Should You Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant? Quick Guide

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Capital campaigns are among the most exciting and impactful projects that nonprofits undertake. They fund strategic and critical investments with new revenue, meaningfully engage top prospects, and measurably increase mission impact. They are also often extremely complex with multiple moving parts to manage and leverage.

Organizations rarely embark on capital campaigns alone.

Capital campaign consultants serve as expert guides to help nonprofits successfully navigate the complexities and challenges of these transformative projects.

If you’re planning (or considering) a capital campaign for your organization, you’ve likely already wondered, “Do I need to hire a consultant?”

In this guide, we’ll help you answer that question. We’ll review all the context, steps, and best practices you need about campaign consulting to make a confident decision for your mission.

Capital Campaign Consulting: Quick Answers

Let’s begin by answering some of the first questions that nonprofits have about capital campaign consulting.

Why do nonprofits hire capital campaign consultants?

There are several primary reasons for hiring a campaign consultant:

• First, capital campaigns are major investments of time, money, and other resources. This means they carry some risk. If a campaign doesn’t go to plan, a nonprofit risks losing resources, wasting time, and damaging its reputation in the community.
  • Capital campaign consultants safeguard your investment and reduce risk by providing expertise, experience, perspective, and support.
  • For example, a consultant will help you better understand your readiness and create plans that are impactful and truly achievable.
• Plus, the guidance and knowledge that a consultant brings will do more than protect your organization—they will also simply make your campaign better.
  • Expert strategy and services help nonprofits raise more support, connect with more donors, and lead their most effective campaigns ever.
• Lastly, capital campaigns are complicated and have multiple moving pieces at any one time. If you’re conducting your nonprofit’s first campaign (or if it’s most of your staff’s first campaign), you won’t know how to do it all.
  • Capital campaign consultants can provide a broad range of services to fill gaps in your organization’s resources and abilities, from custom full-campaign strategy to focused support in specific aspects or stages of your campaign.
  • Partnering with an expert and/or hiring outsourced services as needed ultimately ensures your campaign will keep moving forward smoothly.

What services do capital campaign consultants provide?

Capital campaign consultants may offer many specific services for nonprofits. They typically include:

• Feasibility studies (also called planning studies)
• Full campaign strategy development and execution
• Development assessments and right-size infrastructure planning
• Campaign counsel and advising
• Case for support development
• Fundraising-specific services related to strategy and prospect research
• Other outsourced services related to data analytics, community engagement, corporate relations, etc.
• Interim staffing for crucial roles during a campaign
• Custom training services and workshops

Consulting services are often highly customizable, with deliverables fully tailored to your nonprofit’s unique goals and context. Consultants should work with you to determine the ideal solutions for your needs. However, having a clear initial idea of what you need and why will be critical for finding a consulting partner and then having productive discussions with them.

Additionally, many capital campaign consulting firms specialize in multiple sectors, such as healthcare or higher education. Look for a provider with expertise in your particular sector as well as experience in other sectors for a dual benefit whenever possible. They’ll have the advantage of targeted and cross-sector knowledge and experience you need to address the broadest set of nuances and challenges, helping you succeed at all stages of your campaign.

How much does capital campaign consulting typically cost?

As consulting services can come in many forms and durations (and because no two capital campaigns are alike), total costs will vary greatly between organizations. Consultants may charge flat, hourly, or recurring retainer fees depending on the specific services you need and their scope.

Nonprofits typically spend up to $0.20 per dollar raised on total campaign investment, including both consulting and all campaign costs related to staffing, branding, communication, stewardship, and more. Our clients at Graham-Pelton typically spend between $0.10-0.12 per dollar raised on overall campaign investment.

Note that consulting fees are only a fraction of this total cost, and the right consulting partner can actually help you reduce your overall spend by helping you plan and execute a more efficient campaign.

Additionally, some organizations will choose to hire a full-time campaign manager to serve in-house, while others choose to outsource their campaign management to a consulting firm for the duration of the campaign. Both routes can be good solutions depending on the organization’s unique context, but they will impact the overall proportion of cost spent on consulting vs. personnel.

