Streamline Your Next Capital Project with a Collaborative Team of Experts
by Kate Jaeger-Thomas
Capital projects are complex, and it can be challenging to know where to begin. Do you start with nailing down a budget? Finding an architect? Do you immediately begin fundraising, or do you need a feasibility study to determine what’s possible? And how can you convey a vision when you’re not even sure what you need?
It can feel like an endless chicken-and-egg debate.
There’s a better approach. When you bring in the right collaborators, the pieces fall into place. Here’s what we’ve learned about bringing together strong teams that bring our clients’ visions to life.
Your project vs. your campaign
First things first, let’s talk about capital projects and capital campaigns.
When talking to donors, the campaign is often the first thing to come up. But really, the focus should be on the project and how it’s going to improve the experience for your community. Renovating or expanding existing facilities, making cosmetic or infrastructural changes, buying and building out a space, building from the ground up—all of these are capital projects, and you need to tell a compelling story about why the work is necessary.
Download our Feasibility Study Readiness Playbook
The capital campaign, on the other hand, is simply how you’re going to secure philanthropic dollars for the project.
Who to bring in
Capital projects involve a lot of moving parts, many of which fall outside your organization’s knowledge and experience. You’re going to need outside experts to help you understand and manage at all. For instance, you might need an owner’s representative to help you define your needs, an architect to create the vision, a contractor to build it, and a consultant to furnish and equip the final space.
The right timing
There is no standard order of operations. But there are key points when it makes sense to bring in outside support.
Say your organization has outgrown its space. You know you need a larger facility, but you’re not sure whether to expand on what you have or purchase or lease a new building—or if there’s another option you haven’t even considered. Talking to an owner’s representative might be a good first step. They can help you determine what meets your organizational goals, assess the viability of the market, and even calculate the added operational costs for a larger space. Then, once the project is under way, they can coordinate with other involved players.
If you have a space and your wish list is clear, you might first bring in an architect who can clarify the broad strokes of the project and home in on the dollars needed to make it possible. Or, they might propose a series of options, allowing you to scale up or down depending on your community’s support.
With a rough idea of the project scope and cost, your campaign consultant can begin gauging donor interest and capacity. From there, you can go back to your architect for more detailed drawings and schematics. Or, if the project is beyond the scope of what you can raise, it might be time to bring in a financial expert to talk through financing options, tax credits, tapping into your reserves, and other possible funding avenues.
How to build your team
At the Heller Fundraising Group, we’re fortunate to have a team of professionals we can call on when we’re working with clients. We trust their expertise, we know we work well together, and we’ve seen how campaigns succeed with their guidance.
In our new webinar series, Campaign Collaborators: Aligning Teams Across Your Capital Project, we’re bringing these experts to you for a conversation about how to make the most of these partnerships and move complex capital projects from vision to reality. In our first episode, Heller Group CEO Kate Jaeger-Thomas talks to Michael Hauptman, Principal at BHL Architects, about the relationship between architects and fundraising consultants.
You don’t want to miss it.