Time is Your Friend in a Church Capital Campaign

By Stephen Anderson When preparing for a church capital campaign, time is your friend.  Time is also a critical factor in taking your church capital campaign from good to great.

Depending on the size of the church, it can take 3 to as much as 12 months to give yourself (and the church) time to prepare for and execute a capital campaign. While size is definitely a factor in setting the timeline, three other factors can also impact the amount of time you should take in preparation.

Church capital campaigns raise money for specific capital projects, like construction, renovation, or large capital purchases.  If there is not a high level of excitement, unity, and support across the whole spectrum of the church, this would indicate the church should certainly take more time to make the case for support.

If the amount to be raised is at the higher end of the range of normal campaign results, or will need to be a real stretch, this would certainly be an indicator that you should take more preparation time in order to increase the odds of reaching your financial goal.

If the church does not already have a culture of generosity and sacrificial giving, more preparation time will allow you to improve giving on a week by week basis, thereby transforming the giving patterns of your members for a lifetime, not just 3 years.

Time is your friend in a church capital campaign:

• Time to get the right people involved
• Time to do proper donor development
• Time to create a broad culture of generosity
• Time to do the work without burning anyone out
• Time to make the most spiritual impact
• Time so that your church does not fee like it was "shoved down their throat"
• Time to do it right as opposed to"good enough"  

Anything worth doing is worth doing right.  Taking extra time will be certain to produce additional spiritual and financial rewards.