A capital campaign is part art, part science. Most schools have plenty of the art: passion, mission, a story worth funding. The science, knowing who to ask and how much, is the harder part to get right.
Who
DuBois Central Catholic is a K-12 Catholic school in West Central Pennsylvania, built on a mission to empower students in academics, faith, and leadership. At 60 years old, the school has a large alumni network spread far beyond its West Central Pennsylvania roots.
The Challenge
DuBois Central Catholic entered the quiet phase of a capital campaign, the critical early window for prospect research and cultivation, with a limited prospect research budget and a wide, scattered alumni base to work through. Finding donors who’d graduated decades ago and moved across the country, then figuring out how much to actually ask them for, meant a lot of guesswork without the right tool in place.
Why EverTrue
DuBois Central Catholic brought in DonorSearch by EverTrue to bring some science to that guesswork. For alumni who’d moved away and lost touch, the platform helped the school locate the right person, confirm it was actually them, and then surface real insight into their charitable giving history and capacity, information the team couldn’t have pieced together on their own. That same data helped shape ask amounts and ranges for each prospect, grounded in objective variables rather than instinct alone.
“I couldn’t imagine doing our capital campaign without DonorSearch, because it would almost literally be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And DonorSearch makes the haystack much, much smaller.” — DuBois Central Catholic
The Results
The campaign got off to a strong start, informed directly by what DonorSearch CORE surfaced early on, setting the table for the years ahead. Along the way, the platform also helped the school stumble onto alumni they didn’t even know were still out there. Between the online tutorials and consistent, proactive check-ins from the DonorSearch team, the school never had to figure any of it out alone, and knowing that support was there for a multi-year campaign made the road ahead feel a lot less uncertain.
“DonorSearch provides the confidence that moving forward through the next few years, hopefully that continues to be the case and we’ll reach our ultimate goal.” — DuBois Central Catholic
Every capital campaign needs both halves: the art of the mission and the science of who to ask, and how much. DuBois Central Catholic never lacked the first. DonorSearch CORE gave them the second, turning the data already sitting in their alumni base into the kind of action a multi-year campaign depends on.