---
name: capital_campaign_planning
description: "Plan a nonprofit capital campaign before anyone is asked for money: internal readiness and feasibility checks, a gift range chart built and depth tested against the real donor base, campaign policies and counting rules, a goal built from priced project and campaign costs, staffing and volunteer solicitor capacity, and quiet and public phase gates with a written launch threshold. Ships a chart generator and plan checker, a full 2,000,000 dollar worked example whose budget, gift chart, and depth chart all tie to the goal, and reference guides for the gift range method, feasibility, phase gates, and staffing. Use when preparing, sizing, or rescuing a capital, building, endowment, or comprehensive campaign, or when a board wants to launch before the math is done."
---

# Capital Campaign Planning

## Purpose

Get a capital campaign ready to launch, or prove it is not ready yet and name exactly what is missing. A campaign is a priced project, a chart of gifts that adds up to the goal, a donor file deep enough to fill that chart, people with hours to make the asks, and a sequence of phases separated by gates. This skill builds those five pieces in that order, because each one tests the one before it.

The plan this skill produces ends in a board decision: go at a stated goal, go smaller or in phases, delay with named fixes, or no go. A plan that ends in general optimism has not finished. One full example ships in `references/worked-example.md`, a fictional 2,000,000 dollar arts center renovation, with its budget, gift chart, and depth chart in `assets/` so every number can be rechecked.

## Workflow

1. **Price the project before naming a goal.** Get dated quotes or professional estimates for the capital work, furnishings and equipment, and transition costs such as temporary space. Add a contingency line sized to the risk. The goal is the sum of priced parts. If the board starts from a round number, build the cost sum anyway and put the two numbers side by side. Read the goal building section of `references/staffing-and-budget.md`.

2. **Run the internal readiness check.** Work the ten items in `references/feasibility-and-readiness.md`: strategic basis, financial stability, board readiness, leadership bench, donor depth, staff capacity, systems, case draft, policies, and cash for pre campaign costs. Score each pass, weak, or fail with evidence. Every fail becomes a work item with an owner and a date. A campaign does not launch over an unowned fail.

3. **Set campaign policies in draft.** Write down, before feasibility: the date counting starts, which gifts count and which do not, the standard pledge period (five years is a common counting convention, exceptions need named approval), how campaign gifts sit alongside annual giving, gift acceptance rules for complex assets, designated gift handling, the recognition schedule, and the public launch threshold from step 7. Policies written after the first big gift get written around that gift, badly.

4. **Build the gift range chart from the goal.** Run `python3 scripts/campaign_plan.py chart --goal 2000000` for a starting shape: eight bands, top four carrying 15 percent of goal each, 182 gifts at the example goal, first six gifts supplying 45 percent of goal. Then reshape the bands to your community and sector. The method and its reasoning are in `references/gift-range-method.md`. A chart is a hypothesis about where the money sits. The next step tests it.

5. **Audit the donor base and build the depth chart.** Export real giving records into the columns of `assets/donor-base-audit.csv`: annual gift, largest gift, years given, last gift date, capacity estimate with its basis, linkage, and interest. A qualified prospect has capacity, linkage, and interest, all three. Assign each prospect to one band, highest first, and count qualified prospects per band against the ratios in the gift range method: 4 prospects per gift at the top bands, 3 in the upper middle, 2 at the lower bands, unless your own campaign history supports different ratios and you show that history. Write the result as a depth CSV like `assets/example-depth.csv`.

6. **Check the plan arithmetic.** Run the checker on the budget, the gift chart, and the depth chart together:

   `python3 scripts/campaign_plan.py check --goal 2000000 --budget assets/example-budget.csv --gifts assets/example-gifts.csv --depth assets/example-depth.csv`

   Budget lines must sum to the goal, gift bands must sum to the goal, and every band must hold enough qualified prospects. The checker also reports campaign cost as a percent of goal and warns outside 5 to 20 percent: published guidance clusters at about 15 percent for goals under 1,000,000 dollars, about 10 percent at 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 dollars, and 7 to 10 percent above that. Fix every FAIL before moving on. A short band means cultivate, reshape the chart, or lower the goal. It never means launch and hope.

