Developing your nonprofit's Case for Support

Steven Shattuck: All right, Robin, is it okay if I go ahead and start us off officially here?

Robin Cabral: You got it, go right ahead.

Steven Shattuck: All right, cool. Well, good afternoon, everyone, if you’re on the East Coast, and good morning if you’re on the West Coast or somewhere in between. Thanks for being here for today’s Bloomerang webinar, “Developing Your Case for Support: The Foundation for Your Fundraising Success.” My name is Steven Shattuck, and I am the Chief Engagement Officer here at Bloomerang. I’ll be moderating today’s discussion, as always.

Just a couple of housekeeping items before we begin officially. We are recording this presentation, and I’ll be sending out that recording as well as the slides later this afternoon. So don’t worry if you have to leave early, or if you want to watch the presentation again, review the content, or even share it with a friend, which I would definitely appreciate. Just look for an email from me later this afternoon.

As you’re listening today, feel free to use the chat box right there on your webinar screen. I know a lot of you already have, but we’re going to try to save some time at the end for Q&A. So don’t be shy. Send in your questions and comments, and we’ll try to get to as many of those as we can before the two o’clock Eastern hour. You can also use Twitter to do the same thing. I’ll be keeping an eye on the Twitter feed.

One last bit of housekeeping: these webinars are usually only as good as your own internet connection, unfortunately. If you have any trouble, we find that audio by phone in particular is usually better than the web audio, since it doesn’t rely on internet connections or software or any of that good stuff. So don’t give up on us if you can’t hear or the audio is a little choppy. If you can dial in by phone and you don’t mind doing that, please do. There is a phone number you can use in the email from ReadyTalk that went out about an hour ago.

If this is your first Bloomerang webinar, I just want to say a special welcome to you. We do these webinars just about every Thursday. We bring on a great guest like Robin for a totally educational presentation, and we have a lot of fun doing it. In addition to that, our main business here at Bloomerang is donor management software. So if you are in the market for that, or might be coming up soon here in the new year, or you’re just curious about Bloomerang, check us out. You can visit our website, or you can even download a short video demo and see the software in action. You don’t even have to talk to a salesperson to do that, if you don’t want to. Definitely wait until the presentation ends to do that, but we’d love for you to learn more.

But for now, I am really excited to introduce one of my new friends. She’s actually dialing in from my hometown in Massachusetts, so I’m really excited to hear her accent, in addition to her expertise. Robin Cabral is our guest. Hey, Robin, how’s it going?

Robin Cabral: Hey, great. It’s going great.

Steven Shattuck: It’s awesome to have you. I just want to brag on you real quick before I turn it over. If you don’t know Robin, she’s definitely someone you should follow. Look for her name on conference agendas and things like that. She has over 20 years of experience doing the things she’s going to talk about today, and she’s raised millions of dollars for her clients and for the organizations she’s been associated with. She is the founder of Development Consulting Solutions, which she founded back in 2012. She’ll tell you a little more about it later on.

She’s an active member of AFP. She’s also an active member of the National Catholic Development Conference, where she’s been on their planning committees and their development committees. She’s on the board of her home chapter of AFP in Rhode Island. She’s also an AFP Master Faculty Trainer, and she has served on the AFP International Education and Training Committee. I don’t know how you do all this, Robin, in addition to your day-to-day work, but it’s definitely an impressive resume, and you guys are going to love her advice. She’s a good one. So, Robin, I’m going to pipe down and let you take it over. Take it away, my friend.

Robin Cabral: Great, thank you very much. I want to welcome everyone to this presentation, “How to Craft a Winning...” oops, sorry about that. “How to Craft a Winning Case for Support.” We’re really going to dive into what a case for support is and the components of it.

In all of my work, both as a professional and as a consultant, quite simply, the case for support, while often overlooked over time, is probably one of the most important documents that you will ever write for your entire fundraising program. It really is the cornerstone of everything that you do within your fund development program. Oftentimes I’ll go into an organization when I do an audit and ask, “Where is your case for support?” and that’s the one thing they don’t have, so their messaging is somewhat off.

