Financial Goal Setting for Your Campaign

When setting a financial goal for your organization’s campaign, you want to choose a minimum goal that is both challenging and attainable. Nothing is more discouraging than running a great campaign and coming up a few thousand dollars short of the minimum goal.

There are several important things to keep in mind when setting the financial goal for your campaign, such as:

• Strength and appeal of the case for fundraising
• Past campaign results of both annual and capital campaigns
• Time since last major capital campaign was completed
• Giving history of constituents
• Number of constituents and level of affluence
• Leadership available to reach out to constituents
• Community support and affirmation
• Other initiatives underway in the community

You always want to set your minimum goal at an achievable level. This level should be unrelated to the cost of the project and the amount you would like to raise. Failure to carefully scrutinize the facts at hand can lead to bitter disappointment later in the campaign process.

In an important campaign, you are asking people to make the some of the largest commitments they have ever made, to any cause, in their lives. You don’t want to tell them this will ensure your success, and then fail to succeed. 

Expenses or Revenues: Which to Consider First?

One of the most common blunders in financial goal setting is to move through the process in the wrong order. Goal setting is an orderly process, and when things are done out of order, the process disintegrates very quickly. This happens in our federal government because the committees that spend the money are not the same committees that raise the money. Oftentimes, the congressmen spending the money get way ahead of the congressmen raising the money.

The same thing can happen when any organization finds itself in need of a new building, a new wing, more space, a ball field, etc. When an organization decides to focus entirely upon its wants and needs without considering how to pay for improvements, we invariably see further problems develop.

The ideal process involves a careful analysis of the organization’s needs and wants. These needs and wants are then placed into a priority funding order to be studied further, in view of the funding available. Each component part of the project is funded and undertaken according to the previously agreed upon priority list.

At this point in the process, cash and current assets are combined with long-term assets to determine cash and borrowing power. Cash and borrowing power can then be combined with the estimated amount you would receive from a successful capital campaign to help pay for the proposed improvements. The total of all these resources provides the maximum amount you should budget to spend.

It is often difficult for an organization to say, with any degree of certainty, exactly how much it will raise in a capital campaign. The best approximations always involve an estimate of what the majority will do, based upon an extrapolation of what a few specific people said they would do.

Spending Wisely

Frequently, as fundraising consultants, we are asked to help people pursue the funding to make their dreams come true. Sometimes, because of the circumstances, it is much easier to raise that money than it is in other situations. In some cases, you can distinguish the very easy campaign from the very difficult campaign right over the telephone. But with the average campaign, it is often very difficult to assess the potential of the organization without the benefit of a professionally directed campaign planning and feasibility study.

The key, in a nutshell, is to decide what you can afford to spend before you go shopping. Too many people go shopping, pick out what they want, and then have to go in search of the resources to buy it. Many of us know the disappointing feeling of cutting back your plans to what you can afford. Counting your money beforehand and only shopping for what you know you need and can afford is a completely different experience.

5 Steps for A Successful Financial Goal

1. Determine your long-term wants and needs, including operating support, capital improvements, and endowment funds.
2. Prioritize these needs through a careful planning process.
3. Conduct a campaign feasibility and planning study to help you determine your fundraising potential and formulate a working campaign plan.
4. Undertake a professionally directed campaign to raise this money in pledge-type gifts.
5. Celebrate your success and begin planning for your next cycle!

For more intensive help with your major gift fundraising, strategic planning, or in financial goal setting, contact CDS.

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