Capital Campaign Story, Brand & Communications | Red Rooster Group
Red Rooster Group
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Nonprofit leader looking out over a construction site
Capital campaign story, brand & communications

Give donors a reason to support your capital campaign.

Your campaign may have a goal, a project plan, and fundraising leadership. We turn those elements into a clear, compelling story donors can understand, remember, and support.

Discuss your campaign See our campaign work

You need an effective case for support.

Your organization has
Space requirements
Construction costs
Program needs
Campaign goals
Donors need to see
The human impact
The urgency
The future being created
Their role in making it possible
The impact
A fully funded project
Gifts at the level the plan requires, from donors who understand what they are making possible.
Howard Adam Levy meeting with nonprofit leadership

We work alongside nonprofit leadership, development teams, campaign counsel, and fundraising consultants. We specialize in the strategy, storytelling, branding, and communications that bring your campaign to life and galvanize support.

Our process
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Results across all kinds of campaigns

From large to small, we support capital campaigns with strategy, messaging, case development, branding, and communications.

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This presentation is incredible and really shows how deeply you understand our work.
Katherine Finnigan, Chief Development Officer, JobTrain
Featured campaigns

Three different problems. Three different stories.

Yeshivah of Flatbush campaign brochure spread
$50M · Yeshivah of Flatbush
Turning overcrowding into a story of success and possibility

The school had just finished another campaign and was asking donors to reinvest amid competing priorities. We reframed the space problem as evidence of institutional success — and tied the campaign to student transformation and future Jewish leadership.

U.S. Navy Seabee Museum campaign
$10M · U.S. Navy Seabee Museum
Expanding a campaign beyond its traditional donor base

We identified “ingenuity” as the one idea capable of connecting veterans, construction leaders, engineers, educators, and students — and built the theme 75 Years of Ingenuity at Work, an identity system, website, brochure, and ongoing storytelling around it.

Fairfield County Hospice House brochure
$1.5M · Fairfield County Hospice House
Replacing a building story with a human story

Rather than lead with construction, the case for support told the stories of the people who would one day use the house. Within two weeks of receiving the brochure, the organization secured a $750,000 gift — half the goal.

Red Rooster Group took our vision of what we wanted our materials to look like and produced something even better than I imagined.
Ainslie Seeber, Incarnation Camp
Start where you are

Where is your campaign right now?

Hover any card to see how we would help.

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How we help

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Contact us

Let’s talk

Your campaign deserves more than a description of what you are building. Let’s create the reason donors will want to build it with you.
Howard Adam Levy in conversation
How we help

We find the idea. Then build everything on it.

Every campaign we work on begins the same way: identifying the central idea that connects your plans with what motivates your donors. Everything after that — the name, the case, the brochure, the website, the templates your staff will use for three years — is an expression of that one idea.

What you get
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Our Five-Stage Process

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The craft

Four things make a case for support persuasive.

Donor research collage from a campaign case for support
Donor Research

We ask donors, board members, and staff what actually moves them. The campaign proposition comes out of those conversations.

Campaign line: good things happen when lives intersect
Motivating Messages

We present conceptual directions to frame your message, craft motivational stories, and apply behavioral science principles to resonate with donors.

Journey Toward Well-Being campaign brochure spread
Action Design

We develop designs that invite donors to actively engage in your story rather than just read about it.

BE BOLD campaign brochure with die-cut cover
Memorable Materials

A donor holds the piece before reading a word of it. Die cuts, foil, vellum, and tactile stock tell them this project is serious and worthy of their significant support.

Howard Levy showed a stunning ability to grasp quickly but profoundly the essence, purpose, and values of our project and translate those into a meaningful message.
Paula Caplan, Founder, Listen to a Veteran
Two ways we come in

You do not need a campaign consultant to start.

If you have campaign counsel

We stay in our lane.

Your consultant runs feasibility, the gift table, the committee, and solicitation. We take the strategy, storytelling, branding, and communications — working to their calendar and their approval process, and never touching donor asks.

For campaign consultants →
If you do not

We help you get the foundations in place.

Plenty of organizations come to us before engaging counsel, or without engaging any. We can help you with an initial readiness assessment, a working campaign goal, and a gift table to test it against — enough to move forward with confidence — then build the campaign story on top of it.