So here’s what we’re going to cover in our 45 to 50 minutes together today. We’re going to look at some of the key terms and concepts central to what I consider case development. Then I’m going to share what I believe the differences are between an external and internal case, and define what the components are. Then I’m going to share some ideas on how to actually put the case to work. And then I’m going to share something that Tom Ahern talked about a long time ago that I just loved, called a marketing brief, and how I have actually used that in my professional work in the past.

So, do you need a case for support? Absolutely. You need it for everything that you do within your fundraising office. Let me start out by defining some key terms. We all know what a cause is. Everyone on this call should have, or is part of, some shape or form of cause. A cause is basically what you’re working to meet within your community. It’s what you serve with your mission and your dedication. Some examples of causes are eliminating hunger or homelessness, veterans, transitional housing, those kinds of things. If you want to share with me in the chat box what some of your causes are, I can share those with the group. But this is pretty basic. We all have one. We all represent a cause.

Now, what is a case for support? A case for support is basically why you need contributed income. That’s the best way that I can boil it down. It’s the messaging behind your philanthropic component or your philanthropic need, and it’s really bigger than the organization. It relates to the cause. Now we’re going to look at an internal and an external case.

For me, the internal case really becomes the encyclopedic accumulation of information. You’re going to have everything in your internal case about your organization that you will ever need to reference for your fundraising program, and it certainly answers the most compelling questions: Who are you? Why do you exist? What makes you unique? Why do you need contributed income? And why do you need it now? Where is the urgency, and the emotional component or factor, in your case for support?

Let me share some of the causes folks out there have mentioned. We have some folks representing health care organizations, homelessness, senior care, strengthening the foundation of a community, horse programs for all ages, programs that serve individuals with disabilities, and historic preservation. A great mix of different kinds of causes.

People say, “What is a case for support, and what is this thing, Robin, that you talk about, called a case statement?” Well, a case statement is basically this: if you have different programs, let’s say your senior program, and I’m going to take Robert’s example here, senior care. Your organization may provide assisted living, a not-for-profit assisted living facility. It may provide skilled nursing. You may have independent housing units. Each of those things may or may not have case statements. A women’s center might have a domestic violence program, or a sexual assault program, or a child trauma program.

Each of those would have individualized case statements. They are specifically developed for various programs and constituencies, and they present the argument to support that particular program and its needs and what the program is serving. So it’s really part of that overall case. You have to look at the case for support as the overarching document, and then within that case for support there are separate case statements representing your different programmatic service areas. They’re very, very focused.

I’m just continuing with these definitions, but I’m going to move on to the case expression. There are all these confusing terms around the case for support. A case expression is basically how you take your case for support and express it to your donors and to your general community. Some examples of case expressions may be your brochure or your website. That’s how the case is expressed for general consumption.

And then internal and external cases. I’m really diving deep because people will say, “Why don’t you just have a case for support?” When I was working professionally, and with my current clients, I often start by putting together an internal case for support that is not for public consumption. The internal case for support is what I call that encyclopedic compendium. It’s the Encyclopedia Britannica of your organization. It compiles everything about who you are and what you do, and I’m going to go over what those components are specifically. Then what I produce from that is what I call the external case, and that’s basically, again, the case expression. I may produce a summary document of the internal case that can go to donors and to the board, and it’s more of an external document.

I hope I’m not confusing people here. I just want to make sure that you understand all of the vocabulary around cases for support. If you have any questions about the definitions I just shared, feel free to type them into the questions box, because I am monitoring that.

We often talk about the fundraising cycle. I forgot where this is from, probably the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University or somewhere like that, but it’s a very old graphic that I have in my files, and it shows the whole fundraising cycle in great depth. This one does not have the actual case creation. It has examining the case, and there may be awareness of marketing principles up here, but this is where the case for support would fit in. It really is an integral component of the whole cycle. The interesting thing is that it’s a circle that continues, because fundraising is that kind of process.

