Avoid This Costly Mistake In YOUR Church Capital Campaign.
The church capital campaign to avoid will:
Almost certainly be the one with the highest overall net cost.
Have the least spiritual impact on your church members.
Be the most stressful and least effective.
Therefore, the consulting firm to avoid is your own church and the most expensive church capital campaign is the one done without professional assistance.
Before you dismiss the above comment and click away, allow me to explain why this is true.
Conventional wisdom, along with my personal experience in church capital campaigns, indicates that all but the most experienced churches will raise only about half of what they could with the help of an experienced outside consultant. While the discrepancy in money raised is even greater for larger churches, let’s consider a small to moderate-sized church with a $350,000 annual income from tithes and offerings. A 50% decrease in contributions during a 3-year capital campaign (assuming the church would raise 2x annual giving, or $700,000) could easily result in a loss of $350,000 in potential giving.
Even a conservative 20% decrease in giving to a campaign of this size could still reduce giving by $140,000 or more.
For the sake of argument, let’s be conservative and say that the results of the do-it-yourself church capital campaign in this example were reduced by a relatively small percentage of only around 10%, resulting in a net negative impact of just $70,000. If the campaign consultant was going to cost $36,000, it’s plain to see that running a do-it-yourself campaign was very expensive.
You did not save $36,000 by not hiring a consultant; it cost you at least $70,000. And if your campaign results were more in line with the industry average (these are very conservative numbers), it probably cost you far more.
In this example, the net cost to the church could easily have been $350,000 over the life of the campaign (based on the 50% reduction scenario).
This lost opportunity is many times what a consultant would have charged to help with the campaign. The church could have invested $36,000 or even $70,000 in a consultant and increased giving by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, increase the size of the church and its budget, and the results are even more extraordinary.
Here’s the bottom line:
It will cost you more not to hire a church capital campaign consultant than it will to get their help. Regardless of the size of the church, it is reasonable to expect that for every dollar invested in a good consultant you will see a significant return on your investment.
The only real question left for the church would be to ask, “How often can we do this?”
“There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man’s lawful prey.” - John Ruskin
Need a Biblical Church Capital Campaign? Rod and Stephen at Abundant Giving would love to work with you!
