Capital campaigns are massive undertakings for all charitable organizations, and when executing them, churches face both unique opportunities and challenges. To give your church its best chance for success, you need to partner with a church capital campaign consultant.
In this guide, we’ll answer a few essential questions about these valuable consultants before diving into our top ten recommended firms.
Church Capital Campaign Consultant FAQ
What does a church capital campaign consultant do?
Church capital campaign consultants provide a number of key campaign services, including:
- Pre-campaign or feasibility studies
- Campaign planning and management
- Case for support development
- Staff training
- Major gift strategy and cultivation
Consultants also bring their years of experience to your campaign. If your church gets stuck or isn’t sure how to proceed, a consultant can advise you, help you move forward, identify and resolve obstacles before they become issues, and ensure your campaign has a stable foundation for success.
Does my church need a capital campaign consultant?
Any church considering running a capital campaign should work with a consultant. Without a consultant, your church may struggle to:
- Set achievable fundraising goals, both in terms of aiming too high or too low
- Realize full fundraising potential, such as not capitalizing on strategic fundraising requests
- Source major donors, leading to the campaign stalling midway through
- Reach your fundraising goal, resulting in a failed campaign
The right capital campaign consultant can help your church prevent these problems and stay on course throughout your entire multi-year campaign.
How much does a capital campaign consultant cost?
Capital campaign consultant costs vary depending on the size of your campaign and the consultant’s fee model. A few common cost structures you’ll see when researching consultants include:
- Hourly rate. The simplest cost structure, wherein the consultant charges per hour spent on your campaign.
- Monthly fee. A monthly retainer fee provides your church with access to a consultant for a set period of time such as number of hours per month, allowing you to get in touch with them as needed. You and the firm will likely agree to a set fee at the start of the engagement to ensure the cost fits your church’s budget and that you make effective use of your consultant.
- Deliverable-based. Rather than basing costs on time, this approach involves charging flat fees for each deliverable. For example, you might pay a flat fee for a completed pre-campaign or feasibility study.
Avoid any consultant who has a percentage-based cost structure, where their compensation is a percentage of all funds raised. This is considered unethical and can harm your church in the long run.
10 Church Capital Campaign Consultants
1. Ruotolo Associates: Most Experienced and Reliable Church Capital Campaign Consultant
Overview
With over 45 years of experience, Ruotolo Associates is one of the most experienced and reliable capital campaign consultants in the nonprofit space. Ruotolo Associates works with a wide range of organizations, including churches and religious organizations—serving parish and church communities, arch/dioceses and religious orders, Catholic schools, and faith-based nonprofits.
Having conducted over 625 feasibility studies and assisted in over 1,000 capital campaigns and major gifts efforts, Ruotolo Associates brings decades of experience helping churches like yours.
Services
Ruotolo Associates offers support for every phase of your campaign. Partner with us to access essential services, like:
- Pre-Campaign or Feasibility studies: Our Pre-Campaign Studies, also known as feasibility studies, are built to give your church a roadmap for success. We will conduct interviews, focus groups, and direct response surveys to get input from a wide range of stakeholders and help your church get a sense of its goals, capacity, and campaign direction.
- Major gift strategy: Get support building your cultivation plan and ongoing engagement strategy, as well as coaching to help each member of your church’s fundraisers develop their own effective approach to major gift solicitation.
- Staff training: Ensure your team has the skills they need to steward donors, plan events, and keep your campaign on track with coaching sessions led by Ruotolo Associates’ expert consultants.
Contact us to learn how our team at Ruotolo Associates can help your campaign find success.
2. Generis: Best Church Capital Campaign Consultant for Christian Organizations
Overview
Generis provides fundraising consulting services for Christian churches, nonprofits, and schools. Their services revolve around helping organizations take a biblical approach to fundraising and inspiring a culture of generosity among congregants to provide reliable funding.
Services
- Fundraising and financial audit: With Generis’s Generosity Pulse Report, you can get an overview of your church’s current financial standing to assess your campaign potential and identify opportunities for increased giving.
- Strategy sessions: Set stewardship goals and develop strategic stewardship frameworks through one-on-one sessions with a Generis consultant.
- One Fund™: To help churches fundraise and scale up sustainably, Generis offers One Fund™, which they claim: “accelerates giving for projects while growing givers’ long-term understanding of stewardship with this holistic plan.”
3. Graham-Pelton: Best Church Capital Campaign Consultant for Analytics
Overview
Graham-Pelton is an established consulting firm that serves a wide range of nonprofit organizations. Through GP Catholic Services, their dedicated service offerings for Catholic organizations, Graham-Pelton can provide expert analytics and campaign help to Catholic churches.
Services
- Campaign and donor analytics: Get an in-depth understanding of your current donors and their potential to support your campaign with AI-powered predictive analytics.
- Development assessment: Evaluate and strengthen your internal stewardship and development processes with Mission 360. This assessment method aims to take an integrated look at your mission, ministry, and fundraising to provide a comprehensive view of your church.
- Pledge redemption services: Your campaign isn’t over until all donations are collected. GP Catholic Services can help you solicit pledge donations and develop strategies to continue stewarding donors and collecting gifts long after your campaign ends.
4. Capital Campaign Pro: Best Church Capital Campaign Consultant for Guided Feasibility Studies
Overview
While Capital Campaign Pro works with nonprofits in general, rather than offering any church-specific services, they have a unique take on capital campaign feasibility studies, which may interest some churches. Rather than the consultant completing stakeholder interviews on your church’s behalf, Capital Campaign Pro invites you to take a hands-on role in your campaign from the very beginning.
Services
- Guided feasibility study: With Capital Campaign Pro’s unique guided feasibility study, your church’s campaign planning team will play an active role in your feasibility study. Alongside your consultant, you’ll attend stakeholder interviews to talk with them directly about your campaign.
