isabelpratt capital campaigns

You have long outgrown your old building. You need more space. The program is suffering from overcrowding and something must be done. You start looking into expansion. It seems like maybe you should get a few bids. So you do. Only they came in far beyond what the budget could ever possibly accommodate. You were thinking maybe a small loan. Perhaps the Trustees could make a donation, and you could borrow a little and pay it back out of operating. Only, well, as long as you are expanding you really need a few better … a little more … and that was when the bids got really out of control.

But you guys have lived stretching every penny for a long time. This program does deserve better. The growth won’t continue if your facilities can’t compete.

Then somebody says it out loud. The most dreaded two words in a Trustee’s vocabulary … capital campaign . They say it softly at first; but then, before you know it, there is a chorus -- we need a Capital Campaign!

Somebody was on a Board once where one went wrong. And somebody else says you are going to have to pay top dollar and hire some real professional help. Then folks start to mention names of people they know. There is a daughter-in-law who works at a school in the development office in Boston. They built a big, fancy, new science wing. Maybe you should call her. Someone else is sure it is time for a full-time development director. Only where do you find one up here, whom you can afford, who has run campaigns before? And does the office really have enough support staff? The Director wonders why the development person can’t do all their own typing. Her secretary is already too busy. But do you really want to pay a hundred K per year to someone to type? Aren’t there better things they could be doing with their time?

Say the words ‘capital’ and ‘campaign’ together in a sentence, and everybody who has ever been solicited for anything has an opinion. We must do a feasibility study, some will note. Others don’t get the point since the thing has to get done -- feasible or not. But it is the first step in a complicated cultivation, somebody will argue. Who is going to take off six months or a year to manage this thing, everybody wonders? The ‘asks’ have to be peer-to-peer. Who is going to do it? How long will it take to get a development office up and running?

It is the same old story. The list of questions is almost as long as the list of wishes for how to spend the money.

Luckily now you know someone in the business.

isabelpratt

isabelpratt is here to help

We have a comprehensive program designed to target, develop, cultivate and maximize your leads. We help you create a culture of development and craft your story into saleable form.

We will help you build a culture of development that will keep your organization strong and your foundation secure.

We will help you create a strategy for success that might include a feasibility study, or it might just phase your campaign into manageable pieces to ensure success at every juncture.

We will solicit and train your volunteer campaign team.

We will join your team and make your story ours for as long as it takes.

We will work in a close, intimate way, getting to know you and your community, as the ideas take shape and the direction is obvious.

We will establish recurring development projects that your office can manage and repeat.

We will help you jumpstart a languishing campaign with new projects, new trustee cultivation, professional trainings and fresh ideas to broaden your base of inclusion.

We will create a comprehensive solicitation program that will preserve and protect your fragile ecosystem of leads, helping folks make the decisions that will enhance your program and their lives.

At isabelpratt we know it is all about how you tell the story. We are storytellers. Let us help you tell yours …

802-379-5035