Building Your Endowment With a Major Campaign
The value of a strong endowment is undeniable for any nonprofit organization. Endowment is often misunderstood. It is not a savings account. It is not just for the future. Instead, it should be viewed for what it really is—a dependable and permanent source of revenue to support your mission, both now and for the long term. Organizations with strong endowments generally enjoy more stability and a higher likelihood of sustainability. But we believe that the primary value of endowment is more mission now.
A powerful strategy for developing your endowment is through the execution of a major campaign focused on achieving specific goals relative to the organization’s mission. Any organization with a meaningful community impact, a strong base of supporters and a capable staff can successfully execute a major endowment campaign. In our experience organizations are often reticent about conducting a major campaign for fear of failure. Our belief is that the fear of failure is usually overblown. If managed appropriately, it is impossible for an endowment campaign to fail, since whatever the amount you raise, your organization will inevitably have more than when you started, and thus will be stronger. We believe if you try, you win. The real issue is how to maximize the results of your campaign. It is not about downside, but about the achieving the greatest upside.
For many organizations potential endowment campaigns become stuck in a quagmire of planning and assessment. Here are our beliefs.
There is no perfect time to conduct a campaign. There will always be economic uncertainty and other campaigns in the community.
You can never determine precisely how much you can raise. There are simple techniques to assess the potential of your donor base and develop a plausible work goal that can be revised as needed. Feasibility studies are time consuming, expensive and do not provide definitive answers. The best way to determine feasibility is to go out and ask.
Preparing for a major campaign requires time, but not forever. Get on with it. There are a series of steps to go from the vision of what a campaign can accomplish to launching the campaign and beginning to raise money. The sooner you start asking the sooner the campaign will have an impact on your mission.