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Ten things your church must bring to a capital campaign. Hey, over my years of being an xp, I had a number of experiences with various capital campaign firms. Two of them stand out to me. Early on we were doing a transformative campaign. Big deal for us. And we were about halfway through this campaign and frankly, I was frustrated. I was frustrated with what the campaign consultant brought to us. Every time we meet, they literally had a binder. This was back in the 1900s. And we would turn pages to just what was next. And it was like they were unloading their strategy. Didn't really care who we were. And so we fired them halfway through the campaign. Cost our church a bunch of money. Zoom forward a little bit. Maybe 10, 15 years later, was doing another campaign. And the experience was completely different, totally transformative. In fact, that person is a friend to this day. It was one of those people we started as workmates, but because, because we drew swords together, we became friends. Now, reflecting back on that, what was the difference over the years as an XP or XP adjacent in three fairly fast growing churches? Two of the three went from less than 1,000 to multiple 4,5000 people. We did a multiple of these multiple campaigns, some large, some small. But they were all transformative. Again, you could call them generosity initiatives or a spiritual growth system season or a capital campaign. I really do believe that it's good for you to bring in help for these because they are so transformative. But what was the difference between these two? One fired, haven't talked to the guy, not sure. It was great. The other was a friend. Well, can I have an honest moment here? What you and me bring to these experiences is linchpin. It's not about outsourcing. I was frankly in that first one, looking to our campaign consultant for too much. I didn't really reflect on what it is that we needed to bring to the table. They're coaches. And you know what? You and I have to bring our A game to make these things effective. And so here are 10 things that I've learned that we've gotta bring to the table the next time we're thinking about a capital campaign. Number one, clarity of vision. Before you talk about money, research consistently shows that donors give to impact, not to need. We want a new roof, frankly, raises less than we're building a home for the next generation of faith in our city, capital campaigns that are proceeded by a clear vision soaked season routinely outperform those that aren't, you know, by multiples that make a real difference to your outcome. So the question I have for you is, can the average person at your church explain in one sentence what you, you and your Ch and them, what you're asking people to be a part of? The vision is bigger than the campaign. And you've got to bring an incredible vision to the table with your people. You've got to be crystal clear on that. And then the campaign is just the next step out of that. If your church is not clear on what the vision of the church is, your campaign is not going to work from the beginning. If they're not crystal clear on what it is that God is uniquely calling your church to, then you're not ready for your campaign. All right, number two, leadership alignment at the top. Campaigns like this underperform. If they underperform, it isn't the economy, it's not even the giving culture of your church or the consultants. It's the misalignment at the leadership level. If it underperforms, it is because of misalignment. With particularly the senior leadership, staff members, elders, those people that are privately skeptical about the campaign before it goes public will erode trust. The pressure reveals. When the pressure comes in, that really starts to reveal itself and will ultimately erode the trust of what's going on at the church. Listen, your campaign consultant can't facilitate unity. That's really your job as a leader. You've got to understand, hey, are people all in? Are my people all in? And you've got to have real clear alignment with the entire team. All right, so that's number two. Number three, a willingness to do the work, not just follow the plan. Listen, can I have an honest moment here with you for a moment? Most campaign firms, what they do is they follow a nearly identical strategy. In fact, this is a whole other conversation we could have. You know, they are, they'll say they have a bespoke process, but really, you know, we could sit down for half an hour and I could talk you through what most will say. There's a leadership phase, core donor phase, volunteer phase, public phase, pledge weekend, follow up, that sort of thing. Strategy. Listen, strategy is not the differentiator. Execution is, in fact, in a year of AI, in a time of AI, you could go in and ask, AI, what does this firm, how will they recommend we structure it? How will this firm recommend we structure it? How will this firm. You can find those plans. That's not going to be the differentiator. It really is ultimately going to come down to the work. Are you willing to do the work? Churches that go in expecting that the consultant, the External company will carry the load. Frankly, are going to be disappointed. Think of it like a personal trainer. I love my peloton, but the peloton cannot make me get on the bike and push hard. I can't. It can give me instructions, it can give me gauges, it can compare me against other people. It can give me a plan. But I've got to take the design that they've given and actually put it into place to do. The reps that they're suggesting are we need to do so. You know what you need to do? You and I need to budget our team's capacity. Honestly, a campaign running in parallel with the normal ministry operations is essentially asking your team to do two full time jobs. You're going to have to make space for your team to actually execute on that. Does that make sense? Okay, number three, a culture of repetition. Studies on behavior change, you know this suggest that people need to hear a message somewhere between seven to 10 times before it moves them to action. We've got to repeat ourselves time and time again. In fact, we're seeing this increase over time with the increasingly distracted culture we are in. In a campaign like this, that number is even higher. At a church I was a part of, I was counting them up. That the teaching pastor, the lead pastor, repeated the core campaign message a whopping 23 times before the first public saying of it before the first public Sunday of the campaign. That's not overkill. That's just how transformation works, friends. Got to get used to repeating yourself. This is going to be a season where you're going to lock in on some messaging and you're going to walk it out time and time again. You have got to get used to that as a culture. What is the messages that we need to keep in front of our people? Consistent leaders who get tired of the messages and want to move on frankly are not the ones who will succeed in this season. Your congregation is always further behind than you think. They're not where you think they are. You've got to keep communicating. All right, number five, we're halfway there. Five. Strong engagement with key donors before the campaign. Strong engagement with key donors