As you prepare for a campaign, you probably have a lot of important questions that need answering.
The most important question, though, is not:
- How much money can we raise? or,
- Do we have enough front-line fundraisers to achieve the goal? or,
- Do our donors have enough financial capacity to give in excess of our goal? or,
- Do we have the budget to successfully conclude a campaign? or,
- How long should we be out of a campaign before starting a new one? or,
- At what point is it wise to ‘go public’ once we are in a campaign? or,
- Any number of other basic campaign questions.
Instead, your most important campaign readiness question is:
How much do our current major donors trust us and believe in our plans?
The trust and belief from our friends.
Donors who are new to our institutions don’t typically make major gifts right away. And our current friends who are casual givers do not typically have exceptionally high levels of trust and belief.
But our friends who consider themselves ‘connected fans’ are more likely to give significantly.
The pre-campaign preparation work before us, then, is simple to understand but not always easy to implement:
Build trust and share the accountability for success with as many of our close friends as we can.