Planning your campaign: the 6-week timeline

Great campaigns aren't built the week they launch. The campaigns that hit their goals — and blow past them into bonus territory — almost always follow the same arc: about six weeks of preparation, with the heaviest lifting done long before the public ever sees the page. Here's the roadmap.

Plan note: this playbook leans on tools that are tier-gated by default — Planning, Matching, Historical Intelligence, the Email/SMS/Robocall channels, and the Live Screen come with Pledgix Pro and Political; giving tiers, bonus goals, story translations, the AI writing and banner tools, Coming Soon mode, and public team signup come with Pledgix One and above. The Pledgix team can adjust access per campaign — adapt the steps to the tools your plan includes.

Week 6: Decide the shape of the campaign

Start with three decisions, because everything else depends on them:

1. Your goal and bonus goal. Pick a primary goal you're confident you can hit and a bonus goal that stretches it (see Setting the right goal and bonus goal). Enter both in Campaign Settings → Fundraising (Financial Goals section).
2. Your dates. A 24–72 hour "live" window creates far more urgency than a month-long drive. Set your arc in Timeline & Scheduling using the Phased Timeline mode — countdown start, campaign live, campaign end.
3. Your matching structure. If you're running a matched campaign (2× or 3×), you need sponsors committed before anything else, because your goal math depends on them.

Put every milestone from this article into Planning → Tasks and the campaign calendar now, with owners and due dates. A campaign with an owner for every task is a campaign that launches on time.

Week 5: Lock in your matching sponsors

Sponsor conversations take longer than you expect — budget two full weeks. Your ask: a committed pool amount, a multiplier, and permission to use their name (or an agreed public display name). As commitments land, enter each one as a match pool under Donations → Matching with its Multiplier and Pool Capacity, and leave the pool inactive until launch.

Tip: Sponsors say yes faster when you show them last year's numbers. If you have prior-year data, upload it through the Historical Intelligence tab — "412 donors gave $180K last year" is a far stronger pitch than "we hope to raise a lot."

Week 4: Recruit captains and build teams

This is the make-or-break week. A common rule of thumb: each committed captain is worth roughly 10–30 donations, so a campaign that needs 400 donors wants 20–40 real captains. Create each one in the Teams tab with their own Fundraising Goal and Team Code, then click Create Links so every team has a shareable page. (See Recruiting captains who actually raise for the full playbook.)

Week 3: Build the page

Now the content sprint:

• Write your story — and if you serve a multilingual community, add translations (the built-in AI Auto-Write can draft each language for you to edit).
• Build your giving levels in Zechusim & Tiers — named sponsorships and dedication opportunities consistently outperform bare amounts.
• Set your hero images and colors; the AI banner tools can generate options if you're starting from scratch.
• If you're using your own web address, start domain setup now — DNS changes need lead time.

Switch your page to Coming Soon mode and start sharing the link (Coming Soon isn't offered on Pledgix Go — Go pages go straight to a timeline or live). If you've enabled public team signup, visitors can register their teams while you prepare — every early signup is a warm lead on launch day.

Week 2: Open early giving

Move from Coming Soon to your Phased Timeline — the countdown phase is your early-giving window, when the page quietly accepts donations while the public totals stay hidden. Start collecting commitments from board members, major donors, and insiders. The rule of thumb: bank roughly 30% of your goal before you go live, so the banked total is revealed at launch and the public campaign opens with visible momentum. (Full details in Early giving: banking 30% before you go live.)

Meanwhile, load your outreach lists and draft your messages in Email Studio and the SMS Center, and record your Robocalls if you use them. Everything should be written and approved by the end of this week — SMS can be scheduled in advance; emails you'll send by hand at the planned moment, so decide now who presses send and when.

Week 1: Rehearse

• Walk through the pre-launch checklist (there's a dedicated article) — test a real donation, check every team link, proof every language.
• Brief your captains: exactly when to send, what to send, and what their personal team goal is.
• If you're hosting an event, do a full Live Screen rehearsal at the venue.
• Confirm your match pools are entered correctly and set to activate at the right moments.

Launch week

Trust the plan. Your countdown is ticking on the public page, your early-giving total is banked, your captains have their links, and your messages are ready to go. From here, the Launch-day playbook article takes over hour by hour.

Tip: The single most common planning mistake is compressing weeks 5 and 4 into a few frantic days. Sponsors and captains are the engine of a matched campaign — give those two workstreams the most calendar time, not the least.