I often say the case for support is a living, breathing, dynamic document that should be revisited at least yearly to ensure that everything in the case is still accurate. I have a client now in Vermont working on a capital campaign. We created their case for support last August, and things have changed. We just had a conversation yesterday about the need to update their case for support. So make note that this is something you need to do on a regular basis. Just look at your case for support and update it.

For me, the organizations I come to often don’t start with the first step of defining, outlining, or writing their case for support. In all of my development audits I ask, “Do you have a case for support?” And they say, “No, we have grant proposals.” Well, that’s not a case for support. It’s the first step in the planning process, it’s most often the overlooked step, and it’s the one I suggest an organization tackle straight off, before it does anything else, because everything is anchored around how strong and compelling that message is within your case for support. How well your direct mail appeal letters do, how well your online fundraising is doing, is anchored to the messaging that you have crafted within it.

So it really is the bedrock of your program. People say, “Well, I just don’t have the time to write that case for support.” You really need to take the time, or hire someone who can help you flesh it out.

I found this somewhere: the one-point case, right? This is an easy way of remembering what the case stands for. C is the cause at hand. A is the action addressing the cause, your programs and how you live out that cause. S is your statement of goals, oftentimes strategic goals. And E is the expected results, particularly, when donors invest in you, what are they going to get as a return? That’s a great way of remembering the case for support.

Before we get into the components of a case for support, the big question is this. I know there are so many of you on the call right now, and I’ve been in your shoes as a small-office development staff person. You go, “Okay, now this sounds like a mammoth undertaking. Who is going to write this?” And really it is up to either the development person who is in place, and if there’s not a development person, then certainly the executive director should take this on.

Now, I’ve written cases, but we have to be very careful, because we don’t want too much involvement in rewrites and developing a case by committee. I’ve ended up there many times in my career, and that’s not a good place to be, particularly with such a large, important document. It can be mammoth. So you certainly want to engage others in getting their ideas. You might want to bring in some select board members to test the case with them, or to interview them as part of the case. Some volunteers, some donors, and some prospects. We’ll talk more later about how we share the case with some of these folks.

One of the things I like to do is to ask what the pressing pain-point questions are that your organization has around messaging. Here’s a great example. I have a new client, an organization started by an NFL player. People are saying, “Well, why do we have to give to this organization? Doesn’t he make millions?” Those are the kinds of questions and challenges you need to think of in advance so that you can answer them and strengthen your case for support. It’s not that you can’t answer them, but you want to think of them in advance so that they are answered within that document. And donors validate the case. I’m going to share how I recommend doing that, and making sure you have the right people reviewing it so they can provide insights. But ultimately the person or people who should write these are the development person or persons and/or the executive director. Again, you need to spend focused time on this particular document.

Now you’re wondering what the components of a case for support are. What goes into it? When I say case for support here, I’m talking particularly about the internal case for support, that encyclopedia of everything about your organization. These are the exact same components that I use when I’m producing a case for support for a client. Basically, what you’re compiling is everything a donor would ever want to know about your organization, everything from governance to volunteerism to staffing. Anything you may find on a grant application would be answered in your internal case for support. I call it that database or information bank. Maybe it’s the Google of your organization, because we don’t use encyclopedias anymore. I’m kind of dating myself, because we’re all online now. Again, you need to keep it current. This is a dynamic, living, breathing document that will change. I find it changes most often when your fiscal year has changed, because you’ve got to update your financial information, your statistical information, and you may have new client testimonies or stories that you want to include.

The basic case components, and I’m going to go into them in greater depth, are your mission statement, goals and objectives, an outline of your programs and services, your financial data (I’m going to talk about why that is important), your governance model, or what I would refer to as your board of directors, what your staffing looks like, how you deliver services, and how you plan and evaluate. And then history.

