Expansion Frequently Asked Questions
 

(1)  There's no question we need to expand.  Where should we start? 

The easy and fun part is design and construction.  The hard, and not-so-fun part, is paying for it. 

Therefore, For the long-term health of your school, you should FIRST start with the "how we will pay for it" part. 

Concretely, that means start with fundraising counsel -- and a Pre-Campaign Study -- NOT the architect.  That takes discipline! 

We know you are up against a powerful human dynamic ... your staff is sick of the current facility.  It will be a real short-term morale-booster to get an architect's drawing.  

When that first awesome rendering is unveiled, you will become the hero to your staff.  We understand that.  More good news is that if the architect got a little carried away, you won't even know for several years ... when your school is head over heels in debt.

Human nature being what it is, many Christian schools therefore start with design, bringing architects into the process before they really understand how much they can afford. 

As a consequence, it is very easy to get locked into a design that is simply too expensive. 

The problem is not so much the architects -- they will change their plans, for a fee.  The real problem is the leadership of the school, who will tend to fall in love with those initial plans.

Where expansion is "over-designed" there are typically dangerous leadership rationalizations that will result in your Christian school over-borrowing.

In other words, beginnings profoundly determine how much will be borrowed at the end.

Incidentally, the answer to this question is largely based on the experience of a Christian school that is just 1 hour away from our GraceWorks' offices ... and many others around the country.

(2)  How do we involve major donors in our expansion planning so they are likely to contribute sacrificially when the time comes?

This is an excellent question.  Do keep asking it!

Imagine yourself as a wealthy business person.  (Perhaps you are!)  Or find one, and simply ask them how they make decisions about capital expansions. 

One of my favorite wealthy persons bemoaned the fact that neighborhood complaints forced him to move a staff of six out of his rather-large home into a regular office building ... about six months before he had planned to do so.  A couple of years later, he bought the entire office building!

(To be clear, my friend did not move his business out of his home because his staff members complained about working in his bedrooms!   Any whining, complaining, or belly-aching along those lines would have fallen on deaf ears.  Of course, he didn't hire people who whined, complained, or belly-ached.)    

Imagine going to my wealthy friend with your plans for a new gym, which you know in your heart could have been done adequately for a million less than the current price tag.  What are your chances of getting a large gift?   Especially if this is the first time you have approached him about your gym?

When a wealthy business person makes a decision about capital expansion, it is first and foremost a business decision.   Why is this capital expansion needed?  What are the business fundamentals behind it?   How much will be borrowed?  How do you intend to pay it back?  How can you document your tuition revenue increases.  

How much can be raised in donations?  What is your evidence to support this?  What is your plan? 

Note that an architect cannot answer any of these questions.  Make sure you can answer them before you go to a major donor. 

Far better -- involve your major donor in finding answers to these questions, and the dozens of other questions related that they apply to their own capital expansion.  If major donors aren't on your Board, why not?  If major donors aren't on your Expansion Taskforce, why not? 

Why stop there?  Do you have a wealthy Christian businessman who would be honored to present Christian business principles to a select group of honors students in your high school? 

One of our clients had a wealthy businessman who was fascinated by all things Japanese.  You guessed it, the high school had a half-day Japanese focus for the entire student body.  Our businessman loved it, and so did the students. 

In other words, find a way to involve potential major donors with your Christian school ... before the campaign starts! 

Most school leaders do not understand this involvement dynamic in Pre-Campaign Support Studies. 

If you are genuinely asking for advice in such a study, that is a very positive dynamic for you.  In other words, you are involving people ... not just selling them!  

Here is the opposite -- over a $100,000 in architectural plans, and oh ... we had better tell (sell) our major donors about this .... hmmm.

Asking advice is a lot easier than selling, don't you think?  This dynamic is one of the top reasons to conduct a well-done Pre-Campaign Support Study.

(3)  We are skeptical of the need for a Feasibility Study.   We've prayed this thing through and are convinced God wants us to go for it!   Why should we waste time and money on a study?

First, we are writing to Christian schools ... not churches.  The rules are totally different.  Typically with a church campaign, you do not need a Pre-Campaign Study.

GraceWorks has written a great deal about this topic in our free lessons: Everything You Wanted to Know about Pre-Campaign Studies -- but Were Afraid to Ask and Real World Campaign Success Essentials.

So here is a summary of the key reasons why you will raise more money in your eventual campaign with a Pre-Campaign Study:

(A)  A Pre-campaign Study cultivates donors.  You respect and honor the wisdom of your donors if you seek their advice before you launch the campaign.  The opposite is "selling the donor" after you've made the launch decision. 

"Nobody likes to be sold, but everyone likes to buy."  This truism from selling expert Jeffrey Gitomer is precisely the difference between "no study" and "study."