7. **Run external feasibility.** Test the draft case and the working goal with the people who would fund them, using `references/feasibility-and-readiness.md`. Interview likely lead donors, funders, board members, senior staff, and a few external stakeholders, through an interviewer who will not later make the ask to them. Pay any consultant a fixed fee, never a percent of gifts: the AFP ethics code bars percentage based fundraising pay for its members, and a percent fee rewards an inflated goal. End the study in a recorded board decision: go, go revised, delay with named fixes and a retest date, or no go.

8. **Staff the campaign and count the asking capacity.** Name the people for every role in `references/staffing-and-budget.md`: board, chair or co-chairs, committee, chief executive, campaign manager, prospect research, gift processing and stewardship. Count solicitor workload honestly, using about five active asks per volunteer per month over a push as the planning ceiling. If the assignments exceed the people, the plan adds people, extends the timeline, or cuts the goal. Add campaign costs to the budget: added staff and backfill, counsel, materials, events, recognition, travel, and systems. Show existing staff time as a memo line even when no new salary is paid.

9. **Set the phase plan and the gates.** Lay out pre campaign planning, feasibility, quiet phase, public phase, and completion, using the gate criteria in `references/phase-gates.md`. Solicit inside out and top down during the quiet phase: board first, then committee, lead gifts, and down the chart. Write the public launch threshold into the policies before the quiet phase starts. Published practice reports thresholds from one third of goal up to 65 percent or more. This skill default is 60 percent pledged, with 100 percent board participation and the top three bands closed or in final negotiation. Going public early to create momentum is the most common way campaigns stall in public.

10. **Write the close and stewardship plan before launch.** Pledges and cash are reported separately, always. Name who sends pledge reminders before due dates, who issues written acknowledgments (in the US, a donor needs a written acknowledgment from the charity for a contribution of 250 dollars or more to deduct it, under IRS substantiation rules), who delivers recognition as promised, and who owns pledge collection for the full pledge period after the public close. Set the reporting cadence from the phase gates reference: weekly assignment review, monthly board report by band with an annual fund guardrail, checker rerun at every gate.

## Output Contract

- The campaign plan: priced goal build up, campaign policies, phase timeline with gate criteria, staffing table with named owners and hours, and the board decision requested.
- The gift range chart as a CSV in the format of `assets/example-gifts.csv`, summing to the goal.
- The depth chart as a CSV in the format of `assets/example-depth.csv`, showing qualified prospects against required ratios at every band.
- The campaign budget as a CSV in the format of `assets/example-budget.csv`, summing to the goal, with campaign cost lines flagged and the campaign cost percent stated.
- The readiness score sheet and the feasibility summary, ending in one of the four recorded decisions.
- Checker output on the final numbers showing budget_total and gift_total equal to the goal, no depth band short, and RESULT PASS. If the honest output is FAIL, the deliverable is the fix list, not a launch date.
- The donor base audit file, with the basis for every capacity estimate at the top two bands.

## Operating Rules

- The goal comes from priced costs and a tested donor file. Never work backwards from a number the board finds exciting, and never pad a cost sum to reach a prettier goal.
- Every factual claim in the case and the plan needs a source a donor could be shown: a quote, a set of accounts, a service record, a study finding. Unverifiable means cut it or label it a projection in the same sentence.
- Capacity estimates are planning tools, not knowledge about a person. Keep them in the campaign file, share them on a need to know basis, and never present an estimate to a donor as what they are expected to give.
- Donor information stays confidential within the campaign team, donors get the acknowledgment and recognition they were promised, and gifts are used for the purposes they were given for. Those are standing donor rights in the AFP and CASE tradition, not courtesies.
- No percentage based pay for fundraisers or consultants, no finder fees. Fixed fee or salary, in the contract, before work starts.
- Board gifts come first and annual giving is protected. A campaign that funds a building by draining three years of operating gifts has moved the problem, not solved it.
- Quiet phase means quiet: no public goal, no press, no announcement until the written gate passes. Revising a goal in private is planning. Revising it in public is a story.
- If the checker fails or feasibility says the goal is not there, say so plainly and bring the revised goal or the delay plan. A smaller campaign that closes beats a larger one that stalls at half, every time, in money and in reputation.