Preparing for a Capital Appeal
For a fundraising team, a capital appeal can seem a daunting task. Whether it is to pay for equipment or to purchase a new building, it often involves a significant target to be raised over many years, while all the time you are still raising revenue to run your operations.
Capital appeals are therefore a big test of an organisation’s fundraising resilience and preparedness. As a result, they should not be undertaken lightly but only when you are sure you have a high chance of success.
The place to start is with a funding feasibility study, as the secret of raising a large amount of money (whether a capital appeal or even a major revenue campaign) lies in careful preparation.
Questions to be Asked
Appeals that fail usually do so because the organisation did not do its preparation. Without it, how do you know that the target can be reached? You need to answer some key questions before you commit publicly to raising the money, such as:
Is the money actually out there for what you want to do?
Where will it come from?
In particular, where will the lead gifts come from?
Is the case for support strong enough and how do you know?
Have you got the right people in place to help you raise funds (staff and volunteers)?
How long is the appeal likely to take?
What will it cost and how should it be structured?
How will you protect your day to day revenue income?
Is your charity “fit to fundraise” (e.g. do your latest accounts provide a convincing picture of your finances?)
Have you got the right systems in place to run a major appeal?
The way to avoid appeal failure (and all the embarrassment and practical problems this causes, such as having to give money back to donors) is to carry out a detailed feasibility study to identify in advance all the issues to be addressed if an appeal is to succeed. In this way, you can take action beforehand to give yourselves the best chance of success.
Benefits of A Feasibility Study
The main benefits of such a study are to inform the decision of whether to go ahead with the appeal or not, as well as to reduce the risk of an appeal failing.
By testing the water before you launch the appeal, a feasibility study also gathers much useful information to inform the next stage of the process - the appeal strategy. So for example, a well-conducted feasibility study will involve some headline prospect research that will inform the financial objectives you need to set for each income source.
Sometimes feasibility studies can identify significant challenges, but it is much better to spot these before you launch your appeal than have to deal with them later.
Outcomes
It sometimes happens that a study will find that a successful appeal is unlikely. This of course is disappointing, but it is better to know this before you launch an appeal that is doomed to failure than to find out later, with all the consequences that would entail.
Where we conduct a feasibility study for a charity, the report will typically come to one of three conclusions. Either that a successful appeal is possible and should go ahead, or that it may be possible once certain issues have been addressed, or sometimes that an appeal is unlikely to succeed and should not be progressed.
Whatever the outcome, a feasibility study is an essential part of planning a capital appeal and is well worth the input of time and resource before you commit to such a major undertaking. It will repay itself may times over and increase your chances of appeal success.
Finally, assuming the study points to a likely success, the next stage in the appeal planning is the development of the appeal strategy, which incorporates much of the information gathered during the study and then adds a lot more detail about how the funds will be raised.
Further information
Whether you are planning to raise £1 million or £20 million, conducting a feasibility study is wise investment. For more on funding feasibility studies click here or call us now on 01903 723519 for a free initial chat.
