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Frequently Asked Questions

Do You Have A Question? Let us help you.

Why hire a consultant? Why not design and manage the campaign on our own?

Every campaign is a historic moment for your church. By using a consultant, you are getting the experience and expertise of someone who will raise between 2x-3x more money and save your church and its leaders the spiritual, emotional, and physical stress of conducting a campaign on your own. When making the decision the church must look at the value, the benefits of hiring a consultant (listed below) rather than the cost of hiring a consultant.

What are the benefits of using a consultant?

1. Produce Stronger Results

Historic third-party results show that capital campaigns consistently perform better when using a proven professional consulting firm. The increase of money you bring in through an outside firm easily outweighs any money you would have saved in a consultant’s fee.

2. Locate Undiscovered Gifts

A professional consultant will help a church discover more unknown financial resources than the church is able to find on its own.

3. Avoid Church Splitting Landmines

Often overlooked, “landmines” represent previously undiscovered, usually serious internal issues or potential areas of dispute, disagreement, debate and conflict. A professional, “like-minded” set of eyes helps leadership identify and proactively address such potential issues before they sabotage ministry and church campaign efforts.

4. Engage the Entire Church

In-house capital campaigns typically reach a limited audience and affect only 15%-25% of the congregation. Professional consulting helps you communicate more effectively with the additional 75%-85% who represent much of your core and community members.

5. Working within your giftedness

When a church decides to conduct a capital stewardship campaign internally, someone has to be in charge of the process. Often, pastoral staff with seminary-based training do not necessarily possess the needed skills and/or giftedness that a professional church consultant can bring. Occasionally, some church members may have experience with institutional or “secular” fundraising. Yet, campaigns for churches are based on vastly different priorities.

6. The Gift of Objectivity

A stewardship firm can provide church leadership objectivity regarding a variety of issues from vision to communication strategy with donors. Congregations value an outside perspective as well because it avoids “uncomfortableness” that can occur during different parts of the campaign. Additionally, a professional stewardship firm will never use pressure or manipulation as techniques to motivate giving.

What sets Impact apart from other firms? What does your company bring to a campaign that other companies don’t?

1. Our Mission

We want to transform giving in your church using Biblical principles of faithful stewardship, not just a moment of generosity to meet your immediate needs, but create a lifestyle of stewardship and giving.  Read More 

2. Team Approach

The magnitude of your capital campaign is too much to entrust to a single individual. We see the danger of asking one individual to handle all the internal responsibilities necessary for capital campaign success, especially if those responsibilities fall out of their natural/learned skill sets. Therefore, we utilize a lead consultant in combination with an internal team approach that combines the different skill sets your church needs for an effective campaign. Read More

3. Educational Resources

We have taken our many years of experience and expertise and created a virtual treasury of stewardship tools to maximize widespread church giving through teaching, involvement and creative giving emphasis.  As our client, you will gain access to this treasury that includes: pastoral resources, stewardship education curriculum, communication help, and church capital campaign tools, and samples.

4. Follow-up Support

The vast majority of our clients receive 90% to over 100% of their total commitments. Our support staff team along with the lead consultant provide the quarterly contact, reports, and a mid-campaign recommitment focus, which encourages pledge fulfillment and new givers.

5. Communication Strategy

Our award winning media/creative director is available to all our partners.  We work with your church staff and leadership to produce the best possible media.  Assisting you in communicating your vision, goals, needs, mission, and story. Additionally, we offer a number of optional turnkey services in print, video, website, and social media. We are able to deliver a completely personalized design portfolio in-house.  Our clients enjoy working with someone who has worked with over 400 churches. Read More

What is your fee structure? How is your fee determined?

We provide a flat-fee based on church size, budget, level of consultant involvement and level of service desired by the church.

Our fee is not based on a percentage of what you raise.  We provide a written and oral walk-through of all services and potential cost, so you know exactly what you are paying for prior to our work beginning.

Is there a church size (too small/big) you won’t work with?

Not at all! Impact Stewardship has had the privilege of coming alongside churches of varying sizes, budgets, and personalities. We believe the size of the church does not always equal the size of the vision, nor the proportional commitment to funding it. By knowing all services and fees up front, your church can determine if using an outside firm is financially feasible. Keeping in mind, most churches experience an increase in giving easily covering the consultant’s fee.

How often would you be on site? How will you be available when you are not on site?

Impact Stewardship consistently offers the most on-site time. We find there is a direct correlation between campaign success and consultant time in the field spent with the church. The number of days on site depend on desired level of consultant involvement and services rendered. Rest assured, we will put the number of on-site days promised in writing.  We pride ourselves on our consultants and support team delivering the same prompt and timely assistance to you offsite that you would receive in person.

Should we use your program, who would work with us?

Our program walks your church through our five-step process to engage and create the support necessary to fulfill your vision. We achieve this through a team approach. Here are the different roles and responsibilities you can expect during a capital campaign.

Lead Consultant
-Oversees entire process
-Guides church staff and leadership
-Meets with donors

Training Specialist
-Works behind-the-scenes on details
-Leads series of team training
-Ensures smooth campaign for staff and volunteers

Creative Director
-Provides communication support and training
-Optional design, print, video, website and social media capabilities

Support Staff
-Available to answer questions
-Responds to urgent requests

Visit our distinctions page to discover why our team approach is more effective than trusting the success of your campaign to one individual.

What services do you offer?

Pre-campaign Planning 
– Includes vision development, project feasibility study, stewardship health analysis, and pre-campaign planning database analysis.

