Episode Details

Early in my time as an Executive Pastor, we were about halfway through what felt like a defining campaign for our church. And I was frustrated. Every time we met with our campaign consultant, they showed up with a binder (this was back in the 1900s) and we would turn pages to whatever was next. Cookie-cutter strategy. No real interest in who we were or what God was doing in our community. We fired them halfway through. Cost us real money and time.

A decade or so later, I was part of another campaign. Completely different experience. That consultant is still a friend today. We started as workmates and became something more because we drew swords together through the whole thing.

Reflecting on those two experiences over the years, across three fast-growing churches (two of which grew from under 1,000 to 4,000 or 5,000 people) and through multiple campaigns of various sizes, one thing has become clear: what makes the difference isn’t the firm you hire. It’s what you and I bring to the table.

That first campaign? I was looking to the consultant for too much. I hadn’t thought carefully enough about what we needed to bring. These firms are coaches. Coaches can only do so much when the athletes aren’t doing the reps.

Here are 10 things your church must bring to the table in your next capital campaign, whether you call it a generosity initiative, a spiritual growth season, or a building program.

1. Clarity of Vision Before You Talk About Money

Research consistently confirms what experienced fundraisers already know: people give to impact, not to organizational need. Penelope Burk’s Cygnus Applied Research donor surveys, conducted annually with up to 25,000 active U.S. donors, found that 67% of donors increasingly favor organizations that provide measurable results, and roughly half report they’re not giving at their full potential simply because they lack information about where the impact actually lands. [ref] Yale’s Center for Customer Insights confirmed in 2024 that aspirational, vision-driven framing significantly outperforms need-based asks in generating donor response. [ref]

For churches, the translation is practical: “We need a new roof” raises less money than “We’re building a home for the next generation of faith in our city.”

The question worth sitting with is whether the average person in your congregation can explain your vision in a single sentence, and whether that vision is genuinely bigger than the campaign itself. If your church is fuzzy on what God is uniquely calling you toward, you are not ready. The campaign is just the next step out of a clear vision. Without that clarity established first, the campaign will underperform regardless of the firm you bring in.

2. Leadership Alignment at the Top

When campaigns underperform, the culprit is almost never the economy, the giving culture of your congregation, or the consultant. In my experience, it’s misalignment at the senior leadership level, and the research on this is hard to argue with.

Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management research, now in its 12th edition and spanning 25 years across more than 10,800 professionals globally, has found that active and visible execu