When we were getting ready to do our $8.5 million capital campaign we hired
an outside firm to do a feasibility study.  According to the results, the
firm concluded that we could only raise $2.5 million.  We decided this was
crazy and the board voted to go ahead anyway.

We then hired an outside consultant from a different firm to work with us
for two years (one of the years full-time on-site) to "raise" the money with
us:  about $3 million (? don't quote me on this exact figure) was raised in
about one year, and then we mutually terminated the arrangement because of
numerous problems encountered in the process.

We took over the campaign ourselves and raised the rest of the $8.5 million
on time (some clean-up work still going on now).

I was not personally involved in the campaign, but it seemed that once we
took it over ourselves the money flowed in more readily.  Maybe it was just
the firm we hired (don't ask me for the name because I don't remember it) or
maybe it was the way we did it when it was totally ours to do, but when we
had more direct control over the results it seemed to have worked better.


Julia Moore
Indianapolis Art Center