 Welcome to another episode of the non-profit show. Really excited to have with us today, Amy Eisenstein. And I hope I said that name right, fantastic. Amy serves as the CEO, as well as the co-founder of Capital Campaign Toolkit. And she's gonna get super nerdy with us. And I'm excited for that, of course, but we're gonna talk about capital campaigns as well as the feasibility studies. And a little hint, she's gonna share with us some innovative ways of perhaps how they're being done now. But I wanna say good morning and thank you to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. She is not joining us today, but we wish her well. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and so grateful to be here each and every day in the co-host seat and to have these conversations. You can find all of our episodes if you missed any of them. And I was just sharing with our guest today, Amy. We are well into our 730 plus episode. So you can find all of them on Roku, YouTube, Fire TV, Vimeo. And for those of you that are podcast listeners, like myself, you can go ahead and queue us up wherever you stream at your podcast. Huge shout out to our sponsors without them. We wouldn't be on this platform going as strong as we have since March of 2020. So a huge shout out to our besties over at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, non-profit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, as well as non-profit nerd. Thank you, thank you, thank you to these amazing sponsors that allow us this opportunity to have with Amy Eisenstein. Again, CEO, co-founder, capital campaign toolkit. Welcome, Amy. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, excited to have you. And for those of you that are listening, I do wanna give a shout out to her web address here. So it's capitalcampaintoolkit.com, seems pretty simple. So definitely check out her website. But Amy, tell us a little bit about yourself as well as the company. Great, thank you so much, Jared. So I've been in fundraising for more than just about 25 years, I should say. The capital campaign toolkit is going on five years young, five years strong, and we are a support system for non-profit leaders who are running capital campaigns. And we're doing some very innovative things in the campaign world, and really helping nonprofits all over the country and all over the world raise unbelievable amounts of money. So I'm super excited to share how we're doing that. That is fantastic. So you shared with me, you're joining me today in this conversation from New Jersey, but you serve across the nation, is that right? We do, we actually have clients in almost every state and in a few countries. Fantastic, I love that. Well, I'm excited for this conversation. I had shared with you my personal experience of being on campaign teams, committees, kind of serving those roles. You really set me on fire this morning when you're talking about innovation because I hope that non-profit leaders, board members are listening because I definitely want them to hear of the innovation that you provide. So let's start off, tell us a little bit this conversation. We're gonna talk about traditional feasibility study models versus maybe some emerging models that you're seeing. So I was wondering, Amy, could you start by just like, what is the traditional feasibility study model? What is that at its base? Yeah, well, let's talk first about what a feasibility study is because there's a lot of misconceptions about it. And I think that it was probably misnamed some time long, long ago because a lot of people taken at face value think a feasibility study tells you whether or not your campaign is possible or feasible and that's simply not what it does. So let's sort of scratch that from the lexicon and say that a feasibility study really is an opportunity to test your case and your goal with your biggest potential donors and therefore set up your campaign for success. You're getting the buy-in from the biggest potential donors early in the process getting their feedback and putting together your plan with input from community leaders. Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense to me, yes. And I have been involved with some of those feasibility studies. So I feel like I know the traditional model but what is this emerging? Yeah, so we're now referring it to it as the old model, the traditional model, right? And the big how traditionally feasibility studies have been done is that an organization would hire a consultant an outside consultant to go and interview or speak with their biggest potential donors and collect feedback and data and aggregate it confidentiality, confidentially, excuse me, anonymously and provide recommendations to a nonprofit as to how to proceed with the campaign. So that's sort of the traditional or in my opinion, the old model. The new innovative model that we've been doing for the last five years is having the nonprofit leaders themselves do the interviews. Now, it's still important to have an expert or a consultant guiding and supporting you through this process because the interviews that we're having nonprofit leaders do, they do need to ask specific questions. They need to collect data in certain ways. They need to aggregate the data. And so it's not just about going and having casual conversations with your donors but it's about having really specific strategic conversations with donors and then knowing how to aggregate the data in order to make appropriate recommendations on how to proceed. Yeah, so I remember and I've shared with you I've been in this line of work about 20 years and I remember it was probably 10 years ago and there was an organization that they said they were gonna do a capital campaign but they were gonna do it on their own. They didn't need consultants, right? And I remember the backlash that they received it was like, you can't do that, it'll never work. So is that still around? Like, does that mentality obviously still exist? I think absolutely that mentality exists and some organizations do campaigns successfully on their own, but more often than not what I think happens is that they get stuck in the middle and then it's very hard to re... What's the word I'm looking for? Sort of restart or get going again. Yeah, so I think honestly when organizations, I'm sorry and I'm glad you clarified that when organizations opt to do a campaign by themselves they probably for the most part skip a feasibility study because they're like, we don't need to test and see if this is feasible we're just gonna launch in and do it. We're gonna, we need to do this which every nonprofit needs to do it but that doesn't mean you should go in blind without having data and knowing, having some of that early input and planning so that you're successful. Sort of saying we don't need to do a feasibility study and we don't need expertise means for the most part that you get so far and then you figure out all the mistakes you've made and then if