Leadership gifts aren’t about finding a few wealthy people to fund the campaign. They are about inviting the people who lead the church — formally and informally — to demonstrate their own commitment to its future.

One of the first things I talk about when a church is preparing for a capital campaign is leadership gifts. That doesn’t mean I want to find a handful of wealthy people and ask them to carry the campaign. It also doesn’t mean that every person who serves in a leadership position is expected to make a large gift.

Leadership gifts are about two things that sometimes overlap and sometimes don’t: leadership and financial capacity. The people who have accepted responsibility for leading the congregation need to have an opportunity to demonstrate their own commitment to the campaign. At the same time, there are people in almost every congregation who have the ability to make a significant financial commitment, and those people are important to the leadership phase as well.

That’s what makes a leadership gift different from simply being an early donor. It is a commitment that helps establish the foundation for the campaign and demonstrates that people who are invested in the future of the church are willing to invest in it themselves.

What Is a Leadership Gift?

A leadership gift is a significant commitment made early in a capital campaign by someone whose participation can help establish confidence in the campaign and its vision.

Sometimes that person is a formal leader of the congregation. Sometimes it is someone with the financial capacity to make one of the larger gifts in the campaign. Often, the two overlap.

In a Presbyterian church, for example, I generally invite the members of the Session to participate in the leadership gift phase. In other denominations, that might mean the Council, Board, Consistory, Vestry, or another governing body. These are the people who have accepted formal responsibility for the life and ministry of the congregation, and I think it is important that they have an opportunity to demonstrate their own commitment before the broader congregation is invited to participate.

But formal leadership isn’t the whole picture. There are also people whose financial capacity makes a significant gift possible, even if they don’t serve on the governing board. There may be longtime members, former leaders, major annual donors, or others whose commitment will carry particular weight within the congregation.

The leadership phase needs to include both.

Why Do Leadership Gifts Matter?

A capital campaign asks people to do something extraordinary. Most members aren’t going to make a significant financial commitment simply because a letter arrived in the mail or because someone announced the campaign on Sunday morning. People want to understand the vision, and they want to know that the people leading the church believe in it themselves.

Leadership gifts help create that confidence.

When the pastor, members of the Session or governing board, campaign leaders, and other significant supporters have made their own commitments, the message is pretty simple: We believe in this, too.

That doesn’t guarantee that someone will make a gift, and it shouldn’t be used to pressure people into giving. What it does is demonstrate that the campaign isn’t something being imposed on the congregation by a committee or consultant. The people who are asking others to participate are participating themselves.

There is another reason leadership gifts matter: they help establish the financial foundation of the campaign. In a well-structured campaign, a substantial portion of the total goal is raised during the leadership phase before the congregation is asked to make its commitments.

That gives the broader campaign something to build on.

Leadership Gifts Aren’t Just About Wealth

This is an important distinction.

If we define leadership only by wealth, we end up with a campaign where the people with the most money are treated as the most important people in the congregation. That’s not how most churches work, and it isn’t how I think about leadership gifts.

A person who has served on Session for years may have enormous influence in the congregation without having the financial capacity to make one of the largest gifts. That person’s participation matters because of the leadership role they have accepted.

At the same time, a member who has substantial financial capacity may not hold any formal leadership position. Their participation matters for a different reason.

Both people can make leadership gifts.

The point isn’t to create a hierarchy of who matters most. It is to recognize that people provide leadership to a campaign in different ways, and that both leadership responsibility and financial capacity are important to the early phase of a campaign.

Who Should Be Asked for a Leadership Gift?

Every church is different, so there isn’t a magic list. But I generally begin with the people who have formal responsibility for leading the congregation and then expand the circle from there.

In a Presbyterian church, that means inviting the Session. In another congregation it might be the Council, Board, Consistory, Vestry, or another governing body. I want those people to have an opportunity to think seriously about their own commitment because they are already telling the congregation, through their leadership, that they believe in the future of the church.

Then I look beyond the formal leadership. Who are the people who have the capacity to make significant gifts? Who has a long history with the congregation? Who has been a major annual supporter? Who has particular influence or relationships within the church? Who is deeply invested in the future we’re talking about?

