Five Ways to Set the Conditions for a Successful Capital Campaign
July 31, 2026
By Kacie Escobar, MBA, APR
Most capital campaign communications start with the ask, but research indicates the donor has made up their mind long before.
At Giving USA Foundation | The Giving Institute Summer Symposium in Kansas City this summer, Cherian Koshy , author of “Neurogiving: The Science of Donor Decision-Making,” walked us through the science of how donors decide. His central finding is that a donor has usually made up their mind to give long before that decision gets confirmed in the ask.
Framing it as a courtroom analogy, the verdict is already in before closing arguments. Every touchpoint a donor has with your organization is evidence they are making the right decision. The question then moves from whether they are giving to how much.
That view completely changes how nonprofits should think about communications. Many CEOs and advancement leaders discuss communications in terms of a compelling case for support, a moving video, talking points that help their teams navigate donor conversations and website copy that explains their vision for the project. These are all important elements of the evidence Koshy describes. But communications in service of fundraising activities alone is not setting the conditions; it’s reacting to conditions that have already been set.
Science now confirms our view that campaign communications is more than launch publicity, media relations or collateral. It’s about shaping the ideal environment for philanthropy – one where the entire organization is prepared to carry the campaign story, where every message builds donor confidence in the vision and your organization’s ability to execute, and media coverage doesn’t simply announce gifts but generates momentum.
Here are five ways to adopt a more strategic view of communications as part of your campaign:
1. Ask four people to describe the campaign, then compare their answers.
Before you write another word, ask your CEO, your advancement lead, your communications lead and your board chair to describe the vision for your campaign without preparing. Then check each answer against four questions: Why this? Why now? Why us? Why should anyone else care?
As you speak with them, listen specifically for clarity. Does the campaign vision get more complicated, not clearer, as they try to explain it? That’s a sign of unresolved confusion or internal disagreement. If they are confused, then you can expect a donor will be, too.
If the four descriptions name different problems, different beneficiaries or different rationale, then your donors are likely meeting four different campaigns when they interact with each of these leaders. That misalignment cannot be fixed with a better campaign video. It must be addressed by revisiting the case for support and determining whether all parties are still in agreement with the campaign’s positioning.
2. Give communications something to own, not just something to make.
Most campaign plans list what communications will produce. Few define what communications is responsible for shaping.
Deliverables such as the case statement, the video and the donor proposals all belong in a production schedule. But ownership of the narrative, the strategy for building campaign credibility and the plan for crisis management belongs in the same strategic conversations where fundraising plans are being discussed.
Solve for alignment by building one shared calendar to serve as a single source of truth. Not an institutional communications calendar and a fundraising communications calendar, but a single view connecting campaign milestones, cultivation and solicitation activity, programs, community engagement and public visibility. When those live in separate documents, campaign communications is driven by whatever event is next rather than by strategy.
If your fundraisers are writing their own materials because the shared messaging with central marketing and communications isn’t current or useful, that’s your sign to develop stronger integrations.
3. Build a story pipeline before you need one.
Despite being one of the most important forms of nonprofit communication, storytelling is most often where nonprofits stumble. This isn’t because they are bad at telling stories. It’s because they don’t have the infrastructure to support storytelling.
Storytelling that holds up under campaign pressure can’t be assembled under campaign pressure. Start now to build your inventory, listing every campaign priority and mapping which ones you can support with a first-person testimonial from someone whose life or work changed because of the mission.
Then work on a system for story collection, assigning an owner of the process, setting a regular cadence for updating the story bank, and developing protocols for photo/video releases and reporting program outcomes. Train everyone on the team what to look for and how to share leads for great stories; it’s everyone’s job to fundraise!
4. Sequence your milestones instead of announcing them.
A dream doesn’t attract investment, but an active campaign that can demonstrate progress does.
Most organizations have more evidence of momentum than they use or burn through them without thinking long-term about the narrative they’re building. Leadership gifts, board commitments, partner endorsements, building permits, hires, program results, etc. tend to get announced as they happen, in the order they happen.
Plan the sequence instead. Decide months ahead which commitments become public and when, and which campaign influencers you’ll ask to lend their credibility. Some have genuine news value and warrant an earned media strategy. Others are better in donor communications, owned content or a stakeholder briefing.
And, before thinking through any other milestone communications, ask a harder question about your own leaders: have your board and campaign committee members made their own commitments? Donors read that as evidence and its absence is evidence, too.
5. Write down the questions you hope nobody asks.
This is the step most organizations skip but it’s the one that protects everything else.
Convene your leadership team and surface the hard questions honestly about cost, timing, governance, leadership tenure, location, access, community benefit and what else the money could have funded. Consider whatever a skeptical journalist or a well-informed critic would raise and develop responses to address them.
Then map your stakeholders into four groups — supporters, reachable neutrals, skeptics and potential opponents — and be honest about who belongs where. Most campaigns plan only for the first group.
Finally, decide in advance who speaks for the organization when something goes wrong, who calls the shots in a crisis and how a board member or frontline staff knows when to answer, when to redirect and when to escalate. Goodwill is not a plan; preparedness is what keeps donor confidence intact when a campaign meets scrutiny.
The evidence you’re building now.
These actions require treating communications as a function that shapes campaign conditions rather than one that supports campaign activity. By the time your gift officer sits down with a donor, the case has largely been made. Focus on creating evidence that supports their verdict.