How big should a nonprofit be to hire a campaign consultant?

Nonprofits of all sizes can and do conduct successful capital campaigns with the help of consultants. After all, the size of a capital campaign is relative to the organization’s current capacity, goals, and needs, whether that means raising half a million or half a billion dollars.

The return on investment (ROI) of campaign consulting is the primary factor to consider. Compare the costs of consulting to the total funds the campaign will generate to determine if consulting is the right choice. For example, particularly costly consulting services might not make sense for modest capital campaigns.

Keep in mind that capital campaigns are strategic and critical investments in your organization’s mission. Most nonprofits find that these campaigns are welcomed but need help in marginalizing and controlling risk.

Remember, long-term ROI can easily outweigh shorter-term concerns. If you invest in expert services that ensure you exceed your fundraising goals and can scale up your nonprofit’s fundraising and operational capacity, you’ll see significant benefits down the line.

Of course, the ROI calculus of hiring a capital campaign consultant varies immensely from organization to organization. If your budget or the potential ROI of such an investment is a major concern for your nonprofit, let your consulting candidates know. They can walk you through projected outcomes or recommendations for scaling their services up or down to suit your needs.

How to Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant: Steps & Best Practices

Let’s say you’ve reviewed your organization’s vision and preliminary goals for a capital campaign and have decided that working with an expert partner will be your best choice. What next?

We recommend following this process to find and hire an ideal capital campaign consultant:

1. Define your needs and secure buy-in.

Clearly articulate what you want and need from a capital campaign consultant. What are your goals for the partnership?

You may already know that you want complete strategy development and support.

For more targeted support, refer to the list of common services above and consider the various tasks that will arise before the campaign and during each phase. What is your current capacity to handle them? What aspects of the campaign do you already know you’ll need extra know-how, resources, staff, etc., to accomplish?

You should also work with your organization’s leaders and board members to align on the need for consulting and what to ask from your consultant:

• If everyone is already on board for the campaign itself, they may already understand that consulting services are an essential expense.
• If you encounter pushback on the need for consulting, discuss the reasons listed at the start of this guide as a team. Capital campaigns bring risk but big payoffs—expert support will maximize your chances of success while reducing that risk.
• If your organization is currently misaligned on the need for a capital campaign at all, start there before discussing consulting services.

Alignment is essential. Your organization, campaign, and partnership with a consultant will run much smoother (and bring the intended outcomes) when everyone’s on the same page.

At this point, you should also determine your budget for capital campaign consulting, or at least set rough expectations for total costs as a team.

2. Find and research candidates.

Next, begin identifying potential candidates. It can be helpful to tackle this process with a teammate or small advisory committee—you’ll cast a wide net and work together in the next step to narrow down your list.

In addition to your own online research through Google and industry directories, be sure to ask for referrals from peer organizations and colleagues in other nonprofits that have conducted capital campaigns recently.

Keep any relevant specializations in mind to help guide your search. If you need one specific service or a consultant experienced in your particular sector, such as healthcare or education, search using those guidelines.

You’ll be able to dig deeper into your top campaign consultants’ approaches and track records once you’ve narrowed down your list, but, for now, looking for a few essentials will ensure you find reputable candidates. Specifically, you should look for:

• Specialization in your sector/particular needs
• A website that appears to be actively maintained
• Positive reviews online and/or real client case studies or testimonials
• Clear discussions of the consultant’s services, methodology, and/or fundraising philosophy
• Has an education mindset and can offer an abundance of free tools and learnings
• Has the functionality to subscribe to receive late-breaking news, tips, and other information
• Location (if you know you want the consultant to join you in-house)

Compile any top-recommended consultants from peers with standout options you identified in your own research into a single list with links to the consultants’ websites.

3. Narrow down your list.

Once you have a complete list of recommended or highly-rated potential candidates that seem to mesh well with your needs and/or sector, work with your team to narrow it down to just a few top consultants, 4 or 5 at the most.

It may be tempting at this stage to assume that “more is better.” However, a list of candidates that’s too long will in reality become more overwhelming than helpful, and it may seriously slow down your decision making process.