you get to 40 or 50% of your goal and you're like, well now we don't know what to do it's really hard for a consultant to come in then and re-get you going. So to me it's much better to plan properly from the outset, do this feasibility study talk to your lead potential donors get there, sort of buy in and thumbs up literal and figurative buy in and then proceed and really raise more money than you've ever raised before and do amazing things. So are you finding with this emerging model of having the internal staff team do the interviews versus the outside consultants? Are you finding that being just as successful as the old model? Because I'm curious, I do still buy in somewhat to maybe the donors would be more transparent they would feel more comfortable saying things of concern with an outside person versus the person that's been cultivating them for years. What do you say about that? Yeah, I think, listen, everybody on my team has done interviews the old way, right? And so we've all said that donors will tell us things confidential, oh my gosh, I can't say that word today confidentially that they wouldn't say to a nonprofit leader but we've actually found that just the opposite is true. The donors absolutely love talking to nonprofit leaders. They're the ones with the vision and they're the ones who if there are concerns raised we teach our nonprofit leaders to ask constructive questions so the donors can be open and honest. And then there's recourse, the nonprofit leader says I understand your concerns, here's what we're doing about this or here's what we're trying to do to rectify the situation. So I find that more and more donors are saying to consultants we don't wanna talk to an outside consultant, right? Or they're just declining the interview. We're getting incredible success rates of having meetings set because donors want to talk to nonprofit leaders. They're excited to get to know them and the added benefit is that it sets up the ask beautifully. So it's actually more impactful. It's building relationships prior to the campaign which is exactly what nonprofit leaders should be doing. And there's a lot of trust built already, right? If some of these larger donors as you see the gift chart typically campaigns have a gift chart and you know who these leader gifts are coming from, hopefully that person already has a trusted support team inside the organization. And so it would just continue to breed those positive conversations. So I really like hearing that internal versus the external consultants which leads me Amy to the point of where are we now, right? Pandemic impacts. The pandemic has impacted so many things. We can only assume it's also impacted our capital campaigns. What are you and your team seeing for this? Well, I will tell you that a lot of nonprofits got very nervous at the beginning of the pandemic as you know, and they put their fundraising on hold or stopped altogether and a lot of campaigns got delayed. And what we have found is that the organizations that we worked with and others who continued on through the pandemic are now done with their campaigns and the ones that got nervous and stopped are just getting started. And so our philosophy is that there's always gonna be some uncertainty, fire, floods, political elections, you know, pandemic. And if you have a strong need at your organization actually the pandemic strengthened the need at many nonprofits. Their need was greater, not less. So they went on and donors understand that and they can, you know, you can say here's why this need is greater than ever. Will you get on board? Yeah. And they did, and they did. The donors rose to the occasion. Wow, that is so inspiring to hear that. You know, we have seen so much philanthropy over the last three years. And certainly the line of work that you're in, Amy, you get to see the wealth that is being shared. You know, and to me, that's always motivational. And I have also seen, you know, in the beginning of the pandemic, so many people said, we're gonna wait this out. Like we're gonna sit back. We're just gonna like see where it goes. I don't think ever this casually though. It was just a little bit more panicked about that. But I also, you know, really saw where organizations like they hit the pause button. You know, like, let's just hit the pause button. Let's like, like we're playing a game of freeze tag, you know, everyone just stop right where you are and then we'll come back to that. And so what you're seeing is maybe those that did hit the pause button, now they're kind of like lifting their finger and re-engaging in the campaign. Is that what I heard? That's right. That's absolutely right. So, you know, I want to encourage nonprofit leaders to be brave and to, you know, understand that there's always going to be some outside force that makes it seem like a bad time to have a campaign and that if you have a big vision and a strong need and committed donors, then you should proceed. Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, let's talk about, you know, looking at how the pandemic has made some impacts, but I've also heard that it's, you know, it's really been positive for those organizations that kept going forward. They knew that there was a finish line in sight. What are we seeing by way of capital campaigns with a changing economy? Now, you also mentioned political campaign. We have that coming up right around the corner. Like there's always a lot of things to impact our fundraising, but what are you seeing as it relates to the economy? Yeah, so I sort of have a very similar attitude about the economy as I do to the pandemic. And that is that there's always going to be something and that your needs continue sort of through thick and thin. The good news about campaigns, capital campaigns specifically on average take about three years. And the reality is that the economy in a three-year span goes up and down. And so if you wait to start your planning until the economy is good, the chances are high that when you're asking for gifts, it's going to be low and almost vice versa. But the reality is that the economy will go up and down during the course of your campaign. And so you can adjust your questions, your conversations with donors to recognize whatever's happening in the economy, right? Times are tough right now for a lot of people. Is that true for you? Would that impact your giving? You know, in tough times, there are plenty of people that are doing just fine financially. That was true through the pandemic. It's true through a, you know, a quote unquote bad economy. And so if people can't make large commitments, you can say, well, what can you do now? And can we talk to you in a year? You'll still be fundraising for the campaign a year from now. And it's very likely that the economy will change. So the other good news about going ahead and being brave during a bad economy is that some nonprofits will pause and you will be that many months ahead of them in your