History is interesting. Why is history last? Over the years I’ve followed Tom Ahern religiously. I live close by, in the next state over, and I got my master’s from Saint Mary’s University in philanthropy and fund development. Simone was one of the instructors there. But Tom said to me at one point, or in a book, I forget which, “You never lead with history, because donors don’t care what you’ve done in the past. They want to know what you’re going to do with their money today and tomorrow.” History is a small component of your case for support, and it’s most often what I see organizations lead with. They want to say, “I’ve been around for 110 years and this is what we’ve done over the last 110 years. Look at how wonderful we’ve been.” Donors are not investing in that. They’re not investing in that kind of historical piece.

Let’s go through each of the components in greater depth. First, the mission statement. That’s pretty self-explanatory, or it may not be, because what I often see is that mission statements say what an organization does. They don’t say why an organization exists. It becomes more of a purpose statement. That’s not for the realm of this webinar, but when you are doing your case for support and you look at your mission statement and go, “That says what we do,” it’s not really a mission statement, and maybe you need to earmark that for a closer look as an organization. So you pull out your mission statement and you put it in there.

Now goals and objectives. What do we mean by goals and objectives? Your organization may or may not have goals statements, or general statements identifying what you hope to accomplish as you seek to meet those needs: maybe end homelessness, house veterans, or end domestic violence. Objectives are the results-specific statements about the ways in which you’ll reach those goals. When I get to this point, I often ask an organization about their goals and objectives, and what they will share with me is a lot around their strategic planning goals and objectives. That’s fine, that fits in here. But sometimes, particularly if you are an organization that does a lot with logic models and federal and state funding, you already know what your goals and objectives are, because you have to flesh those out in the process.

Programs and services are very self-explanatory. It’s really what you do. We know what your mission is, we know what your cause is, and we get a sense of your goals and objectives. Well, this is how you meet all of that, whether it’s providing domestic violence counseling, safe homes, or an emergency shelter program. These are the specifics of what you are actually doing in the program area. This is your program component, and it outlines how you meet the goals, fulfill your mission, and advance your cause.

Now, finances. This is an important one for me. I worked for about three years with an organization called the Sisters of Mercy Northeast, and I was very confused when I first started as a staff person there, because I asked, “What is your case for support? What are you raising money for?” In fact, there were no easy answers. Many said we were raising money for ministry, for the sponsored ministries, for the retirement of the sisters, and to grant to other organizations. No one had a straightforward answer, and that was very confusing. What we did was pull the financial data of the organization and look at exactly how the Sisters of Mercy were spending their money, and I think almost 70 to 80 percent of their expenditures was on the retirement and care of the sisters. So it would have been very erroneous if we had said that all of the money we were raising was going to support a sponsored ministry, when in fact that was not true. The finances really have to line up with why you’re saying you need philanthropy.

So here you pull your 990s and your audited financial statements, and you work with your finance person to create an in-depth financial picture of both the expenditures and the revenues that come into your organization. You may want to put in some nice shiny pie charts and so forth.

I want to stop and say to all of you out there: if you are interested in seeing an internal case for support, that inside encyclopedic document, as well as the external case summary from that internal case, so you can see the entire package, just email me later on. You’ll see my contact information. I’ll be more than willing to share that with you, and to share how all of these things are described within the internal case for support.

Governance. I call it governance because we hope that you have governing organizations and certainly not management boards of directors, because there is a difference, and hopefully you are more of the governance-operating type. This is the structure of your board of directors or board of trustees, who govern your organization. You may want to outline what your bylaws say about term limits, the composition of your current board of directors, how many members are on your board, how they are elected, your recruitment and screening procedure and policy, whether or not you do any kind of self-assessment, whether the board has retreats, and what kinds of committees you have on your board. You want to outline all of that. And if you have resumes on your key board members, that would be an important part, because donors are looking to invest in organizations that have strong leadership. This is the way of showing and demonstrating that.

The other piece is staffing. We want to outline how many staff we have, maybe how many on the executive level and how many on the direct service level. Certainly the biographies and resumes, so that donors know that you have competent, credentialed, professional staff.