The question isn’t simply, “Who can give a lot?” And it isn’t simply, “Who is on the governing board?”

It is a combination of both: Who needs to demonstrate leadership, and who has the capacity to make a significant early commitment?

How Do You Determine the Size of a Leadership Gift?

There is no formula that tells every person exactly what they should give. A leadership gift needs to be significant enough to represent a real commitment, but it also needs to make sense in the context of that person’s circumstances and relationship with the church.

I don’t want to tell someone what they ought to give. I want to help them think about what would be a meaningful commitment for them.

That conversation may include their history of giving to the church, their financial circumstances, the size of the campaign, and their own sense of what they want to contribute to the future of the congregation. Someone may make a very large gift because they have the capacity to do so. Someone else may make what looks like a much smaller gift but is making a very significant sacrifice to do it.

The goal isn’t to get everyone to make the same kind of gift. The goal is to invite people to make a commitment that is meaningful to them and appropriate to the campaign.

When Should Leadership Gifts Be Solicited?

Leadership gifts come before the broader congregational campaign. That may sound obvious, but it is an important part of the process. You don’t want to announce a campaign to the entire congregation and then start figuring out whether the people leading it are actually committed.

In a typical campaign, I allow about four to eight weeks for the leadership gift phase. That’s enough time for personal conversations to happen without allowing the process to drag on indefinitely.

And these are conversations, not mass solicitations. Someone should have an opportunity to sit down with a leader, hear the vision, ask questions, talk about what the campaign means to them, and consider what they are prepared to do.

The goal is not to rush people into making a commitment. It is to give them the opportunity to think seriously about their own participation before the congregation is invited to do the same.

What Happens After the Leadership Phase?

Once the leadership phase is complete, the campaign moves into the broader congregation. This is an important transition because the leadership gifts aren’t supposed to become the campaign. They establish the foundation for the campaign.

The congregation still needs to hear the story. People still need opportunities to ask questions and talk about what the church is trying to accomplish. And every member needs an opportunity to participate.

If the leadership phase produces a significant portion of the campaign goal, that is encouraging. But it isn’t permission to stop asking. It is an indication that people who have had an early opportunity to understand the vision and consider their own commitments have confidence in what the church is trying to accomplish.

The broader congregation now has an opportunity to join them.

What Leadership Gifts Shouldn’t Do

Leadership gifts can be misused.

The first mistake is to treat them as a way to get a few wealthy people to solve the church’s problem. That can create resentment and can leave the rest of the congregation feeling as though the campaign has already been decided for them.

The second mistake is to treat leadership gifts as a competition. People don’t need to know who gave what, and nobody should feel embarrassed because someone else made a larger commitment.

The third mistake is to assume that a successful leadership phase means the campaign is finished. It isn’t.

Leadership gifts are meant to demonstrate commitment, establish confidence, and create a foundation for the broader campaign. They aren’t meant to substitute for congregational participation.

Leadership Is More Than Giving

A capital campaign needs leaders who are willing to do more than make a financial commitment. They need to talk about the vision, answer questions, listen to concerns, and help other members understand why the campaign matters.

That’s why I don’t think of the leadership phase as simply the time when we go after the biggest gifts. It is the time when the church’s leaders begin demonstrating what participation in the campaign looks like.

They give. They talk. They listen. They invite others to join them.

And that matters whether the person making the commitment is the chair of the Session or someone who has the financial capacity to make the largest gift in the campaign.

The Goal Is Shared Ownership

The best capital campaigns don’t end up being owned by the people who gave the largest gifts. They become part of the shared story of the congregation.

That’s why leadership gifts matter. They establish a foundation, demonstrate commitment, create confidence, and help the congregation see that the people leading the campaign aren’t asking everyone else to do something they aren’t willing to do themselves.

A leadership gift is ultimately an act of leadership.

And that’s what you want at the beginning of a capital campaign: people who aren’t simply asking others to support the vision, but who are willing to put something of their own behind it.