During this process, don’t hesitate to reach out to candidates for clarification on any points that will help you make your decision. You’ll contact them again in the next step to have more in-depth discussions.

Input from multiple internal perspectives will be helpful at this stage. If you encountered challenges securing buy-in for consulting, ensuring that everyone feels involved in the hiring decision can smooth out any last feelings of hesitation.

Sit down to review the candidates as a team, look at their websites, review their testimonials and services, and weed out the consultants who you can agree aren’t the right fit.

4. Meet with your top 4-5 candidates.

Set up time for you and one or more team members to meet with your top potential consultants. This discovery call will help both you and your candidate better understand your needs and whether each firm is equipped and qualified to help you address them. Introduce your organization and explain your context, campaign goals, and current fundraising capacity.

This is also your time to ask valuable questions. Avoid surface-level questions that you could learn from the consultant’s website. Instead, aim to get to the heart of your candidates’ methodologies, campaigning styles, and track records.

Key questions to ask potential capital campaign consultants

• What measurable outcomes have your clients achieved with your support?
• How do you tailor your approach for each client?
• How do you plan to involve our team and stakeholders to boost impact and make the most of our existing resources?
• What’s your communication style or plan?
• How do you align your consulting approach with clients’ long-term strategic plans? Can you share any examples?
• How do you recommend integrating newly-acquired campaign donors into a long-term retention strategy?
• How will you adapt if our goals or circumstances change, and has this happened before?

These kinds of deeper questions will help you gain a much clearer picture of what it will be like to work with each candidate. Adjust and expand this list as needed—developing your own list of targeted questions before outreach is a valuable use of your team’s time.

Be sure to record your calls with candidates or take notes that can be shared with your other stakeholders later.

At this point, you might further narrow down your list of candidates or choose to ask for tactical details from all of them.

5. Request proposals (or other next steps).

Once you’re satisfied with your candidate pool, invite the prospective consultants to submit formal proposals. This stage is their chance to offer tailored, concrete details about what they can do for your organization.

You may choose to submit formal requests for proposals (RFPs) to each candidate, or take a less structured approach that allows consulting firms to respond as they deem appropriate. Whatever the process, provide your candidates with thorough details about your needs, goals, expected timeline, and more so that they can develop a truly tailored proposal.

Comprehensive proposals from capital campaign consultants often include:

• A cover letter and/or executive summary
• An overview of their consultancy, values, track record, personnel, etc.
• Lists of previous clients and/or descriptions of past similar campaigns and outcomes
• A clear and accurate understanding of your nonprofit’s campaign goals, objectives, needs, and expected scope of services
• Their proposed services and strategies to meet your needs
• A rough timeline for developing and implementing their plans (built around your target campaign launch and completion dates)
• Descriptions of outcomes and projected impacts of their plans
• Costs and fees for the project
• A transparent explanation of their fee structure, payment schedule, contingency plans for cost adjustments due to scope changes, and how additional costs will be factored in
• Risk management and other contingency plans for avoiding or mitigating potential internal and external challenges that may arise during your campaign
• An explanation of how they will measure success for your campaign and report progress to your leadership team

Consultants may also include terms and conditions in their proposals so you can get straight to hammering out the contractual details if you like their plans.

6. Review and compare proposals.

After receiving proposals from your handful of top consulting candidates, again sit down as a team to review and compare them.

The goal is to narrow your options down to a shortlist of just the top 2 or 3 consultants who you will then invite to provide more thorough pitches and discuss any open questions.

As you review proposals, you might try a rubric exercise to help reach consensus decisions that factor in everyone’s opinions. Determine the key factors you want to compare, then have each team member score the proposals. Your rubric may look something like this:

Proposal	Alignment with our Needs	Impression of Methodology	Alignment with our Budget	Total
Proposal 1	4	3	3	10
Proposal 2	5	4	4	13
Proposal 3	2	3	2	5

When comparing proposals, first look for adherence to your goals, expectations, and rough budget. Then, look for these proposal qualities that can better clue you into what it will be like to work with each candidate:

• Specificity. Winning proposals should be clearly customized to your organization’s needs, goals, culture, and community.
• Clarity. Overusing technical jargon may hide shortcomings or issues in a proposal. Candidates should be able to clearly articulate their plans and vision in a way that your whole organization will understand.
• Professionalism. Simply put, have your candidates made good impressions with their proposals, communication styles, and responsiveness?

