Sometimes, no. But for a major campaign, there are some things worth considering.

Why would a church pay someone to help it raise money?

It’s a fair question. After all, whatever you pay a consultant is money you don’t have available for the project. And churches are full of capable people. Why not just organize the campaign ourselves and put every dollar we save toward the roof, the building addition, or the new ministry?

Sometimes, that may be exactly the right answer.

If your church needs $75,000 for a roof, you know the congregation has the capacity to raise it, and you have experienced leaders who know how to organize the effort, you may be perfectly capable of handling it yourselves.

But when the goal requires a congregation to stretch, when you are asking people to make significant commitments over several years, or when the success of the campaign will determine whether a major vision becomes possible, the question changes.

For many congregations, this will be one of the largest financial undertakings they attempt in a decade. Sometimes longer. It may involve hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. It may determine whether a congregation can repair its building, eliminate debt, expand a ministry, or take advantage of an opportunity that will shape its future.

And most churches simply don’t do this very often.

That is probably the first reason outside counsel matters.

You don’t know what you haven’t had the opportunity to learn

Think about the leadership around your church right now. How many of them have actually led a successful capital campaign?

Maybe your church conducted one ten years ago. Maybe twenty. Maybe nobody currently serving on the governing board remembers the last one.

Even if someone does, having participated in one capital campaign is very different from having seen dozens of them.

Every now and then, I encounter a congregation fortunate enough to have a professional fundraiser among its members. Sometimes that person has spent a career raising money for a university, hospital, arts organization, or other nonprofit. When the church begins talking about a capital campaign, somebody naturally says, “We have a fundraiser right here. Why don’t we ask them?”

I’ve heard two kinds of responses from those professionals.

The first is, “I know fundraising. I don’t know churches.”

I have enormous respect for that answer.

The second is, “Sure. Fundraising is fundraising. I can do this.”

That’s where I become more cautious.

Sure, church fundraising is fundraising. But a congregation isn’t a university, hospital, or community foundation. We are dealing with generosity, but we are also dealing with faith, relationships, congregational culture, pastoral leadership, and stewardship. And I mean stewardship in the theological sense, not donor stewardship as professional fundraisers understand it.

A process designed for another kind of nonprofit can raise money. But it can also miss what makes a church campaign a church campaign.

That distinction matters.

Church members will tell an outsider things they won’t tell each other

One of the most valuable things we do happens before a campaign ever begins: the Readiness Study.

We sit down with members of the congregation and ask questions. What do you think about the proposed project? What excites you? What concerns you? Do you believe the church can raise the money? Are there issues leadership needs to address before moving forward?

Church leaders could ask those questions themselves.

They just wouldn’t necessarily get the same answers.

Church members are often much more candid with an outsider than they are with another member of the congregation. That isn’t because they’re being dishonest with one another. It’s because relationships matter.

If I tell a fellow church member exactly what I think about the building project, the pastor, the governing board, or the direction of the church, I am going to see that person again next Sunday. And the Sunday after that. We may serve on a committee together. Our children may be friends. We may have known each other for thirty years.

So we guard ourselves a little.

A consultant occupies a very different place. I am there for a particular purpose. The conversation is confidential. The person sitting across from me knows I am trying to help the congregation understand itself more clearly, and they also know that our relationship is not going to extend for the next twenty years.

People let their guard down.

They tell me what they’re enthusiastic about. They tell me what they’re afraid of. They tell me what they think the church can accomplish. Sometimes they tell me things they desperately want leadership to understand but don’t quite know how to say themselves.

That produces better information: more accurate, more forthright, and ultimately more useful information.

And before a church commits itself to a major campaign, good information matters.

Experience gives you a realistic picture of what is possible

There is another advantage to working with someone who does this repeatedly: we know what churches can do.

That applies to money, of course. We work with congregations year after year. We see their annual giving, membership, financial capacity, campaign goals, leadership structures, and results. Over time, you develop a realistic understanding of what is possible.

But I don’t mean only how much money a congregation can raise.

One of the things I emphasize with churches is that a successful campaign has both a financial side and a spiritual side.

I have watched congregations come through campaigns with a stronger sense of mission and vision. I’ve watched morale increase. I’ve watched people develop a greater sense of cohesion and a renewed understanding that they really are the body of Christ together.

And I’ve seen the opposite dynamics, too.

Every congregation has its own culture. Some churches are extraordinarily open about money. Others treat giving as deeply private. Some have enormous confidence in their leadership. Others are still recovering from conflict. Some are accustomed to asking big questions about their future. Others become anxious the moment someone suggests doing something they have never done before.

Those nuances matter.

