, a biblical focus, stewardship education, effective communications, a worthy project, and the right motivation. All of which are aspects of preparing your donors to respond.
Executing the right campaign strategy is one of the biggest challenges. Without the right fundraising knowledge and experience, it’s hard to ensure success. It’s easy to look at other churches or organizations like yours and see what they’re doing. But it doesn’t mean that strategy is going to work for you. Sometimes it will. A lot of times it won’t.
Join me this month for a series of articles on Church Capital Stewardship Campaigns. Topics like: are you ready for a campaign, factors that affect financial potential, campaign design, campaign planning and follow-up.
Schedule a call today and let’s see how a faith-focused capital stewardship campaign can help you. Michelle Harder can share some of the lessons learned from leading over 100 churches through design and implementation of successful capital fund programs with your church or faith-based organization.
Michelle has over 20 years of experience in fundraising and non-profit development both as a consultant and as part of an executive team. With a Master of Arts degree in Philanthropy & Development from Saint Mary’s University in Minnesota, Michelle has both theoretical and practical experience in fundraising. As an author, consultant and public speaker, with a specialty in faith-based fundraising, Michelle is driven by a passion to help organizations large and small like yours achieve their fundraising and strategic goals.