From the 4-5 proposals you’ve received, narrow them down to just the top 2 or 3.

7. Invite your top 2-3 candidates to pitch their plans, then choose.

Once you identify the top 2 or 3 candidates, reach back out to ask for a thorough project pitch or interview, virtually or in person.

This step is important; another meeting will give your team a chance to interact with each firm and get a feel for what it will be like to actually work with them. Take your time to make a decision that your team feels confident about. After all, your capital campaign is a major investment of your organization’s time and resources, and consulting will be a critical part of that investment.

Also, don’t underestimate the value of chemistry. You’ll ideally build a long-term relationship with your consulting partner, so they should fit your culture and get along with your team!

After comparing proposals, receiving pitches, and/or interviewing your top candidates, your team should have everything it needs to make a decision.

Make your pick, and reach back out to your chosen capital campaign consultant to refine the proposal and contract details. Request and negotiate changes as needed. Ask any clarifying questions about their plans and fee structures. Once everyone is pleased with the finalized plans, you can make the agreement official.

Prepare to launch your best campaign yet!

Capital Campaign Consulting Success Stories

What does a successful engagement with a capital campaign consultant look like?

No two organization’s needs or goals are the same, and each campaign may benefit from a different mix of services and levels of support. We’ve gathered a few examples from our own work that illustrate a range of campaign sizes and service scopes:

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles

Stony Brook University

The Madeira School

TSC Alliance

Want to explore more stories from real nonprofits that have broken their fundraising records with capital campaign consulting? Take a look at our complete library of case studies:

How Graham-Pelton Stands Out

Graham-Pelton is a leading capital campaign consulting firm. Campaign planning and management have been the core of our expertise for decades, and we’ve helped nonprofits of across sizes and sectors transform their operations with ambitious, successful campaigns.

We can develop custom strategic solutions to meet your organization’s unique campaign vision and culture. We offer a complete range of custom capital campaign services, including:

• Campaign planning and feasibility studies
• Our unique CAPS™ Accelerated Planning System, ideal for organizations ready for fast, bold, and transformative campaigns
• Development assessments and growth planning
• Case for support development
• Complete capital campaign management and execution
• Hands-on collaborative campaign partnerships
• Campaign counsel
• Interim and transitional campaign staffing
• Major giving strategy development and implementation
• Sponsor and foundation engagement strategy
• Workshops and training to reinforce campaign best practices

Our Specializations Make the Difference

The Graham-Pelton team brings rich, sector-specific expertise that many types of organizations can’t find elsewhere. We specialize in helping:

• Healthcare institutions. We’ve pioneered an innovative (and successful) grateful patient fundraising framework, Beyond Gratitude™.
• Higher education institutions. We offer specialized knowledge of college and university fundraising practices and a track record of proven results.
• Independent and private schools. We understand the unique fundraising challenges of independent schools and develop custom strategies to meet them.
• Social and global impact organizations. Our cutting-edge methodologies are trusted by missions across diverse social, environmental, and humanitarian missions.

Partnering with experts will give your organization the structure, guidance, and confidence it needs to exceed its fundraising goals and transform the way it drives impact for constituents.

The fundraising experts at Graham-Pelton can give your nonprofit everything it needs to succeed with its next capital campaign.

Learn more about our comprehensive capital campaign consulting services, and please get in touch if you have any questions. We can get started laying out custom campaign strategies in no time.

Want to discover more capital campaign and development best practices? Check out these recommended resources from the Graham-Pelton team:

• How to Write a Case for Support: Pro Tips for Driving Impact
• Conduct a Capital Campaign Feasibility Study: 5-Step Guide
• Predictive Modeling for Annual Giving: Four Critical Questions to Ask
• The Hidden Dangers of Internal Interim Appointments for Nonprofits