When you’ve worked with many different kinds of congregations, you begin to recognize them. You can see which dynamics are likely to help a campaign and which ones may complicate it. More importantly, you can help a congregation work with the culture it actually has rather than the culture someone wishes it had.

There is a process, and the process matters

One of the most common mistakes in thinking about a capital campaign sounds perfectly reasonable at first.

“We need to raise $1 million. We have 100 households. If everybody gives $10,000, we’ll have our million dollars.”

The arithmetic is impeccable.

The fundraising strategy isn’t.

People don’t give in equal amounts. They don’t have equal financial capacity. They don’t have equal levels of commitment. And a campaign does not succeed by dividing the goal by the number of members and sending everybody their share of the bill.

There is a process to this work.

In some ways, we helped invent it.

Our history goes back to 1950, when the Presbyterian Church created a Fund Raising Department to help congregations raise money for new churches, educational buildings, manses, and debt reduction. In its first year, two field representatives conducted campaigns in 20 churches and raised more than $800,000. The average payment period was 34 months.

In other words, 76 years ago they were already doing something that looks remarkably familiar: helping congregations organize multi-year campaigns, invite broad participation, and raise significant money for capital needs.

The process has evolved over those decades because churches have changed, giving has changed, and we have learned from thousands of campaigns. But some principles endure because they work.

Good planning matters. A leadership gifts phase matters. Personal conversations matter. A well-developed table of gifts matters. Broad participation matters.

Those aren’t arbitrary rules imposed on a congregation because “that’s the way consultants do it.” They reflect what we have learned about how successful campaigns actually work.

And when churches skip those steps because they seem uncomfortable, unnecessary, or too time-consuming, they usually don’t discover a better way to conduct a campaign.

They usually raise less money. And often, they make the work much harder on themselves in the process.

Somebody has to be willing to set expectations

This is one of the places where having an outside consultant can make a significant difference in the amount a campaign ultimately raises.

Pastors and church members are often reluctant to set expectations around giving. That’s understandable. Money is personal. We don’t want to pressure people. We don’t want someone to feel that the church values them according to the size of their gift.

Neither do I.

But there is a difference between pressure and invitation.

A successful campaign needs leadership. Before we ask the entire congregation to participate, we work with a smaller group of people whose early commitments can establish momentum for the campaign. We use a table of gifts to help people understand what kinds of gifts will be necessary if the congregation is going to achieve its goal. And whenever possible, those conversations happen personally, one-on-one.

That one-on-one conversation is one of the most important pieces of a successful capital campaign.

It is much easier to mail everyone a brochure and a pledge card.

It is also much less effective.

The personal conversation gives someone an opportunity to ask questions, talk about the project, understand why their participation matters, and consider what generosity might look like for them. It turns fundraising from a transaction into a relationship.

And it allows us to invite people to do something significant without turning that invitation into a demand.

Getting a congregation comfortable with those conversations takes planning, training, and sometimes a little courage. An experienced consultant knows how to help people get there.

Because it isn’t really about the money

This may sound strange coming from someone whose job is to help churches raise money, but I say it all the time:

It is never really about the money.

Money is the vehicle.

The question is what the money makes possible.

God has put this congregation in this place. God has called these particular people together at this particular time. The church exists for a purpose.

My Presbyterian friends will recognize what the Book of Order calls the Great Ends of the Church: proclaiming the gospel, nurturing God’s people, maintaining worship, preserving truth, promoting social righteousness, and exhibiting the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

Those are ends. Money isn’t.

A roof matters because of what happens underneath it.

A renovated fellowship hall matters because of the community that can gather there.

An accessible entrance matters because of the people who can finally participate fully in the life of the congregation.

Debt reduction matters because of the ministry that becomes possible when resources are no longer consumed by debt service.

The money is simply the means by which a congregation does something it believes God is calling it to do.

That understanding has been part of our work from the beginning. Years ago, Church Financial Campaign Service, as we were then known, described its campaigns as “more than fund raising” because they were theologically based, biblically rooted, and grounded in stewardship.

The language may have changed over the years. The conviction hasn’t.

And there is another result of a good campaign that is harder to put on a financial statement.

A congregation exercises its generosity muscle.

People accomplish something together that they weren’t certain they could accomplish. They see a goal that once seemed enormous become possible. They experience the satisfaction of sacrifice, generosity, and shared commitment.

That changes a church.

Success increases the congregation’s capacity and confidence. It strengthens morale and esprit de corps. It gives people a deeper sense that we did this together. And that confidence can carry into the next challenge, the next opportunity, and the next big question about what God may be calling the church to do.

The money may be the easiest thing to measure.

It isn’t necessarily the most important result.

Every campaign reveals something about the congregation

Congregations have personalities.

