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Advised Not to Launch a Campaign, They Built the Engine Instead

Posted on by CFA

Not every nonprofit feasibility study ends with a green light for a capital campaign. Sometimes, the better outcome is to surface what an organization is genuinely ready to accomplish and to identify the investments that will strengthen its development program, increase fundraising yield, and ultimately position it for more impactful work down the road. For Minnesota Land Trust (MLT), that was precisely the case. In 2023, the organization engaged Creative Fundraising Advisors (CFA) and consultants Paul Johnson and Colin Hamilton to assess its readiness for a campaign. What followed was a carefully considered course correction that, three years later, has produced some of the most significant fundraising growth in the organization’s history.

Minnesota Land Trust: Protecting What Cannot Be Replaced

Founded in 1991, MLT works to protect and restore Minnesota land, water, and wildlife. The organization helps landowners protect and preserve property through conservation easements, legal agreements that permanently restrict development and open the way for rewilding the land and restoring its ecology. MLT has conserved more than 1,000 properties across Minnesota, making it one of the highest-volume land trusts in the country. Public sources fund the majority of its roughly $20 million annual budget, and the organization is also a trusted advisor to the Minnesota state government on conservation policy.

Entering the Engagement

In 2023, MLT was thinking expansively. Having completed a $5 million capital campaign in 2021, leadership hoped to follow it with a larger, $12 million campaign to accelerate programmatic work, grow the development program, and build the long-term stewardship fund. MLT CEO Kris Larson recalls a thorough, energizing process, involving a strong volunteer committee and extensive donor interviews. Like most organizations embarking on a feasibility study, MLT expected the process would confirm a campaign as the logical next step.

What the Feasibility Study Revealed

CFA Founder and CEO Paul Johnson says that one of the main purposes of a feasibility study is to “move things from the ‘we think we know’ column to the ‘we know’ column.” What emerged from MLT’s process was a nuanced and ultimately clarifying picture. CFA’s assessment found that while donors believed deeply in MLT’s mission, the conditions for a $12 million campaign were not yet in place. In launching a new campaign so soon after the previous one, some stakeholders felt that MLT was simply asking again rather than offering something meaningfully new. The study also indicated that the development operation needed investment before it could support a campaign of this ambition. The analysis surfaced a strategic question at the heart of its recommendations: was a campaign the right vehicle to fuel the growth of the development operation, or did investment in their development operations need to come first? The evidence pointed clearly toward the latter.

CFA’s assessment concluded there wasn’t a feasible short-term path to $12 million, and that scaling back the number wouldn’t produce a compelling campaign either. But the data pointed to a real opportunity: a substantial pool of cold-to-warm donors ready for cultivation, and an underdeveloped strategy for engaging landowners as long-term philanthropic partners. CFA Strategic Partner Colin Hamilton puts it simply: “A campaign can become the default solution, but sometimes there are more effective things an organization can do first. It’s really about finding what’s the best path at any given period in your organizational arc.” What CFA’s assessment revealed was not a closed door but a roadmap, one that gave MLT the clarity and confidence to take the steps that would serve its mission best in the long run.

Minnesota Land Trust

Building the Foundation for Lasting Growth

CFA’s core recommendation was to spend the next 18-24 months building MLT’s development program: hire and activate a stronger team, deploy CEO Kris Larson as lead fundraiser rather than depend on him for every relationship, and evolve major giving into a more donor-centric, portfolio-driven approach. Rather than one large campaign, CFA pointed MLT toward smaller, targeted initiatives tied to specific geographies, issues, and outcomes that donors already cared about—moves that were smaller, more local, more nimble, and ultimately more productive than competing head-on with larger national organizations that were also planning campaigns at that time.

