How to Create an Impactful Name for Your Capital Campaign (9 Steps + Examples)

Choosing the right name for your capital campaign can be a daunting task. You want a name that will capture donors’ attention and provide a clear understanding of the purpose of your campaign.

The name should be impactful, memorable, and concise. It should be able to be used across all of your campaign materials, including brochures, website content, and emails. To create an effective name for your capital campaign, you will need to consider various factors, including your organization’s mission, your target audience, and the overall message of your campaign.

With the right combination of thoughtfulness and creativity, you will be able to create an impactful name that resonates with your donors and ultimately supports your fundraising goals.

How to Name a Capital Campaign in 9 Steps:

Consider the Mission of Your Organization

Before you start the naming process, it is important to consider your organization’s mission. You want your name to be connected to your organization’s core values. This will help your name feel authentic to your organization and help donors recognize your name as one that aligns with their values.

When selecting a name, consider how it will look on signage, how it will sound when read aloud, and how it will look in printed materials like brochures and invitations. Remember the types of donors your organization attracts, and try to choose a name that appeals to both new and existing donors.

Naming your campaign can be a great way to highlight your organization’s mission and encourage people to get involved. By selecting a name that reflects your organization’s values, you will be able to strengthen donor relationships and increase overall engagement.

Identify Your Target Audience

The next step in naming your capital campaign is identifying your target audience. This will help narrow your naming options and provide more insight into your campaign’s focus and message.

Before you start brainstorming campaign names, list the types of people you would like to engage with the campaign. Consider your donor’s and volunteers’ demographics, interests, passions, and financial situations. You can also consider your campaign’s geographic focus. You might consider naming your campaign after a key person or milestone in your organization’s history.

Alternatively, you could name your campaign after a key location or event in your community. Or you could name your capital campaign after an inspiring or aspirational goal you want your organization to achieve. By considering the attributes of your target audience, you will be able to come up with name ideas that resonate with your audience.

Think About Your Overall Message

Now it’s time to think about your overall message. Your campaign name should tie into your overall campaign message, which is the “call to action” you want donors to walk away with after they read your campaign materials.

Your message should explain the purpose of your campaign, the number of funds you’re seeking, and how donors can get involved. Using a slogan or motto, you can incorporate this information into your campaign name.

Alternatively, you can use an adjective or descriptive phrase to connect your name to your message. For example, if your campaign aims to build a new facility for your organization, you could name your campaign “Future Foundations.”

This name ties directly into your campaign’s message and gives donors a clear understanding of the purpose of your capital campaign. Your overall message should be clear and concise, and your campaign name should reinforce this message.

Brainstorm Creative Name Ideas

Now it’s time to brainstorm name ideas for your capital campaign. There are a few different ways you can go about brainstorming name ideas. You can create a list of positive words and qualities you want your campaign to embody.

Alternatively, you can create a list of verbs representing your organization’s activities and goals. No matter which approaches you to choose, ensure all of your ideas are written down so you can explore them further and make connections between them. Once you have a list of ideas, try to connect them and make connections between them.

For example, you might want to connect the words “future” and “foundations” to come up with the name “Future Foundations.” You can also try to combine words to create new words and names. Brainstorming name ideas can be challenging, but it’s important to be open to different ideas and try to think outside the box.

Test Your Name Ideas

After you have come up with a few name ideas, it’s time to test them. To test your name ideas, you can create a Google Doc or Excel spreadsheet, create a Name Ideas document on a document-sharing platform like Dropbox, or create a board on a visual collaboration platform like Mural or corkboard.

You can add all of your name ideas to this document or board and assign a score to each name, indicating how well it performed in your testing. When testing your name ideas, include demographic information like age and gender. You can also include information on geographic location and financial situation.

Before you share your name ideas with others, you can perform preliminary testing online to gauge interest in your name ideas. If you decide to do this, keep in mind that internet users are not a representative sample, and your results will not be statistically significant. With this in mind, your goal with online testing will be to get a general sense of interest and engagement with your name ideas.