- Campaign technology: Capital Campaign Pro’s online toolkit provides churches with resources like videos and how-to guides, campaign planning templates, a gift range calculator, and even their schedule of live training sessions.
- Campaign management: Along with the feasibility study, Capital Campaign Pro can continue to guide your church throughout the rest of your campaign, or even come in to help midway through if you were previously operating without a consultant.
5. Churches by Daniels: Best for Church Construction
Overview
If you’re planning a construction project for your capital campaign, you may end up getting in touch with Churches by Daniels, even if you go with another capital campaign consultant. Offering both construction projects and help with fundraising campaigns, Churches by Daniels could be your church’s one-stop-shop for both its campaign and the resulting project.
Services
- Capital campaign consulting: Churches with Daniels can provide support for your capital campaign, including strategies for getting your pastor involved, providing professional visuals, and earning congregation donation commitments.
- Architectural and design support: Ahead of your construction project, architectural design plans can be helpful for pitching your campaign to donors. Churches by Daniels can help you draft design plans that consider interior design, facility functionality, technology needs, and more.
- Church construction services: From retrofitting to multipurpose facility construction to even designing mega churches, Churches by Daniels can help you with a wide range of building projects.
6. Ascend Stewardship and Consulting: Best Campaign Consultant for Financial Management
Overview
Ascend Stewardship exclusively works with churches to help with capital campaign campaigns and financing. If your church is struggling with debt or even looking to run a campaign to pay back its debt, then Ascend Stewardship may have both the consulting and financing services you need.
Services
- Capital campaign management: Ascend Stewardship approaches church capital campaigns with a goal of helping their clients raise money, while growing faith and generosity.
- Feasibility studies: Ascend Stewardship’s approach to feasibility studies aims to assess your church’s leadership readiness, congregation sentiment, giving capacity, potential obstacles, and optimal timing.
- Church financing and loans: If your church is planning on taking out a loan to fund your project, Ascend Stewardship provides several financing options, including mortgages, refinancing, bridge loans, and more.
7. Church Development: Best Church Capital Campaign Consultants for Planned Giving
Overview
Church Development is uniquely focused on church capital campaigns, helping churches with every step of their campaign while also engaging their congregations. They believe in cultivating a culture of giving, asking for gifts based on prayer, and making planned giving a key component of your campaign strategy.
Services
- Comprehensive campaigns: Comprehensive campaigns involve launching one fundraiser to support both your capital campaign and annual fundraiser at the same time. Church Development can support these campaigns and provide your nonprofit with a long-term strategic plan.
- Staff coaching: Provide your staff and volunteers with the expert coaching they need to run a capital campaign, from stewarding donors to handling day-to-day project management responsibilities.
- Planned giving: Legacy giving allows mid-level donors to provide even more support to fulfill your capital campaign needs. Church Development can help you plan for your church’s future by cultivating planned gifts to support your campaign now and in the years to come.
8. INJOY Stewardship Solutions: Best Capital Campaign Consultant for Religious Schools
Overview
Religious schools have unique needs, even among other religious organizations. INJOY Stewardship Solutions specifically focuses on churches and schools, helping to create mission-aligned campaign journeys.
Services
- Financial analysis: Get a comprehensive view of your church’s giving trends, financial sustainability, debt and cash flow, and generosity opportunities.
- Board management and support: Board support is key for successful campaigns. INJOY can meet with your school’s board to ensure your board and leadership are aligned throughout your campaign.
- Annual giving support: Your religious school will need to keep up with regular fundraising throughout its capital campaign, and INJOY can help you increase annual giving year-over-year.
9. Walsh & Associates: Best Biblically-Based Church Capital Campaign Consultant
Overview
Walsh & Associates works solely with churches and is committed to basing all of their work on biblical thought, citing their company’s philosophy as the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30). With this ethos, Walsh & Associates approaches each church with a personal mission to do their best work and empower success.
Services
- Endowment building: An endowment can provide your church with stable revenue now and into the future. Walsh & Associates can help your church create a campaign that explains the potential of endowments and why donors should contribute to yours.
- Debt reduction: Raising funds to pay off debt can be challenging as it often lacks the inspiring message of a new building campaign. However, Walsh & Associates have led multiple successful debt reduction campaigns and are ready to help your church plan yours.
- Campaign direction: Get help establishing your campaign’s overall goals, strategy, and framework by partnering with a consultant who can provide a biblical perspective to fundraising.
10. CCS Fundraising: Best Global Capital Campaign Consultant
Overview
CCS fundraising serves a wide range of nonprofits across the globe, including religious organizations of all faiths. If your church is struggling to find a capital campaign consultant due to your location, consider partnering with CCS.
Services
- Data analytics: CCS are experts in both fundraising and data science. They can help optimize your church’s data, automate repetitive tasks, and build a revenue modeling app to help simulate campaign scenarios.
- Feasibility studies: With a focus on data collection, CCS aims to gather quantifiable results—while still informed by qualitative evaluations—to create a data-backed campaign plan coming out of your feasibility study.
- Campaign management: CCS takes a consulting approach of embedding themselves in their clients’ fundraising teams. This means that throughout your campaign, your CCS consultant will be a part of your church to ensure they understand your operations and oversee all day-to-day campaign work.
Choose the Right Capital Campaign Consultant for Your Church
The right church capital campaign consultant will depend on your church’s project, processes, needs, culture, size, and more. Before partnering with a consultant, meet with them to ensure they understand your church and will be a reliable partner throughout your multi-year campaign.
If you’re looking for an experienced consultant, get in touch with our team at Ruotolo Associates to discuss your church’s campaign and learn how we can support you every step of the way.
