To take a major step forward, a nonprofit organization needs to become successful at bringing their best ideas before potential donors for consideration and funding.
I have worked with nonprofits who believe in their mission so sincerely, they can’t imagine that a donor would not join in support, just hearing about the program. But major donor prospects are bombarded with many such program descriptions every week, and don’t have the funds to support them all.
How do you make the case for your nonprofit program or project stand out so it gets the consideration it deserves? It is worth it to bring in professional expertise to help create this case for giving? It will be useful all year long, but needs to be reviewed and updated each year as circumstances change in the organization and/or in its service community.
Does the case state the right set of needs in the vocabulary of a major donor?
Organizations make a common mistake by describing their own needs instead of the needs of those they serve. Another common mistake is to miss the all-important balance between statistics and emotional appeal.
Have you described your program in a nutshell that follows naturally the needs you just described?
Major donors are busy people and have a whole stack of program literature they try to plow through. Don’t make their job harder by going on and on about program details. It’s easy for us to miss the boat on this one, as we are so used to talking about our program.
Are you able to describe to the prospect why it makes the most sense to fund your organization (rather than someone else) to meet these needs? Remember the stack of proposals in front of the donor. One or two of them might present a similar program idea to what you are presenting.
Are you able to describe the costs of the project, with just the right amount of detail for the donor to grasp quickly? Although some prospects like spreadsheets of figures, the case for support is not the place for this. In this document we want to establish an idea quickly and in a compelling way. Supporting detail belongs in an appendix.
Have you painted a verbal picture for the reader of what success will mean? Suppose all the needed funds are raised. Can you leave the donor with a mental picture of how life will be different, and for whom?
You can see that writing a compelling case for support is practically an art form. It uses words and paragraphs, but the writing is as tight as poetry. We’ll get once chance with this donor, better invest a little up front to make it shine.