Blackbaud in the News: Capital Fundraising Strategies that Raise the Roof

From the September issue of DramaBiz Magazine:

By Ian Stokell

Fundraising is the financial lifeline of live theatre. Especially when you consider that, for many theatres, ticket sales barely account for 50 percent of operating costs.

Fundraising sounds easy enough. Just go out and ask people for money, right? Not so. The key is often not only how you ask, but who. This is never truer than for a capital campaign.

The Difference between a Capital Campaign and an Annual Campaign
There is a big difference between a regular annual fundraising campaign and a capital campaign. A lot of annual fundraising is born out of necessity, simply a way to make up for operating losses. It is also a way to replace such depreciating assets as props, computers, or an archaic phone system, as well as to pay for program services.

Says Kit Matthew, Blackbaud’s Arts & Cultural Solution product manager, “We tend to think of capital as a building or new facilities, but capital campaigns could also be for new business ventures, new corporate infrastructure, even new ways of doing business such as moving to the virtual world of the Internet.”

Read more here.