before the campaign. Listen, I don't know any. I don't know who you are. I don't know you know what you're bringing to this. But I can predict that. I know that close to 50% of the donations at your church come from just 10% of your people. This top tier of donors are going to make or break the campaign before the public even hears about it or a single major donor can shift the outcome of your campaign. And listen, here's the thing, friends, before you think about your campaign, if you have not done any engagement with this group, you're already behind on this process. The biggest checks come from the smallest rooms. You've got to work now to get ahead and start building relationships with these people so that you're not just coming to them asking for money. Early donor conversations are not about pressure. It's ultimately about invitation. But you've got to start today before we get there. Building relationship. You're giving your most generous people the privilege of a connection with them that's critically important. I can't overstate that. We can have a whole other conversation about that. Number six, a real follow up plan. So before the campaign even starts, this is where your campaign could fail. So like, before we even get rolling, here's something that we could drop the ball on and not even know it. If your church makes building or staffing commitments based on 100% of the pledge fulfillment that comes in, you might be building on sand. Because if you don't have a strong follow up process designed before you ask people to pledge, before you even get out there and have the public conversation, you've got to make sure that you have that entire follow up phase sorted out before you go public so that we can follow up strongly and follow up on those pledges. That's really what's needed most. Another tip, ensure that your campaign consultant is engaged with you through the follow up phase. Don't let the contract structure in a way that they just are with you up until pledge Sunday. You really want to keep them engaged beyond that'll help accelerate your results. All right, number seven, financial and operational readiness. So you need to plan for a percentage of the total campaign, maybe 3 to 5% of the total campaign to go towards expenses. Communications, events, materials, video productions. Can I be honest? Too many of us under budget for this part. You know, I was talking to a church recently. They're engaging in a $4 million campaign. It's going to be transformative for their church, but they're going to need to actually budget for these expenses. Also, you need to be thinking about the financial kind of infrastructure. Is it ready for a surge in giving? Let me tell you, as from one friend to another, we set out on a campaign and we talked about this a lot with the team ahead of time. Are we ready? Are we ready? Are we ready? On opening day, I talked with our finance people. Are we ready? We're expecting a Lot of revenue to come in on this opening day. And in fact, we were hoping for a million dollars plus to come in on one day. And I said to our finance people, hey, are we ready? And yeah, yeah, yeah, we're ready, we're ready. I think partly they didn't think that was actually going to happen, but it did. There was a million dollar plus surge in a single day and then we got shut down by our processing people because we weren't ready. So we need to work on ahead of time, think about what we're doing to follow up. It's super important on this front. All right, number eight, emotional and spiritual resilience. Church leaders who've led campaigns consistently surface the same surprise. I've heard this from too many church leaders. The internal relational strain is harder than they expected. This pulls on our unity when we focus on resources for specific ministry areas. Some leaders can feel left out. Combine that with the extra workload, the high stakes, the spiritual opposition, it is a recipe for team fracture. Friends take it from a friend. Build in regular rhythms of prayer, of celebration and of rest throughout the entire campaign season. Not just at the end. Talking to a friend recently who finished a campaign a year ago and, you know, at the end of one of the phases, in the middle of it, he went and went on a vacation, went to Mexico, had a great time, unplugged, and he said, listen, if I hadn't done that, I'm not sure I would have been able to pivot to the public phase. Critically important. All right, number nine, a plan for the dip moment. A plan for the dip moments. Expect that weekend attendance is going to drop. We often see this in campaigns and maybe your consultant won't tell you this and it can freak you out a little bit. Now, campaigns I've led, we've actually seen an increase in attendance. That's a whole other conversation. But oftentimes lots of churches see a dip in attendance. It's not unique to you. And please don't take it personal. It does not mean that the thing is not right. It's normal. You're asking people to take a big step and it's understandable that some people take a step back at that moment. Simply put, some people just feel like pushed by these kind of vision. Sundays, they'll come back. Eventually, lots of them will come back and some of them won't. But you do need a strong recall after that phase. So think about this like what we're doing after. What are we doing to call these people back? There's a Whole bunch of dip moments as well. You need to think through. You know, will there be a transfer from the campaign, the generosity initiative, will there be a transfer to that out of operational giving? Even in a one fund, you might see the total giving, you know, dip a little bit. Don't be surprised by that. All I'm saying is be concerned, be prudent on your planning around the financial stuff to assume for a bit of a dip, both in attendance and maybe even on the financial side on the front end. Again, that's like a whole other conversation. There's lots of ways to do that so you don't have that operational debt, but at least plan for it at this. And then number 10, this is the big one, ownership of the outcome. This is a hard truth that I don't think no consultant, no matter how good they are, no matter what firm they're with, can. No matter how kind of much they want your campaign to work, it really doesn't rest on them. It's ultimately up to the Lord and to your people and to you. The churches that win are the ones that work on us owning it. We don't hire these people and think, okay, that's up to you now to own that. We've got to own it. We have to say, this is up to us. These folks are coaches that come alongside us to help us. But it's not up to them. It's ultimately up to us and to the work we do. You're not hiring someone to run your campaign. You're hiring someone to coach you while you run it. That's a massive difference and you need to think that through clearly. This, at the end of the day, is up to you and I. Alright, friends, so there it is. 10 things your church must bring to your next capital campaign. Reach out if I can help in any way. Rich Burch on Instagram. I run a thing called Unseminary Stuff you wish they taught in seminary. It's a weekly podcast. We do blogging and all kinds of other fun stuff. Stuff I'd love for you to check that out as well. Unseminary.com thanks, friends.