Day: November 3, 2016
Are Campaign Consultants Really Worth the Price You Pay?
Avoiding the Pitfalls
Do you want success in your church capital campaign? It’s a key question that virtually every pastor wants to answer affirmatively. Yet pastors often relate horror stories about not achieving their goals. In many cases the failed campaign was poorly conceived and that created divisions in the church that were difficult to overcome. So how can a pastor avoid this?
First, it’s important for pastors to realize that they may need help. It never ceases to amaze me how some churches are willing to spend sizeable sums on architectural fees. Yet, they don’t think they need assistance in fundraising. Consider that if your campaign fails to achieve its goal the construction costs and architectural fees don’t change.
We had a church come to us for help, but at the last minute the deacons thought they could save money by implementing the campaign themselves. The project goal was $12 million, but they raised less than $2 million. Architectural fees alone on this project were over $1,000,000. Yet, they were reluctant to pay our fee, which was $70,000 total for the planning (feasibility) study and campaign counsel.
Increase the Likelihood of Success
Of course, using counsel doesn’t guarantee success. However, if you follow the plan and the advice the consultant gives you, the likelihood of success is much higher. It stands to reason that if the person helping you organize and implement your church financial stewardship campaign does this every day, you’ll avoid some common mistakes and increase the likelihood of success.
Even the most competent church member, will not have the time to organize and implement the campaign the way they should. When our church was getting ready to launch a capital campaign, our pastor recruited me to chair the $26 million effort. That made sense, since at the time I was the chief development officer at a well-known university. Also, we had also just completed a successful capital campaign ourselves.
I agreed, but I also realized that ours was a mega-church. I simply lacked the time to set up the systems and do all of the campaign organization and training necessary for success. Besides, the model for a church campaign is entirely different than that of a university campaign. Accordingly, I recommended that we hire a consulting firm to partner with us. We did, and it resulted in raising over $30 million.
Follow Wise Counsel
An equally important principle to consider is that if you hire a campaign consultant, you need to follow his or her advice. In our 20-year history of doing church campaigns, we’ve only had one church fail to achieve its goal. I believe they failed because there were four major strategies we recommended, but the pastor and leadership team decided not to implement them.
Simply stated, if you pay someone who is experienced, it’s important to follow his or her recommendations. It is in the consultant’s best interest to help you achieve success, and he or she will no doubt bring you best practices. You need to trust them. If you do that, you will also realize that the advice you received was well worth the price!
