by Kate Jaeger-Thomas
CEO, Heller Fundraising Group

As development professionals, you already know the value of a feasibility study and understand how this crucial step can set your campaign up for maximum success. By taking the time to hone your budget and your message, engage with donors, and build out your leadership team, you’re also mapping out a clear roadmap for the months and years ahead.

At the Heller Fundraising Group, we’ve advised our clients on how to build the infrastructure, leadership and messaging that lays the groundwork for a truly transformational campaign. We have a few recommendations on how to jumpstart this process with your own team, whether you need their buy-in to conduct a study or want to be intentional about how you engage them along the way.

Make the case to your leadership

As both a development director and a consultant, I’ve heard all kinds of reasons why you should skip the research and move straight into campaign mode. Your board might be pushing you to start raising funds now for critical needs, or a one-in-a-generation opportunity is on the table and you feel pressure to move quickly. They might argue that you know your donor database inside and out and there’s little new information to learn about your top prospects—especially from an outsider.

We argue that feasibility studies go far deeper than answering questions like “How much can I raise?” and “Who are my top donors?”

A truly effective feasibility study can help you identify gaps in your knowledge, whether that’s in the giving capacity of donors, what is needed from leadership, or the time and resources of staff. It can also reveal opportunities that can be leveraged in new and compelling ways — new champions, overlooked donor segments, stronger case language, or untapped community enthusiasm.

In fact, we often call them planning studies because the end result isn’t just a dollar goal and a list of names. At Heller Fundraising Group, we work closely with clients to develop a detailed strategy with tested, data-driven recommendations for how and when to present your campaign to donors.

Think beyond your dollar goal

Some might question the cost of bringing in a consultant to lead your study instead of doing it yourself. But the right consultant should take the pressure off your in-house development teams, not add to it. Instead of managing a campaign on top of your day-to-day work, you have a partner to share the load.

Also, campaigns are a chance to break out of longstanding patterns, whether that’s how you engage with existing donors or finding new champions. Bringing in fresh perspectives can help you shake things up and see your organization and your donors in a new light. Not only can a consultant guide you to a successful campaign; their strategic planning can strengthen your team well past the campaign’s end.

When you find the right partner, outside experts should help you maximize your fundraising—and should even pay for themselves.

Lay the foundation with comprehensive pre-planning

Well before your first donor interview, you should be assessing the scope of your project, estimating costs, and figuring out a clear and compelling way to make your case to donors—all of the ingredients you’ll need to test during your study.

It’s a tough needle to thread. You might be wondering how you can scope a project before you know how much money you can raise. Or if there’s anyone on your board you should tap to serve as campaign chair. You might be unsure if your database is set up to manage the gift processing flow, or if your team even has the capacity to take on a campaign.

At the Heller Fundraising Group, we developed a pre-planning guide that’s designed to jumpstart this early planning stage and make even the most complex campaigns feel attainable. By asking the right questions of the right people, you can enter your feasibility study with clarity and purpose.

This advance work also strengthens the findings from your study, and ensures you have a solid plan from which to build. When your campaign runs into an unexpected detour or roadblock—which, let’s face it, will inevitably happen—you’ll have the research and understanding to know how to pivot.

A fundraising campaign can transform your organization’s future and strengthen your community around its mission. They’re also a huge undertaking, requiring months—if not years—of in-depth analysis and planning. Taking the time for thoughtful planning and deep analysis will give you a comprehensive plan for how to move forward in the weeks, months and years ahead.

Get our Feasibility Study Readiness Guide

We created our Feasibility Study Readiness Guide to help development professionals take the first steps in campaign planning. It has prompts to help you clarify early questions, organize internal thinking, and prepare for the deeper insights a feasibility study will provide.

Kate Jaeger-Thomas was named Heller Fundraising Group’s first Chief Executive Officer in May of 2026, after serving as Consulting Services Director for over three years. She has spent her 20+ year career helping organizations grow stronger so they continue to positively impact their communities for years to come.

Kate’s first major campaign came during her tenure as Director of Development at Signature Theatre Company in NYC. She led the $70 million capital campaign to build its new 75,000-square-foot home, the Frank Gehry-designed Pershing Square Signature Center. Her experience at Signature sparked her passion for the transformative impact of major fundraising campaigns, laying the path that led her to the Heller Fundraising Group.