By Matt Vuorela / Chief Executive Officer of Steier Group / Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
Like it or not, to be a church leader means you have responsibility for the church’s budget. That’s probably part of the reason you’re reading this blog. Maybe you need to fix the church roof, build a new church altogether, or want to start a capital campaign for other needs. First things first: a feasibility study.
A feasibility study is a way for your parish to pause and ask people what they think before beginning a big project. It’s the first step to find out if your goals and ideas are realistic and exciting to your community.
Understanding the cost of a capital campaign feasibility study is just as important as understanding its purpose. Good news, though – while a capital campaign is both a big task and a big expense, it’s also an investment in your mission, impact and future.
Here we’ll explain how a study can help your church achieve your goals and what to expect for feasibility study cost.
Understanding the Purpose of a Feasibility Study
It can be tempting to skip a feasibility study in favor of launching straight into your campaign fundraising. It’s often a lot more involved than most development teams realize or have the capacity for: donor interviews and identification, data analysis, giving capacity projections and more. But, beyond helping you test interest in your proposed plans, a well-managed feasibility study can help identify volunteers and gather information from key donors to make them feel valued.
Investing in this process ensures your parish is prepared to move forward with confidence and good stewardship, regardless of your proposed goals.
Why Feasibility Studies Matter
At Steier Group, we often call them campaign planning studies. Because a well-run study will acquire the right information to allow us to customize a capital campaign that best achieves fundraising success. You may have a sense of what your donors think, but you won’t truly know until you’ve asked them directly as part of a study. What leadership identifies as a priority may not rise to the top for others in your community. By testing these goals and engaging in deep conversations with donors, you gain the insight needed to build a realistic, data-driven campaign plan to get buy-in from parishioners.
What Impacts the Cost of a Feasibility Study?
Every feasibility study will have a different cost based on the length of time that a study will take and how complex it will be. A six-week study for a small church will be a smaller cost than a multi-month feasibility study for a Catholic Diocese.
Aside from project size and complexity, these are a few other factors that impact your feasibility study cost:
- Size of your church/organization
- Location of your church
- Timeline
- Number of stakeholder interviews conducted (and methods, such as in person vs. electronic)
- Amount of support needed to execute campaign strategy and create campaign resources
- Industry and market conditions
- Additional needs: technology and software upgrades, communications tools, etc.
What Is Included in a Feasibility Study?
Like the cost, exact deliverables of a feasibility study will differ depending upon your goals as well. Our team has helped thousands of nonprofits across the country with capital campaign management. In a past blog post, we outlined four traits that set up your campaign for success right from the start. Here’s what you can expect a feasibility study to include: stakeholder interviews, market research, fundraising projections and strategic recommendations.
Stakeholder and Market Analysis
Working with any of the team members at Steier Group means that we will speak with as many of your organization’s most active and engaged donors as possible during a study. We work with each client to identify the specific individuals and key questions for this stage, and we interview 50-100 supporters during a typical study. This amount varies based on a client’s number of registered households and database size.
During these personal interviews, donors share honest feedback about the campaign goals and the organization. It’s also an opportunity to educate key supporters.
Additionally, key leadership stakeholders will also be interviewed. This can gain insight from your team about potential problems to address before a campaign.
Still, interviews are only one piece of the planning study. Online donor research, wealth screening tools, electronic surveys and a comprehensive review of your donor database are also elements of a successful feasibility study.
Insights from all the gathered data help shape the structure of the campaign, find volunteers and campaign leaders, reveal community interest and gauge giving potential.
Financial Analysis and Recommendations
Based upon the research and interviews, we can start to form estimates and projections for campaign results. As a consultant, we would then present findings and strategic recommendations for next steps. Some of what a feasibility study will help you answer are these questions:
- What do your supporters think of the proposed campaign goals?
- Are there opportunities to secure gifts from outside the organization’s existing database?
- Who will serve as campaign leaders? Who will serve as volunteers?
- Who will consider significant gifts to the capital campaign? What might those gifts be?
- Which supporters would consider making a planned gift to the campaign?
- Which donors have already left a gift to the organization in their will?
- What challenges or “hot button issues” will the campaign face? How can we overcome those challenges?
- How much money can we raise?
Final Report and Next Steps
Many times our clients gather members of the parish leadership council in addition to staff to hear the planning study final report. This group will make the decision on moving forward with a capital campaign. At the Steier Group, we strongly recommend moving immediately into a campaign after completing the study. Pausing the start of the effort can lose the momentum generated by the study.
What to Look for in a Quality Feasibility Study to Balance Cost and Long-Term Value
Organizing, planning and executing a campaign is a large undertaking. Partnering with outside fundraising consultants, like the Steier Group, can provide structure, guidance and experience throughout the feasibility study and capital campaign process.
It’s a good idea for church leaders to interview multiple fundraising consulting firms before deciding who to work with. You’ll want to find the best fit for your community.
Choosing the Right Feasibility Study Consultant
You know the old saying “you get what you pay for?” That’s true with fundraising consultants and all things feasibility studies, too. Saving money on a study could also limit your fundraising potential. The small savings are not likely worth the potential loss down the line.
Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Consultant
Once you’ve decided to work with a consultant on your capital campaign, you can ask board members and other nonprofit organizations in the area for referrals.
When evaluating each firm, it’s important to ask questions, so both sides can get a feel for working together. A few common questions we hear from clients before they choose to work with us:
- Have you worked with other organizations like ours? With similar challenges?
- What is your overall fundraising approach?
- What level(s) of support do you provide?
- How many people will we have working with us on our campaign?
- What is your billing structure?
- What is the staff and/or board structure for the typical organizations you work with?
- Can you send case studies for other clients with their campaign totals?
Truly, no question is off limits. The answers will inform the length of a study and your total cost. We try to be as transparent as possible so everyone understands expectations and deliverables before moving forward.
Understanding Consultant Pricing Models
Remember that all firms will price differently based on project complexity and scope. There are a few other differentiators to look out for:
- Staffing: Some consultants work from afar with one manager serving multiple clients at once. At the Steier Group, our campaign managers are on site with our clients three days each week. While there are costs associated with travel, our team has found that being on site with client makes everything run more smoothly and leads to better fundraising results.
- Service levels: The Steier Group offers a full-service campaign model. We handle graphic design, grant writing, donor research and data analysis in house. Other consultants may use third parties to handle those tasks. This could lead to a difference in cost.
Why a Feasibility Study Is a Strategic Investment
Hopefully you can understand after reading this why a feasibility study is a valuable use of time and dollars. A well-executed feasibility study will reveal what parishioners really care about and create clear and realistic fundraising goals and plans. And that will help your parish avoid surprises later, keeping focus on raising the maximum funds for your community.
As you consider the value and cost of a feasibility study, know that it’s an important investment in your campaign and in your mission itself.