planning. Ooh, that's right. Yeah, because, so you said three years, you know, for a campaign, is that, you know, I feel like I want to use the word traditional but I hesitate. But a capital campaign generally takes about three years. And you're right, there's a lot Amy that changes in three years. I really appreciate how you say, you know, I really see that very similar to the pandemic. And, you know, here we are three years later from March, 2020. Yes, yes, exactly. Almost exactly three years later, right? And really think about that. So all the organizations that were brave and kept fundraising, they are done with their campaigns. And there are so many that we're working with now that are just getting started that either started a little bit or were planning it in early 2020 and just stopped. And they could be done. Do you ever see an opportunity, Amy? I'm curious when, you know, an organization has done all that they can. They did a really good feasibility study. They started into the capital campaign. You know, they moved into the different phases of the campaign and they just hit this mark where they couldn't really seem to budge any further. Do you advise or have you seen organizations? That's kind of a dual question there. Where they say, you know what, here is good enough. We're gonna call this complete. Talk to us about that and maybe what you do advise for those opportunities. Right. I mean, I think there's certainly occasions where an organization has set a goal that's so aspirational that when they get into it, they find that maybe they need to scale back the project or the plans that the money that they hoped was there isn't completely there. The reality is that even in those situations, it depends how you're framing it. But if you set an aspirational goal, let's say $25 million, and then you raise $22, is that a failure or is that a success? You may have to wait on some piece of the project or maybe you didn't grow the endowment as much as you hoped or maybe you can't give every scholarship you wanted to or maybe whatever component of the project goes on hold or is scaled back slightly. But the reality is that even those organizations have raised a tremendous amount of money. One of the things I think that surprises a lot of people who are not familiar with campaign strategy is that we advise, and I think most consultants advise, not announcing a public goal until towards the end of your fundraising. And so you're working with a draft goal or a working goal through the quiet phase, something that you're working towards. If you get to the end of the quiet phase and you say, you know what? We think we're gonna come up slightly short of our goal. You revise the goal and then when you go public, you announce a different goal and you celebrate because you got to that. That makes total sense and I really appreciate that. As soon as you said, if the goal was 25 and you hit 22, is that really a failure? I couldn't help but think is the glass half empty or is the glass half full? Like it's all about perception there. Yes, and so there is campaign strategy that says we want to announce a goal that we're going to be successful at and be able to celebrate. And so we're gonna hold off on that's how campaigns are designed. That's why there is a long quiet phase where you're not publicly announcing the goal because you want to have a successful campaign and success looks a lot of different ways. To me raising $22 million even if maybe you're a few dollars short of pieces of it, your dream aspirational goal, you should, then it's okay. You should be aiming very high at the beginning. So to me, it's about raising as much as you can given the opportunity at a point in time and that should be celebrated at the end. Yes, I agree. Amy, tell us what it's like to work with you and the capital campaign toolkit because to me, I'm hearing it's a lot of fun. Well, thank you. I have to say we are different than probably all other campaign consultancies out there. We have really strived to be unique and bring a different model to the marketplace. And we're really a community where our members, our clients, the nonprofit leaders we're working with have the opportunity to tap into the community and the network of experts we have as well as other clients and learn from their peers. I think we're probably the only consultancy that has an online toolkit. So you can tap in and access resources from any device at any time and modify them for your campaign but you're also getting support from our expert advisors. So it's kind of, you know, I'm bragging, I'm totally biased, but it's the best of all worlds, right? No, I think it sounds fantastic. And, you know, as I am out and about doing the work that I do, you know, I always hear of organizations that are starting to dip their toe into the thought process, right, of capital campaigns. So I'm certainly gonna keep you and your team in mind as these conversations arise. For those of you watching and listening, please do check out the website for Amy. Again, she's the CEO and co-founder at Capital Campaign Toolkit and that web address is just what you heard, capitalcampantoolkit.com. It's been such a pleasure, Amy. I really appreciate your point of view when it comes to this. Brené Brown was definitely channeling, you know, through you with some of this, the brave concept and I really appreciate that so much. You know, in our line of work, it is so important for us to continue to be brave, continue to be vulnerable, right? We have to be in the arena. So all of that is just so important for the work that we do and, you know, wanna honor you and your team for doing that right alongside so many amazing missions. Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been fantastic. Again, Amy Eisenstein and I wanna say shout out to Julia Patrick. I hope she's had a fantastic morning. You know, every now and then, we take some time off from the show because we do it five days a week and every now and then, you know, we need to give each other just a little bit of a break. So I'm Jared Ransom, honored to be here with Amy and again, honored to have the continued support from our amazing presenting sponsors. So another verbal shout out I wanna give to our friends at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique and the non-profit nerd. These companies keep us going and growing, but more than that, they're here for you and your mission and you should also probably, you know, if you're thinking about looking into a capital campaign, look into them and see how they might support you as well as the capital campaign toolkit. Amy, thanks again, my friend. It's been such a joy to have this conversation with you, learn more about innovation that you're providing into our community. Thanks for all of you that joined us. As we end every episode, we want to remind you as well as ourself to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks again, everyone. I'll see you tomorrow and thanks, Amy.