Make Sure Your Name is Memorable and Concise

Before you finalize your name, make sure it is memorable and concise. A name should be easy to remember and use in conversation and for donors to incorporate into their vocabulary. To ensure your name is memorable and concise, try using it out loud in conversation with other people in your organization.

See how easily it rolls off the tongue. You can also try using your name in an email to a small group of donors or stakeholders. If you notice any hesitancy or confusion among your recipients, make adjustments to your name until it feels right. Ideally, you want a name that is simple and easy to use so that donors are excited to give to your campaign.

Use Your Name Across All Materials

After you have finalized your name, you will want to use it across all capital campaign materials. Make sure to use your name in your campaign invitation letters and emails and on your website. Your name should be prominent in your marketing efforts, including on social media pages.

Include your name in all printed materials, like invitations and signage. While your name doesn’t need to be in all caps or bolded, it should be easy to read and prominent on all capital campaign materials. Make sure to mention your name in every content you create for your campaign.

This will help keep your name top of mind for donors and ensure that your name is always associated with your campaign. Using your name across all materials will make your name more prominent and memorable to donors, ultimately increasing engagement and support for your campaign.

Develop a Tagline to Supplement Your Name

While your name should be impactful and memorable, it might not resonate with everyone. To help engage a wider audience, you can create a tagline that supplements your name and more clearly explains the purpose of your campaign.

The best taglines are short and succinct, using keywords already familiar to donors. For example, the American Diabetes Association’s Campaign Boot-Strap a Boot to Fight Diabetes campaign uses the tagline “Raising money to fund research, programs, and services.”

This tagline communicates the purpose of the campaign while also being easy to remember and incorporating the name of the campaign. By adding a tagline to your materials, you can increase engagement with a wider audience and better explain the purpose of your capital campaign.

Have a Backup Name in Case of Rejection

Before you launch your campaign, you’ll want to make sure you have a backup name ready in case someone at your organization rejects your first choice. You don’t want to risk alienating anyone at your organization, but you also want to ensure you end up with an effective and impactful name.

If you encounter resistance from your board members or senior staff, ask them why they don’t like the name and work to address their concerns. If you can’t agree, have a second name ready in case your first choice is rejected.

Tips while naming a capital campaign

Before you begin naming your capital campaign, be sure to do your research to help ensure you will come up with a name that makes sense for your organization. If you’re launching a new capital campaign, you’re likely working with a blank slate, which means you’ll have the opportunity to choose a name uniquely tailored to your organization and its mission.

On the other hand, if you’re launching a capital campaign to replace an existing campaign with a different name, you’ll have to be careful to choose a new name that is similar enough to the old name to keep your donors engaged but different enough to avoid any confusion.

Keep in mind that the name of your capital campaign could significantly impact how much money you’re able to raise, so you’ll want to put some extra thought into the naming process.

10 Examples of Creative Capital Campaign Names

When naming your capital campaign, you’ll want to consider what your organization does and why donors should support your mission.

To get you started, we are sharing some capital campaigns with creative names that effectively communicate the campaign’s purpose.

• Building a Better Future
• Invest in Impact
• Empowering Our Community
• Creating a Legacy
• Transforming Lives
• The Power of Possibility
• Making a Difference
• Realizing Our Vision
• Unleashing Potential
• Bringing Hope to Life

Finalize Your Name and Move Forward with Your Capital Campaign

Once you’ve decided on a name for your capital campaign, communicate that name to everyone you work with, including donors, volunteers, and staff members. Ensure your campaign website is updated to reflect your new name and any email lists you manage.

Capital campaigns are often multi-year efforts, so you want to ensure the name you select functions well over the long term. Also, stick with that name, even if you have a different preferred name. Capital campaigns typically have the same name throughout their fundraising efforts, so once you’ve selected a name for your campaign, you’ll want to make sure everybody uses it consistently for the campaign.