Recession strategy: Scale back ambitious campaigns, but don’t give up on them

February 26, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes

A growing number of charities are delaying capital campaigns that had been in the planning stages. But fund-raising experts say that most big campaigns, which often last five to seven years, will go on for longer than any economic downturn is likely to last. Instead of postponing a campaign indefinitely, they say, charities can consider readjusting the goal or lengthening the campaign’s first phase, when the biggest gifts are solicited.

Some charities in the planning stages of a big capital campaign have recently decided to postpone the drive until they have a better sense of whether the economy is going to start improving or get worse, says William Krueger, president of Capital Quest, a Louisville, Tenn., campaign consulting firm. Increasingly, charities “are more in a survival mode than a growth or expansion mode,” he says.

However, the problem with waiting for the economy to clear is that it creates pent-up demand, says Mr. Krueger. “At some point, it is going to become conventional wisdom that the economy is better, and then everyone is going to want to do a campaign. That will create a different set of problems.”

Among them: so much competition among campaigns that donors become fatigued, and charities are unable to recruit volunteer campaign leaders, says Mr. Krueger.

There is an alternative solution, says Leo Arnoult, a Memphis fund-raising consultant.

He points to one of his clients, a large environmental charity that wanted to start a capital campaign to raise more than $200-million this year. The organization was forced to reconsider after several board members who had planned to make big campaign gifts lost large sums in the market collapse. Instead of a five-year comprehensive campaign, Mr. Arnoult says, the charity “deconstructed” its drive and is now holding a much smaller campaign to coincide with an important anniversary of the organization’s founding in 2010.

“They have pulled back and dropped the goal to one-fifth of what they originally planned,” says Mr. Arnoult. “They will take their nearest and dearest donors to do this and wait for better times.”

— Holly Hall and Paula Wasley