With a study, you end up "on the same side of the table" with your major donors, asking them to help you solve a very real problem your school faces.  All of us buy that way -- we investigate a problem we have, and come up with a solution.  That's the same dynamic of a good Pre-Campaign Study -- a buying dynamic.

Without a study, you ask major donors to accept your solution.  Ownership is not there.  In other words, you are selling.

Through involvement, a Pre-Campaign Study cultivates major donors in a deep way.  Involvement = Ownership = Major Gifts.

(B)  A Pre-Campaign Study provides accurate and achievable goals, which in turn maximizes major gift results. 

This plays out in two key ways.  First, your average wealthy person wants to know that you have your act together ... that you can afford what you are building ... that there is a basis in reality for your fundraising goal.  For major donors to give significant gifts, they have to believe in you. 

A study sends a strong message that "you have done your homework."

Second, you will run into a number of major donors who could give much more, but will give according to your need level and/or the giving of other major donors.  A donor may decide that they will give only 10% of your total goal, even though they could give 100%.   

If your total goal is too low, you do not lift sights adequately.  If your total goal is too high, you might get higher lead gifts from your donor, who later will feel "used" when you conclude the campaign millions below your goal.

(C)  Case for Support, whether in fundraising or marketing, is a huge problem that insiders don't understand what outsiders like.  By listening to your donors, you definitely learn. 

When your messages are on target, your donors won't need to figure it out on their own.  To be clear, many will not even try.  Many will give a token gift if they do not understand your real case for support.

(D)  More people to ask.  By asking "who else do you know?" type questions, you will identify more people to ask. 

The caveat there is that you really don't know until you actually talk to the donors so referred.  If Sue thinks John would be a good prospect, John may have an entirely different idea.  The consultant needs to talk with John, too.

(That's why GraceWorks does view Pre-Campaign Studies as a numbers game.  It is not enough to talk to 50 people like Sue -- we need to interview or survey hundreds more like John.  Sue's opinion of John is not good enough.)

Potential supporters are part of the equation here, as well.  A study helps you assess how much cultivation is needed for key donors to give a major gift.  A premature major gift ask can set you back for months.

(E)  More askers.  The problem for practically all Capital Campaigns is not that we lack potential donors; we lack people to ask these donors. 

In other words, you need to cultivate, cultivate, cultivate -- hundreds and thousands of hours.  Building relationships.   

Who does all that?  Far too many campaigns fade out with a whimper with their very best letter to hundreds of people that should have been worked with personally.  It never works.

A good Pre-Campaign Study not only finds out who is willing to give ... a good Pre-Campaign Study finds out who is willing to ask.

(F)  Less longitudinal time to achieve the goal.  Time after time, campaigns with no Pre-Campaign Study get stuck.  The result is the great leadership debate, which is:  What do we do now?

If you think two - three months for a Pre-Campaign Study is bad, try six months, or a year, or years.  

Keep in mind that the average shelf life of a good fundraising volunteer is 18 months.  You don't have a lot of time for missteps in your Capital Campaign.

(G)  Maximize overall support, not just financial support -- current and potential.  GraceWorks' Pre-Campaign Studies seek out potential volunteer, leader, and parent support, not just financial support. 

The point is, if a person is a volunteer with your school, they will give more.  Many schools need to a lot more creativity in how they utilize volunteers.  A good study will ask:  In what creative ways can we involve potential donors in the life of our school?  

(4)  How does a study help us figure out how much we can afford? 

Anyone who does a credible Pre-Campaign Study needs to give you realistic minimum, probable, and best case goals.  These need to be well documented, with logic that makes sense to you.

The amount you can afford is your probable fundraising goal, plus the amount you are willing to borrow.

How about a goal that 100% of the cost of your new addition will be paid by donor pledges over the next five years?  You can do this if you build in phases, as explained in Capital Campaign Real World Success Essentials.

If you immediately default to a plan that includes borrowing, you will have major donors who wonder why they should sacrifice when you will just borrow the difference anyway, regardless of what they donate. 

The real trick is to exit a Capital Campaign with everyone believing you succeeded, and your Christian school is not over-built and over-borrowed.

(5)  When should fundraising consultants be brought into the process? 

We think the earlier the better!  Here's why.

A Capital Campaign is not the time to implement a major gift program.  You should be doing that years before a Capital Campaign.  How can you expect major donors to give sacrificial gifts if you've not even asked them to give a significant gift in the past.

A Capital Campaign is not the time to decide volunteers are an integral part of your program.  You should be looking for systematic ways to involve potential major donors well before a campaign starts.  That way, giving a sacrificial gift is a natural extension of their relationship with you.

