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Your church, with an annual budget of $800,000, has approved a $2,400,000 building initiative. You hope to complete the project without taking on long-term debt. While the church is healthy and congregational giving is good, there are no spare funds to pay for the project up front. The congregation is willing and able to support a capital fundraising campaign. You are now at a crossroads: the decisions you make from here on will have major impacts on the future of your church.

With the talented lay and staff people in the church, you could put together a task force to raise the funds. Should the church staff and laity do it? Or should the church call in professional assistance from a firm that specializes in capital funds campaigns?

Even though you know that many churches have used the services of professional firms with great success, you are still reluctant. The issues of working with a fundraising firm are very real: (1) their fee involves a lot of money; (2) the church could save the money spent on the fee and use it for other purposes; (3) you are not sure you want to let a stranger into your church family; (4) you wonder whether you can trust him or her; (5) you don't know if they will do what they say they will do; (6) some people will wonder why the church is spending money to raise money; and (7) this doesn't seem terribly difficult—won't the church be just as successful doing it on their own?

There are many stories of churches that tried to do their own campaigns, only to achieve poor results. When asked why they did not hire a professional, the response usually has something to do with the fee. "The professional consulting firm's fee is a lot of money for a church like ours. Couldn't we do it ourselves and use that money for something else?" That is certainly an option.

And there are some churches that have a giving culture and a team of staff and laity who know how to do capital campaigns well. But those churches are the exception, not the rule. Look at it this way: the fee paid is money invested where it will yield more giving. So saving the fee is kind of like eating your seed corn.

Churches that conduct their own campaigns tend to produce results at about 50 percent of the professionally-led campaigns. These churches do well to raise an amount equal to their annual budget. Churches that use consultants often raise two (or more) times their annual budget in three-year commitments to their capital campaign. To save a $30,000 to $40,000 consulting fee, a church conducts a campaign that receives several hundred thousand dollars less in commitments. It is the most expensive mistake a church can make—to save the cost of a consulting fee and then fall short of their giving potential by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Additionally, there is the intangible cost of recovering from a campaign that falls far short of its financial goals. A campaign that achieves poor financial results interrupts the momentum of the church. It can take months, even years, for a church to recover the lost momentum from a poor campaign. Hiring an outside consultant significantly increases the chances of the church reaching its financial goals.

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