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Differences Between Development Audit and Capital Campaign

Traditionally fall is a great time of year to take stock in your development program and the needs of your nonprofit organization. During a time of review, many organizations ask whether it's better to embark on a development audit or a capital campaign to help their organization. While both are tools to enhance your development efforts, each has its own distinctive goal and outcome.

A development audit takes an in-depth look at your overall development efforts. It examines how your nonprofit identifies and communicates with your donors, friends and alumni. It investigates what vehicles are being published or distributed and how often. An audit studies how the different segments of the operation are or are not working together including development, events, alumni, media and public relations, advertising and community outreach. A good development audit will dissect what method your nonprofit uses to "friend-raise" while you are continuously fundraising. It looks at your fundraising activities to make sure that all your potential audiences have the right opportunities to be asked to assist in a way that is meaningful and timely for them. An audit asks the tough questions concerning how your nonprofit recognizes and combats donor fatigue and what methods are in place for annual major gift solicitation.

Audits are challenging because they take an organization out of its comfort zone in order to help position the nonprofit for future growth and opportunities. It gives organizations information to maximize its staff and its efforts to truly keep your donors and friends informed and involved both personally and financially.

While audits look at a wide range of needs and development issues, a capital campaign is a very specific instrument which addresses a defined need in a fixed timeframe. Capital campaigns maximize a nonprofit's ability to fundraise for a pressing and identified need, which it cannot address using its normal development operation.

A great tool to disseminate information, garner support and test a nonprofit's case for a capital campaign is a feasibility study. The study listens to your donors, friends and the community to find out their desires and priorities, to examine the economic climate surrounding your organization and to ultimately see if prospective donors truly support the project and are willing to give their time and financial support to address the specific need.

If the study comes back positive and the nonprofit moves forward, the capital campaign creates and uses its case to personally meet with your donors and benefactors to ask for a specific gift over a designated period of time to help address this particular pressing need. Because capital campaigns seek multi-year pledges, challenge your donors and maximize your volunteers to rally behind a specific and important need in a defined period of time, nonprofits traditionally only tackle this type of fundraising every 5-20 years.

So both audits and campaigns are effective development strategies for different objectives. Audits are used to examine and improve a development operation, while campaigns are used to raise capital for a specific and defined need.

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