We do not manage campaigns or solicit gifts. If the campaign needs full counsel, we will say so and can suggest consultants.

Investment and timeline

What it costs and how long it takes.

So you can start the internal conversation before you talk to us.

Typical investment
$20,000–$40,000

For campaign messaging, theme and identity, and a case for support. Where you land in the range depends on the depth of discovery, the number of materials, and whether a campaign website is included. Printing and production are billed separately at cost.

Typical timeline
8–12 weeks

From kickoff to materials in hand. Roughly three weeks of discovery and messaging, three weeks of theme and identity, and the balance on the case for support and production. Schedule depends upon timely approvals.

You might be wondering

The questions you may have.

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Let’s find the idea at the center of your campaign.

Whether you are planning the quiet phase or restarting a campaign that has lost momentum, we will tell you honestly what your story needs.

Discuss your campaign
Capital campaign case studies

Campaigns across causes, sizes, and situations.

Ambitious visions, buildings that needed a human story, donor bases ready to grow, and campaigns that had stalled and needed new momentum.

View
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In depth

75 Years of Ingenuity at Work

How a stalled $10 million museum campaign found the one idea that could reach veterans, construction executives, engineers, and high school students at the same time.

Read the full case study
U.S. Navy Seabee Museum campaign
Your framing is very useful to me. The way you think helps me order my thinking.
Barrie Hathaway, CEO, JobTrain

Have a campaign in planning or already underway?

We are as often brought in to restart a stalled campaign as to launch a new one.

Discuss your campaign
← All case studies
Case study · $10 million campaign

75 Years of Ingenuity at Work

U.S. Navy Seabee Museum · CEC/Seabee Historical Foundation · Port Hueneme, California

U.S. Navy Seabee Museum campaign header

The challenge

The Foundation needed $10 million for state-of-the-art exhibits — but the campaign needed more than a refresh. It had to reach beyond military veterans and their families to the construction and engineering industries, STEM educators and students, and the broader public. Without a story that could speak to all of them, the campaign would keep fishing in the same small pond.

The insight

We started with a competitive analysis of military and institutional campaigns and asked one question: what makes the Seabees worth supporting that no other campaign can claim? The answer was in the stories. On Iwo Jima, Seabees flushed out a hidden enemy patrol by pumping 500,000 gallons of water into their cave. One Seabee got an engine running again with a condenser built from cigarette-pack tinfoil, fruitcake-box waxed paper, and a discarded beer can. In the field they turned 55-gallon drums into sewer pipes, roofing, canoes, bathtubs, and solar showers.

Ingenuity was the thread that could connect a Seabee veteran to a construction executive, and a museum donor to a high school student considering a career in the trades.

The campaign

The theme anchored the campaign in the Seabees’ diamond anniversary while making the legacy relevant to audiences who had never heard of them. We built the logo and identity system around that idea, delivered a complete style guide so the Foundation could execute independently, designed a website that invites visitors to explore Seabee ingenuity before it ever asks them to give, and wrote a brochure on Action Design principles — leading with identity and pride rather than need.

To sustain momentum, the site carried a blog of new Seabee stories, donor spotlights, and museum progress that kept the campaign alive between solicitations.

What we delivered
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The work
Seabee campaign brochure cover
Campaign brochure — cover
Seabee campaign brochure spread
Brochure interior spread
Seabee campaign style guide
Identity style guide
Seabee campaign website homepage
Campaign website — explore the stories before the ask

Ready to give your campaign a story donors will rally behind?

Whether you are shaping a new campaign, broadening your donor base, or restarting one that has lost momentum, we can help.

Discuss your campaign More case studies
For campaign consultants

The creative partner that brings your campaign to life.

You bring the campaign discipline: the feasibility study, the gift table, the committee, the solicitation strategy. We bring the strategy, storytelling, and design firepower that turns your plan into materials donors respond to — the in-house creative capability most consulting practices do not have.

Start a conversation See our campaign work
What we add to your team

Three capabilities that decide whether the campaign lands.

Donor research from a campaign case for support
Strategy

Donor research and competitive analysis of comparable campaigns, so the proposition is built on what actually moves your client’s donors — not on what the board likes.

