Dream Big with Your Capital Campaign

Our Custom Development Solutions (CDS) staff are constantly talking with many nonprofit organizations across the US and Canada. We provide our clients with feedback on how they can best conduct their fundraising and capital campaign operations. That professional objectivity is a luxury for us and a resource for our partner organizations. Why Should You Dream…

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Choosing a Stellar Campaign Leader

Dedicated volunteers are worth their weight in gold to your charitable organization. These high-level volunteers, including your campaign leader, provide credibility and undertake the essential relationship-building that helps attract friends, supporters, and financial resources to your organization. In a successful capital campaign, the importance of committed, high-performing volunteer leaders simply cannot be overstated. In fact,…

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Campaign Progress Reports: The Basics

Reporting on the progress of a capital campaign is a vital function of an efficient and effective fundraising initiative. Capital campaigns are often large endeavors that can appear overwhelming and unaccountable. They are actually precise initiatives with a specific schedule of activities that must be accomplished in a particular order. Therefore, it’s important that your…

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The Forensics of Fundraising: Study, Research, and Analysis

My youngest daughter is a big fan of crime scene investigation shows. She tries to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed at the end of the show. While watching television with her one night, it occurred to me that fundraising was a lot like crime scene investigations, except, of course, for the corpses…

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Buying Locally Doesn’t Always Pay

Development directors for non-profit organizations are often laden with the responsibility to determine how to raise greater and greater amounts of money to help balance their organizations’ ever-growing budget. The most popular and traditional means employed is to increase the goal of the annual appeal. For a number of reasons—the economy, reduced governmental funding, weak…

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A Major Fundraising Capital Campaign –Take Your Marks, Get Set, and Go!

Preparing for a major fundraising campaign can be a momentous process in the life of a non-profit organization. Board members, executives, and professionals are excited and probably more than a little anxious as they consider how best to begin the complicated and important process of raising major capital commitments. The objective viewpoint of experienced campaign…

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