Eight weeks. Ten organizations. An honest answer to the question nobody on your board asked before they voted: can yours actually carry one?
The Incubator is the step before the feasibility study. It builds the documents a campaign runs on, with your board chair and treasurer in the room, and it ends with a written verdict that can say “not yet.”
Built for you by my team, a campaign plan starts at $10,000. A case for support, built one-on-one with us, is about $8,000. All in, it’s more than $25,000 of work at our own rates. You pay $2,997.
Your chair and your treasurer attend their weeks, and every week has a second seat.
A feasibility study averages $30,000 to $60,000, and often costs more. The Incubator builds the case, the budget and the prospect list the study checks, for about a tenth of the price. And it’s the thing that keeps you from paying $50,000 for one that comes back “no.”
Building costs rose about 4% last year (Statistics Canada, 2025). On a $5 million building, that’s roughly $200,000 more for waiting a year.
What I haven’t done is run this program before. You’d be in the first cohort — which is exactly why it’s $2,997.
Maybe it’s the roof. Maybe it’s the program run out of a converted storage room for six years, and everyone’s quietly stopped pretending that’s fine. Someone said the words. Everyone nodded. The minutes now say you’re exploring a campaign.
Nobody asked whether you could actually run one.
The budget is a 2019 document with a new date on the front. Your donor database is a spreadsheet a practicum student built, and three of the columns don’t mean what they say. The board that voted yes hasn’t talked to a donor in two years — and the person who’s supposed to lead this is doing payroll on Thursday.
You already know the answer. You’re just not saying it in a board meeting.
A capital campaign isn’t won on a great case for support. It’s won on whether what’s underneath you can hold the weight.
You said yes, and everyone in that room remembers. So either you stall — another year, building costs up about 4%, roughly $200,000 more for the same $5 million building. Or you spend $50,000 on a feasibility study to be told what you could’ve found out first: you weren’t ready to ask.
What’s at risk isn’t the fifty grand. It’s twenty years of people trusting your judgment.
I’ve sat in both rooms. The second one is worse.
Building costs: Statistics Canada, building construction price indexes, 2025. Non-residential construction costs rose 3.5% to 4.2% year over year. The release.
Find out what has to be built before anyone spends study money, and build it in eight weeks with your board in the room.
A campaign is a business. It runs on a validated budget, a case, a plan, a clean database and a board that has met donors. The eight weeks build each one, on your organization.
It’s cheaper to find out now. A feasibility study averages $30,000 to $60,000, and often costs more. Building costs rose about 4% last year. The Incubator is $2,997.
It isn’t on one person’s shoulders. Your chair and your treasurer attend their weeks, and every week has a second seat.
Ready organizations don’t beg, and they don’t chase donors. They build something worth funding and let the money come to it. That’s week one. Everything after it depends on believing it. Then you build: one readiness area a week, on your own organization, with my eyes on your work. You leave with the actual document — not a blank template, and not notes about it.
Plus a full re-assessment against the entry quiz — proof on paper of what moved in eight weeks.
The live session. The teaching, and the part where somebody says the thing your board won’t.
The working session. Cameras on, everybody building, nobody talking. The people who show up here are the ones who finish.
Open office hours. Drop in whenever. Bring whatever fell apart.
Learn it Wednesday, build it Friday, bring the wreckage Monday. Every session runs 10:30 to 11:30 am Saskatchewan time (CST), which is 11:30 Eastern, 9:30 Mountain and 8:30 Pacific. Everything’s recorded and posted within 24 hours — miss a live session and I’ll catch you up Friday.
Budget week, bring your treasurer. Case week, your fundraiser. Governance week, your board chair — whoever needs to hear it, in the room the week it matters. I price it per organization; bring who you need, week by week.
Up to nine other charities work the same eight weeks, most small enough that the ED is also the fundraiser. Some further along than you. You’ll steal things from them. That’s allowed.
“Starting this new journey, I had a million questions — everything from building lasting relationships to fundraising and campaign planning. Since day one, Emily has been immensely helpful.”
“The knowledgeable Brazen team has been instrumental in helping the YMCA create a strong framework for our fundraising.”
Twenty years in fundraising, a CFRE, and more than $50 million raised in direct solicitations. I’ve run a campaign for cows. Actual cows. Also a lake, a trail, a museum, a symphony.
Campaigns from $750,000 to the $180 million one I’m sitting on right now.
What I haven’t done is run this program before. You’d be in the first cohort — which is exactly why it’s $2,997.
| Your campaign plan, the business plan the campaign runs on: budget workbook (project, campaign and operating), gift table and top 50 prospects, board talking points, stewardship plan and a 90-day plan. What my team charges to build one for you. Here, you build it with me. | $10,000 |
| Your case for support, drafted and tested with three real readers. What we charge to build one for you. Here, you build it with me. | $8,000 |
| 24 sessions across eight weeks: Wednesday live, Friday working, Monday office hours | $4,800 |
| Members-only access to the Brazen tool library: the case for support bot, the meeting strategist, the gift chart calculator, campaign planning documents and templates. Opens 6 January, when the cohort starts. | $1,200 |
| Three months of office hours after the eight weeks, in the members’ area where the tools live. Bring what you’re working on and pick our brains while you put the plan to work. | Included |
| A recorded board presentation — the conversation you’ve been dreading, delivered by somebody who isn’t you | $500 |
| A scored assessment of where you stand across the eight areas, at the start and again at the end, and your written readiness verdict | Included |
| Bonus if you enrol by 27 November: three sessions with me before the cohort begins | $600 |
| A second seat every week, and up to nine other organizations in the room | — |
| Total value | $25,100 |
| You pay (first cohort) | $2,997 |
A feasibility study checks whether donors will give. The Incubator builds the case, the budget and the prospect list the study checks, for about a tenth of the price.
One price, per organization — the whole program above. Pay it in one go, or spread it over the first three months.
Everything above. Pay in full below, or make three monthly payments of $1,199 by card.
Everything in Full, plus 15 hours of me over the 90 days after, on the 90-day plan you build in week eight. Email me to enrol at this level.
Want my team to build the whole campaign plan for you? Separate engagement, from $10,000. Ask me in week eight.
One note when enrolment is about to close on 18 December. Nothing else. If you want to see how I teach first, the free class is Tuesday, 17 November.
No spam. Unsubscribe any time.
Enrol, read everything, talk it over with your board. If you decide before Monday, 4 January that it isn’t for you, email me and I’ll refund the full amount. No questions.
The tool library, the templates and the campaign planning documents open on Wednesday, 6 January, when the cohort starts.
After that, the work starts and the seat is yours. If you’re doing the work and it isn’t giving you what you came for, say so in week two, not week seven, and I’ll fix it. Ten organizations is a small enough room that I’ll usually notice before you have to say anything.
Enrol by November 27 and you get three sessions with me before the cohort begins — a $600 head start, so you walk into January knowing your gaps instead of finding them in week four.
Ten organizations, and when they’re gone they’re gone. Enrolment closes 18 December. Cohort One runs Wednesday, 6 January to Wednesday, 24 February 2027. The next cohort runs in March — a full quarter your board spends exploring before you find out what you already suspect.
Don’t enrol. Call me. That’s a different conversation, and it needs to happen this week, not in eight.
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