Campaign line: good things happen when lives intersect
Storytelling

A campaign theme, name, and case for support written to be read once, quickly, by a major-gift prospect deciding whether to keep reading.

Campaign brochure with die-cut cover
Design and production

Identity systems, brochures, presentations, and campaign websites — produced at a quality that signals the ambition of the project before a word is read.

You deliver
Feasibility and readiness assessment
Campaign plan, goal, and gift table
Committee and volunteer structure
Prospect strategy and solicitation
Campaign management and reporting
We deliver
Messaging strategy and donor proposition
Campaign name, theme, and identity
Case for support and giving-opportunity materials
Presentations, brochures, and campaign websites
Templates and communications for the long middle

When no counsel is engaged, we will help a nonprofit establish initial readiness, a working goal, and a gift table so the campaign can move forward. Once you are on the engagement, those are yours — we do not duplicate or revisit them.

Red Rooster Group created a very effective preliminary case statement for one of our nonprofit clients. I was very impressed with the firm’s creativity in both the writing and the graphics. Howard really listened to our needs and worked with us to create a polished product.
Susan Lasker Dankoff, Founding Partner, Aspire Nonprofit Partners
Why consultants partner with us

Easy to work with, and easy to hand off to.

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Working together

How an engagement runs, start to finish.

No surprises for you or your client. Here is what the collaboration actually looks like.

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The point of all of it

Campaign results everyone celebrates.

A goal met or exceeded. A board that stayed confident. Donors who felt part of something. And a consultant whose client is glad they made the introduction.

$10M
raised in six months, Northside Child Development Center
$750K
gift within two weeks of the brochure, Fairfield County Hospice House
$3M
in sponsorships raised in two months, SBH
400%
return on investment for a new campaign, JobTrain

Partner with us or refer a campaign

Tell us the goal, the timeline, and where the story is stuck. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner.

Start a conversation
Capital campaign insights

Practical advice about capital campaign communications.

Articles
Who we are

A fundraising agency built around nonprofit growth.

Red Rooster Group has been helping nonprofit organizations raise money, increase awareness, and drive engagement in their missions since 2001. Capital campaigns are one part of a broader practice: we help nonprofits sharpen their positioning, strengthen their brand, modernize their communications, and raise more money year after year.

2001
founded in New York
250+
nonprofits served
30+
years advising nonprofit leadership
Our practice

We work on the growth issues behind the campaign.

A capital campaign rarely arrives alone. It comes with questions about identity, audience, staffing, and whether the organization is telling a story big enough for its ambitions. We work across all four.

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Communications designed to move donors

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Results from RRG fundraising strategy, messaging, campaigns, and communications

Howard Adam Levy, President of Red Rooster Group
Who you work with

Howard Adam Levy, President

For more than 30 years, Howard has helped nonprofits raise more money by giving them something clearer to say. He directs a team of strategists, writers, designers, and digital specialists, and works across the full range of fundraising — capital campaigns, annual appeals, major gifts, monthly sustainer programs, planned giving, and donor acquisition.

His approach begins by identifying the central idea that connects an organization’s plans with donor motivations. He helps organizations shift their focus from buildings, budgets, and square footage to what the campaign will make possible for the people and communities they serve.

+Howard’s fundraising results

Beyond capital campaigns, Howard has built fundraising programs that perform year after year. His annual appeals have consistently exceeded prior-year goals, and the new spring campaigns he has launched have opened a second giving season for organizations that previously relied on one. He raises average gift size through sharper segmentation, clearer asks, and messaging matched to where a donor sits in their relationship with the organization.

He designs donor acquisition and cultivation programs across direct mail, email, and digital; builds monthly sustainer programs that convert one-time donors into recurring support; and develops planned giving communications that open legacy conversations without awkwardness. That range means a capital campaign he shapes is built to sit alongside your annual fundraising rather than cannibalize it.

Howard speaks on nonprofit branding and fundraising communications at nonprofit conferences, seminars, webinars, and podcasts, and has written for NonProfit Pro, Candid, BoardSource, and other nonprofit publications.

The team

The expertise your campaign needs.

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+Full bio

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+ Organizations we have worked with
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What clients say
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Let’s talk about where your organization is headed.

A campaign, a rebrand, or a growth plan that needs a clearer story — start anywhere.

Start a conversation