A Capital Campaign is not the time to figure out that your Board is not up to the task.  This can be everything from leadership dynamics to lack of gift capacity.  Don't plan on raising millions if your Board is giving thousands. 

A Capital Campaign is not the time to figure out that you do not have the internal staffing horsepower to pull it off.  It takes real skills to pull off the structure and people-management required for success. 

It all comes back to the necessity of starting well, of the need for great beginnings.  

Try to make a pickle like this.  Immerse a cucumber in an entire barrel of vinegar, and nail the lid down.  Shake the barrel vigorously for 24 hours.  Get your best volunteers shaking that barrel ... put some real organizational muscle to it!

After 24 hours of rigorous activity, open the lid and check your progress.  Guess what?  Your cucumber is still a cucumber!  

Beware campaign consultants with vinegar barrels attached to their backs, who are perfectly willing to start a campaign whenever you are. 

(6)  There are dozens of consultants who can provide Capital Campaigns.  Why should we consider GraceWorks?

If (A) you are in a big hurry for a Capital Campaign or a Pre-Campaign Study, and (B) you don't have an ongoing relationship with GraceWorks, then you should not consider us.

As a matter of ministry values, GraceWorks only provides studies and campaign management to Christian schools with whom we will have an ongoing relationship.  Relationships are integral to our holistic approach to healthy schools.

Step #1 for GraceWorks is to establish relationships of mutual trust and respect.  That simply doesn't happen in the artificial "cattle calls" for Capital  Campaign consultants that go on all around the country. 

You see, GraceWorks' only goal is that your Christian school is healthy ... before, during, and after a Capital Campaign.  We want you healthy before you start a capital expansion project.  We want you healthy afterwards.  We care if parents are more or less satisfied after the campaign is over.  We are concerned with the overall relationship with your sponsoring churches. 

GraceWorks wants your staff happy for the long-run, confident that you lived within your means, and did your capital expansion in a way that glorified God and fulfilled His vision for your Christian school. 

We can't do that just waltzing into the life of your school when you think you need a study and a campaign, and then waltzing back out when the campaign is over.  We can't keep you healthy if the only focus is on the campaign dollars, with no regard to visioning or marketing or staff morale or volunteers.

So how do you establish a relationship with GraceWorks?  If you want to spend no money, try us out for free.  Let us earn your respect and trust. 

Our 65-page manual on Succeeding at Major Gifts is only one phone call away, so call (719) 278-9600.  Or how about a free 56-page chapter on Increasing Your Word of Mouth Effectiveness. 

We will also gladly talk to you for free about the biggest problem that faces your Christian school today:

If you like what we provide for free, perhaps you would consider spending a little money, such as purchasing our book, Marketing Christian Schools:  The Definitive Guide. 

(Note that as soon as you start spending money with GraceWorks, our risk-free money-back guarantee kicks in.  This is central to GraceWorks' ministry philosophy.  We will never harm, in any way, what God is doing through His Christian schools.  Such a guarantee can only be practical in the context of strong relationships.)

If GraceWorks has earned your trust and respect in these small ways, then you could consider an intermediate step, such as our seminar "Healthy Capital Expansion for Christian Schools."  To whet your appetite, here are some of the topics we consider.

Build It ... and Will They Come
Understanding parent overall program priorities
How parents really feel about facilities
Capital expansion's real usefulness in marketing

  "Attitude of Gratitude" vs "What's in It for Me?"
  The crucial difference between fundraisers and fundraising
How our tuition and financial aid policies turn perfectly good parents into consumers ... and why we don't get major gifts from consumers
Changing our organizational ethos to rediscover philanthropy

Achieving the Goal
Keeping God in the process
Campaigning in phases vs going for broke
Critical marketing mistakes that drive away affluent parents

Major Gift Essentials
Why 80% of major gift work is not asking or closing
Seamlessly integrating cultivation activities into your program
Effective and ineffective ways of asking

Campaign Readiness
The foundation:  vision and values
Beginnings and ends
What your Board and staff aren't telling you

Pre-Campaign Support Studies
If you need a Feasibility Study, the architect started too soon!
Feasibility Studies vs Pre-Campaign Support Studies
What you really need from a study ... short-term and long-term
How consultants use Feasibility Studies as loss leaders

Another way to develop a relationship with GraceWorks is through our Marketing or Fund Development Audits.  (If your only goal for a study is to determine the feasibility of your architect's concepts ... don't spend $10,000 more for a full study.  Just get a GraceWorks' Fund Development Audit.)

In short, GraceWorks will serve Christian schools in capital stewardship in relationship, holistically, recognizing that marketing, visioning, annual funds, leadership, and government all directly impact your success in capital expansion -- and vice versa.

Start your relationship with GraceWorks today!  Our number is (719) 278-9600.   Ask for Dan Krause, President.