They also have anxieties, habits, histories, unwritten rules, and subjects everyone knows not to bring up.

Those things don’t disappear when a capital campaign begins.

In fact, a campaign often brings them into sharper focus.

A congregation may have a deeply ingrained culture of secrecy around giving. That doesn’t mean the church cannot conduct a successful leadership gifts phase, but it does mean we need to think carefully about how leadership gifts are identified and how conversations are handled.

Another congregation may be nervous about asking people directly for commitments. Another may have experienced conflict around a previous building project. Another may trust the project but not yet understand the urgency.

Often these aren’t reasons to put off a campaign.

They are reasons to think carefully about how to conduct the campaign.

That’s one of the less visible things experience provides.

After working with enough congregations, you develop pattern recognition. A church describes something about itself, and you recognize that what sounds like a minor procedural issue may affect the campaign later. Sometimes the church leaders themselves don’t see it because the dynamic is simply normal to them. It’s how their church has always operated.

An outsider can see it differently.

The job isn’t to come in and tell a congregation that its culture is wrong. The job is to recognize the dynamic, anticipate how it may affect the campaign, and create a pathway that allows people to move through their anxiety rather than running headlong into it.

That’s often the difference between dealing with a problem while it is still manageable and discovering it halfway through the campaign.

You don’t have to figure all of this out yourself

There is also a very practical reason churches hire consultants.

Capital campaigns are a lot of work.

Pastors already have jobs. So do campaign co-chairs, governing board members, committee members, and volunteers.

Without outside help, someone has to figure out the process. Someone has to decide what happens first and what happens next. Someone has to determine what materials are needed and how they fit into the campaign. Someone has to train volunteers. Someone has to determine how a leadership gifts phase should work. Someone has to figure out what to do when an unexpected problem appears.

You can read a book.

You can search online.

You can ask another church what it did fifteen years ago.

Or you can have someone beside you who does this work all the time.

I sometimes describe the consultant as a coach. I’m not there to run the church’s campaign for it. In fact, one of the principles I believe strongly is that the campaign must belong to the congregation.

But a coach provides the structure, training, experience, and perspective that allow the people doing the work to do it well.

There is another way a consultant can shoulder some of that burden.

Church leaders can say, “That’s what Michael said.”

I don’t mean that flippantly.

Campaign leaders sometimes know what needs to happen but feel uncomfortable insisting on it. The pastor may believe personal visits are important, but someone on the committee wants to skip them. The co-chairs may understand the value of a leadership phase, but another leader worries that someone will feel excluded.

Having an outside person who can say, “We’ve seen this before. Here’s what tends to work,” takes some of that burden off the people inside the congregation.

I’ve had churches worry that people who aren’t included in the leadership gifts phase will be offended. I understand the concern. I’ve worried about it myself.

But in actual campaigns, those hurt feelings almost never materialize.

I can say that not because I’ve developed a clever argument for why people shouldn’t feel that way, but because I’ve watched campaign after campaign and seen what actually happens.

That’s the value of experience.

Whatever issue a church raises, there is a good chance we have encountered some version of it before.

Not because all churches are the same. They aren’t.

But churches are made up of people, and people tend to bring some recognizable hopes, fears, anxieties, relationships, and behaviors with them.

The consultant doesn’t eliminate those things.

The consultant helps the congregation navigate them.

So, do you really need a consultant?

Maybe.

I don’t think every fundraising need requires one.

But I do think the question churches should ask is larger than, “Can we organize this ourselves?”

Of course you can.

Churches organize extraordinarily complicated things all the time. They build ministries, manage budgets, employ staff, maintain buildings, care for people in crisis, educate children, feed neighbors, and somehow manage to put worship together fifty-two Sundays a year.

The better question is:

What are we trying to accomplish, and what will give us the best opportunity to accomplish it well?

If you’re considering a campaign that will ask people to make significant, sacrificial commitments over several years, the cost of getting the process wrong can be substantial.

There is the obvious financial cost. If a congregation could raise $1 million but raises $700,000 because it didn’t structure the campaign effectively, saving the consulting fee suddenly doesn’t look much like saving money.

But I think there is another cost that matters even more.

A capital campaign is an unusual opportunity in the life of a congregation.

For a season, the church is asking some of its biggest questions.

Who are we?

Why are we here?

What has God entrusted to us?

What do we believe God is calling us to do next?

And what are we willing to do together to make that possible?

If the only result of a capital campaign is a larger bank balance, we have aimed too low.

A good campaign raises money.

A great campaign helps a congregation discover that it is capable of more than it thought: more generosity, more commitment, more confidence, more ministry, more imagination about what God might do through these particular people in this particular place.

The money is the vehicle.

The destination is somewhere much more interesting.