Your board wants a campaign. Start with one question.
Before anyone picks a goal, hires a consultant, designs a logo or announces a campaign, find out whether your fundraising ambition is connected to actual donor relationships.
TAKE THE FREE MILLION-DOLLAR CHALLENGEThe 30-Day Million-Dollar Challenge™
If your organization had to raise $1 million in the next 30 days, who are the 10 people you would personally call?
Put the relationships on paper before you debate the campaign goal.
One question. Ten names. A surprisingly revealing conversation.
Need does not equal fundraising capacity.
A board can approve an ambition. Donor evidence has to support the pathway.
What gifts would actually have to happen to reach it?
Capacity alone does not make someone your campaign prospect.
The annual fund doesn't disappear when campaign work begins.
Put the relationships on paper.
“Who are the ten people you would personally call?”
Not the ten wealthiest people in town. Not someone a board member met once. Actual people or organizations with a reason to care and a relationship you can activate.
Take the 30-Day Million-Dollar Challenge™
Enter your first name and email. I'll send the one-page worksheet plus a short five-part Campaign Readiness teaching series.
One relationship test can't tell you whether you're campaign-ready.
Campaign readiness also depends on donor evidence, leadership, case clarity, annual-fund health, organizational capacity and whether the campaign goal itself holds up under pressure.
Do giving history and leadership-gift potential support the ambition?
Who can credibly open the conversations that matter?
Can you protect Fund Today while building Fund Tomorrow?
My Board Wants a Campaign™
The 30-Minute Campaign Reality Check
A structured decision tool built from 25 years of nonprofit management and fundraising strategy — designed to help you move the conversation from “We think we're ready” to “Here's what the evidence says.”
✓ Donor evidence
✓ Relationships + access
✓ Case + leadership
✓ Annual fund + capacity
✓ Campaign Goal Reality Test
✓ Proceed / Pause / Stop
✓ Board conversation language
✓ Critical warning signs
This is not a feasibility study. It's a pre-feasibility decision tool for leaders who need a more rigorous conversation before ambition becomes campaign strategy.
My Board Wants a Campaign™
The 30-Minute Campaign Reality Check
30 minutes. $59. Before you commit to a multimillion-dollar campaign.
The goal is not to tell you what you want to hear. It's to identify where the evidence is strong — and where you're still relying on assumptions.
GET THE REALITY CHECK — $59Big ambitions deserve rigorous thinking.
Evidence & Ambition helps nonprofit leaders test fundraising ambitions against donor evidence, relationships, leadership and organizational capacity — so they can make better decisions before they launch.
Ambition tells us where you want to go. Evidence tells us what it will take to get there.