Kris took the advice to heart, recruiting Adam Breininger as the new Director of Development and Communications. Adam reviewed the feasibility study before accepting the role, a transparency that shaped his approach from the start. Among his first moves was co-designing Ignite, a targeted campaign that made a compelling case for investing in the development department itself. Ignite raised more than $800,000, funding growth of the development and communications team from four to ultimately nine positions, a tech stack overhaul including a new CRM and online giving platform, and a comprehensive organizational rebrand launching later this fall.

Remarkable Signs of Success

The results have been striking. Since fiscal year 2023, MLT has achieved 83% growth in contributed revenue, with budgeted annual fundraising rising from about $1.3 million to more than $3 million. The donor base has grown roughly 50%, from 2,000 to 3,000, with another 1,000 supporters expected this year. MLT’s 2026 gala was the most successful event in the organization’s history, raising over $725,000. Adam also notes that the growth is broadly distributed: “All four of our giving categories, from community-level donors to major gifts, are seeing significant upticks.” Some of the organization’s largest gifts to date arrived not through a campaign but through annual giving, a powerful signal that MLT’s donor base is warming and scaling in ways that would have been hard to imagine three years ago.

A New Organizational Confidence

Growth in contributed revenue is just one part of this success story. A bold new strategic plan calls for accomplishing as much conservation work in the next decade as in its first 35 years, and MLT has grown from roughly 30 to 45 staff members to help deliver on it. Kris no longer carries the majority of donor relationships himself; that trust has been distributed across a professional team, reducing organizational risk and deepening stewardship across the board.

“The traction we had on the development side freed up not just the board but the whole staff to dream bigger,” Kris observes. “Development used to feel like a department of limitations. Now it’s the engine driving ambition across the whole organization.” When MLT launches its next campaign, it will do so from a very different position than in 2023, with an experienced team, sophisticated infrastructure, and a growing donor community ready to scale alongside the mission.

Partner With Us

Are you unsure whether a campaign is right for you? A feasibility study can give you the information you need to confidently step into your next chapter. CFA meets every client where they are, with honest, thoughtful counsel to meet your challenges and seize your opportunities. Whether the path forward is a comprehensive campaign, a targeted initiative like Ignite, or a period of purposeful capacity building, we can help you map the right path and deliver your mission with greater impact. Contact CFA today to begin the conversation.

3 Leadership Opportunities to Shape Your Fundraising Culture

Posted on by CFA

When Anya joined a regional art museum* as its director of development, she came with a strong resumé and genuine enthusiasm for the mission. Operating on a $60 million annual budget, the museum possessed a loyal donor base, growing visitorship, a good reputation in the community, and an ambitious strategic plan that would require a major campaign in the years to come. On paper, everything looked great.

Eleven months later, Anya was quietly seeking a new position.

No one had been unkind or set impossible expectations. What had happened was subtler and harder to name. The executive director, a charismatic figure with deep connections in the philanthropic community, had become the center of gravity for every significant donor relationship, leaving Anya little room to build the kind of connections that sustain a development program. The curatorial staff guarded their donor relationships for their own projects and acquisitions rather than collaborating on them with the development team. When a significant fundraising gap appeared, Anya had a plan, but no internal partners to help her execute. She was talented and committed, but functionally on her own.

Her experience is not unusual. According to industry research, including CompassPoint’s UnderDeveloped — a landmark study of more than 2,700 nonprofits, the average tenure of a development director hovers between 16 and 18 months. The problem is frequently framed as one of compensation or talent pipeline. Jake Muszynski, Principal and Head of Consulting at Creative Fundraising Advisors, sees a deeper current running beneath those explanations. He observes that “the culture of fundraising or ‘culture of philanthropy’ in any organization is almost always a direct expression of how the person at the top understands and relates to philanthropy. That understanding, or the absence of it, radiates into every corner of the organization.” 

A culture of philanthropy is an organizational mindset in which philanthropy is woven into the mission, values, and daily work of the institution. It is characterized by shared responsibility, meaningful engagement among donors and stakeholders, and disciplined practices that strengthen relationships, advance the mission, and fuel long-term success. Leaders who do not shape the culture of philanthropy with intention and care risk undermining the very fundraisers who make the organization’s mission possible. The cultural gaps Jake encounters tend to emerge when leaders miss a few key opportunities to determine how fundraising is understood and practiced across the whole organization.