Church Capital Campaigns
– Includes our five step process to engage your church family, consultant led individual and team training sessions through campaign manuals, donor communication strategy, and follow-up support.

Ongoing Stewardship
– Includes Elevate, which is our operational giving campaign program, legacy giving options, and educational resources that can be used in conjunction with different giving emphasis or campaigns.

How does Impact use technology and media?

Visit our communication strategy page for more information.

In short, our media/creative director is available to all our partners to work with your church staff and leadership to produce the best possible media communicating vision, goal/need, mission, and most importantly your story.

However, we offer a number of optional turnkey services in print, video, website, and social media communication channels. Our award winning media/creative director can handle all design in-house and deliver a completely customized portfolio for your church’s project.

How do you communicate your process with our culture?

Moving and motivating your church can be one of the biggest challenges you face.  By utilizing our pre-planning services our consultant can match, shape, and personalize our process to your unique culture. In fact, the majority of our client testimonials express their gratitude for creating something that matched them perfectly, which many attribute to their capital campaign success.

When is the best time to do a campaign?

That is a very good question. The short answer is that it depends on what stage your church is in when considering what and where God is leading, the urgency of the project, and your ministry schedule. The following are the four most successful campaign cycles we have seen during our nearly 20-year history.

Spring
1. Preparation Phase Jan-Mar
2. Open Dates/No Activity Easter & Spring Break
3. Public Phase Apr-May

Summer Bridge
1. Preparation Phase Apr-May
2. Open Dates/No Activity Summer
3. Public Phase Late Aug/Early Sept-Early Nov

Fall
1. Preparation Phase Aug/Early Sept-Early Oct
2. Public Phase Mid Oct/Early Dec

Christmas Bridge
1. Preparation Phase Oct-Nov
2. Open Dates/No Activity Dec-Early Jan
3. Public Phase Mid Jan-Late Feb/Early March

In your experience, what are the keys to a successful campaign?

Here is what we believe the keys to a successful campaign

A Biblical Philosophy/Approach

Church capital campaigns must function quite differently than secular or institutional fundraising. Most secular programs rely on pressure and outside support. By contrast, church-oriented support campaigns must center on prayer and communication within the church family. Our model is rooted in Biblical principles that are clearly articulated and consistently taught to the church body. Every campaign designed by Impact encourages obedience to the Father as shown in scripture, an attitude we have seen Him consistently bless. This philosophy forms the cornerstone of every Impact Stewardship campaign. See Our Approach page for more details.

A Proven Process

To be successful in a capital campaign you must have a process that engages and transforms your people. Over the last 20 years, our five-step process has been the hallmark of how we transform giving in the church. We walk your congregation through the different Biblical steps of understanding and prayer; ultimately leading them to being obedient and involved in how and where God is leading them to step out on faith. We provide the structure to this very organic and spiritual process.

Communication is Key

Effective campaigns understand the different facets of communication to maximize awareness and engagement. We offer a variety of tools and services to build a fully integrated marketing and communication strategy within your church. See our communications strategy page for how we achieve this critical factor to campaign success.

Our track record far exceeds church capital campaign industry averages and includes numerous construction, renovation and debt reduction projects. Impact Stewardship has helped raise over $1 billion dollars for ministry since 1999. Our church partners consistently report better results using programs developed with Impact compared to alternate campaign plans.

In your experience, what are the potential roadblocks to a successful campaign?

Within every church, there are potential roadblocks or “landmines” that can derail a campaign and even worse, can sabotage an individual or an entire church for effectiveness. Often, these “hidden” internal issues revolve around the trust, attitudes, and priorities of the congregation. Therefore, we strongly suggest churches engage in our Project Feasibility and Readiness Study, or at least one form of pre-planning to help identify these potential risks and the spiritual, emotional, and financial support before jumping head first into a campaign.

How will you help us insure this will be a time of spiritual growth for our congregation as well as a time for financial growth and support?

The mission of Impact Stewardship is to transform the giving in every church through the Biblical principles of faithful stewardship. Meaning we want to be the catalyst of heart transformation and a lifestyle of giving. Many firms center on a one-off expression of generosity. Impact Stewardship chooses to focus their attention on the stewardship of the giver. We encourage every individual in the church to view all resources as God’s. As a second step, we ask them to commit to glorify God through all of the resources God has given them. We accomplish this primarily through the following:

– Biblically centered hands-on training and educational resources.

– Designing professional communication pieces tailored to your unique culture.

– Providing you with the personal attention and expertise of our consultants.

A successful campaign to us is one that brings in the support and resources needed to meet your goals and a lifestyle of giving continues well beyond the capital campaign.

Our track record far exceeds church capital campaign industry averages and includes numerous construction, renovation and debt reduction projects. Impact Stewardship has helped raise over $1 billion dollars for ministry since 1999. Our church partners consistently report better results using programs developed with Impact compared to alternate campaign plans.

What level of support do you offer after the initial part of the campaign is complete?

As part of our full service program, we get right to work helping you maximize pledge fulfillment for the entirety of your capital campaign with Impact Stewardship. In fact, the vast majority of clients receive 90% or higher of their total commitments. We are pleased to have a high number of our clients coming back to us for their 2nd, 3rd and even 4th campaigns. Our support staff team along with the lead consultant develop and implement an ongoing communication strategy, make quarterly contact, analyze reports and updates to discover giving trends, offer a mid-campaign re-commitment focus and on-site follow up to encourage previous made and new commitments to your campaign.