Nonprofit News

The coronavirus has made us want to reach out. For the rest of 2020, we’re going to share a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from the work of our Communications team.

Most will have nothing particular to do with you-know-what—we just thought it was a good time to share as many resources as we can. We hope they may be of service, and we’d love if you would subscribe to the series and reach out with questions or ideas. Hang in there.

Alongside the six elements of your case for support, there’s one other foundational idea that shapes every case development project we take on:

The case lives in conversation.

Or, to be a tiny bit more metal about it, the case lives or dies in conversation.

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The coronavirus has made us want to reach out. For the rest of 2020, we’re going to share a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from the work of our Communications team.

Most will have nothing particular to do with you-know-what—we just thought it was a good time to share as many resources as we can. We hope they may be of service, and we’d love if you would subscribe to the series and reach out with questions or ideas. Hang in there.

We’re kicking off Fundraising Communications Weekly with a deep dive into the Six Elements of Your Case for Support—the foundation for strong donor messaging in everything from major gift cultivation to annual appeals. In Part 1, we introduced the six elements on a conceptual level—now it’s time to see how they work in practice.

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The coronavirus has made us want to reach out. For the rest of 2020, we’re going to share a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from the work of our Communications team.

Most will have nothing particular to do with you-know-what—we just thought it was a good time to share as many resources as we can. We hope they may be of service, and we’d love if you would subscribe to the series and reach out with questions or ideas. Hang in there.

As we kick off our new Fundraising Communications Weekly series, there’s only one place to begin—the idea we return to most frequently in our work and share most regularly with our clients. Here it is:

A robust and comprehensive case for support will have strong core messages in six key areas: Context, Impetus, Vision, Plan, Credential, and Appeal. These are the six elements of your case for support. This is a big topic, so we’re going to break it into two parts. Today we’ll introduce the six elements, and next week we’ll show how they work in practice with a sample case.

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In a recent conversation with a fundraiser, I found myself struck by a realization that’s been sitting right in front of me for years (it keeps you humble):

Case development is the only existentially significant part of fundraising that isn’t anyone’s job.

Think about it. A lot of factors go into a successful fundraising program or campaign—building donor relationships, engaging leadership and board, managing data and operations, the list goes on—and there are talented people who come to work every day with each of those as their top priority.

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