Opportunity #1: Shared Ownership of Fundraising

One of the clearest signals Jake looks for is how the executive director talks about fundraising and who figures in that story. A leader who can speak about philanthropy in the context of programs, board leadership, financial strength, and organizational impact has understood something essential: that fundraising is not any one department’s singular function but a shared organizational responsibility. 

A lack of shared ownership can manifest in different ways. In some organizations, a leader has wrapped their identity so tightly around fundraising that the development team has little room to operate. While it may appear that this leader is fundraising successfully, there are risks. Jake observes, “When fundraising becomes one person’s domain, it stops being a culture and starts being tied to a single personality. Personalities are not scalable, and they are not sustainable.” 

The opposite extreme is the executive director who steps away from fundraising entirely and assigns it to a department. Fundraising is siloed in these organizations, too. Program staff may see little reason to share stories or donor connections, and board members may take their cues from leadership and conclude that fundraising belongs to a department and has little to do with them. Donors may build relationships with fundraisers, but they receive little evidence that philanthropy is valued across the institution. The result is a weakened fundraising program that is fundamentally disconnected from the mission it exists to support.

Opportunity #2: Donor Relationships That Belong to the Institution

Closely related to shared ownership is how leaders manage their relationships with individual donors. Many executive directors, particularly those who have been with an organization for a long time, have cultivated deep personal connections with its most significant supporters. Those relationships are genuine and valuable. The challenge arises when a leader becomes the sole bridge between the organization and the people who support it. Jake encourages organizations to give their most important donors more than one point of contact: “a donor who knows only the executive director has a relationship with a person. A donor who also knows the development director and a program lead has a relationship with the institution itself, one that does not depend on any single individual remaining in place.” A major donor who has met a curator or attended a behind-the-scenes preview has more reasons to stay invested than one whose entire connection runs through the executive director’s office. 

Opportunity #3: Transparency That Equips Rather Than Overwhelms

The third area where leadership shapes fundraising culture is in how honestly and how helpfully leaders communicate about organizational challenges. Jake is a genuine advocate for transparency and believes executive directors should be clear with their teams about financial realities. What he cautions against is a version of openness that functions more as a transfer of pressure than genuine communication. Telling a development director that a significant budget gap needs to be closed by year’s end is not leadership; it is delegating a problem. Jake says: “The most effective leaders share the hard truths and then immediately ask, ‘What do you need from me to be successful?’ That single question changes the entire nature of the conversation.” The executive director who names the challenge, asks what support would help, and commits to being part of the solution has done something fundamentally different. That shift can help to keep talented fundraisers from seeking employment elsewhere.

The Questions Worth Sitting With

Anya was not let down by any single failure of leadership. She was let down by institutional norms and assumptions that had drifted, gradually and unintentionally, away from the best practices that create a healthy fundraising culture. Jake has found that the most useful thing he can offer leaders willing to examine these dynamics is two questions: 

  • Do you truly understand how fundraising touches every part of your organization? 
  • How are you empowering the people around you to be part of that work?

An honest look at the answers to these questions can breathe new life into an organization’s fundraising culture. The leader who establishes a healthy culture has a better shot at retaining the institutional knowledge accrued by valued employees and securing the resources and relationships needed to fuel the mission over the long term.  

Partner With Us

Every leader influences their fundraising culture, whether intentionally or not. If you are wondering whether yours is working the way you hope, CFA’s Development Assessment offers a compassionate and clear-eyed look at the structures, relationships, and culture shaping your philanthropic work. Contact CFA today to start that conversation.

*Disclaimer: Client confidentiality is paramount in our work with each and every organization. The story in this article is fiction, based on real situations drawn from CFA’s broad experience serving nonprofit organizations.