The other component of staffing that is not indicated on these slides is volunteerism. That’s a very important component. I was meeting with some folks at the organization I’m working for up in New Hampshire, and they said, “Oh yes, grant applications ask for your volunteers. They want to know what your volunteer program is like and how many volunteers you have.” This is very important to outline, because many organizations have tens of volunteers to hundreds of volunteers. So you also want to outline who they are, what they look like, what their responsibilities are, and how you utilize your volunteer force as an organization.

I see a comment here. Bill says, “This sounds very similar to a strategic plan.” Well, it would be very helpful to have all this information before going into your strategic planning process, wouldn’t it? It really is that encyclopedia, or Google, of your organization.

We continue on with service delivery. How is this different from the services that you provide? Well, this is how your services are delivered. Are you located along a bus line? Do you have a Meals on Wheels program? When are those meals delivered? Who delivers them? How often do you provide support groups? When are they provided? How accessible are you? That’s a little bit of an example of service delivery.

Then planning and evaluation. Those of you with logic models, this is an easy part, because you’re required to figure that piece out. But you want to know how you actually evaluate the impact of the programs and services you’re providing, and how you are meeting your mission and your goals and objectives as an organization. We all know today that donors are looking for more impact in terms of their giving, so this is becoming an increasingly important section to be able to outline.

And then lastly, as Tom Ahern says, and I cannot take credit for this, rarely is history the most compelling reason to give. So don’t make a big deal about it. I mean, yes, it is a big deal, but in terms of what a donor is looking for, yes, history is important to show longevity as an organization, but there are organizations that have just been founded that are doing tremendous things in communities. So be sure you have your history, but let’s not take three or four pages of it and make it all about your history.

Before I move on to the next section, about how we actually put this case to work, let me take a look at some questions very quickly. How long do you consider quality cases to be? Well, for internal cases for support, I can share samples with you, Meagan. Right now I’m working on one that’s over 20 pages long, and they’ve been more than that. It really is an encyclopedia. The summary document, that external case statement, is much shorter, maybe about three or four pages, so you can see the difference. And then Tracy is asking, what if the history links to board leadership? Again, you don’t want to exclude history. You certainly want to include it, but talk about your board leadership today and moving forward into the future, because that’s what donors are going to be investing in.

So how do we actually put the case to work? Bill says this sounds similar to strategic planning, and one of the things that happens with strategic plans, as I’m sure we all know, is that they sit up on shelves and never get dusted off and used. So I want to give you concrete steps on how you can actually dust off your case for support and begin to put it to work, because it’s one thing to have this document, and another thing to actually use it in the work that you’re doing.

I’m going to share some ways that you can test the case for support with key stakeholders, how you can engage donors with your case for support, and then how it can be used as a communications, marketing, training, planning, and inspirational tool, as Bill was suggesting, and as an internal resource document.

However, before we do that, I do want to reiterate that a lot of this data would change, so it really needs to be a living document. I can’t stress enough that you can’t just do it once and not pull it out and look at it again. And sometimes, when I say process is more important than product, it’s because I’m a process person. I really want folks engaged within the organization and grappling with the information. Quite easily I could write the case and leave it at that, but I like to involve maybe the board chair, some donors, and some volunteers in helping to shape and form the document. People begin to buy in and become invested in the case for support that you have, and that buy-in and ownership is important. What I say to board members is that the case for support might seem like a very big and boring document, but essentially it is their manual for the organization, number one. It can prepare them to answer all things about their organization. But most importantly, your elevator speech can come out of your case for support, and they are going to be ambassadors for your organization. So give them the verbiage that allows them to be strong ambassadors for your organization and for your philanthropic programs. Buy-in and ownership is critical, because they want to feel as if they own what you’re saying within your case for support.

Moving beyond the case, I want to talk a little about the marketing brief concept and the external case expression and collateral that I referenced earlier. I do want to say that this marketing brief concept is certainly not my idea. It was a Tom Ahern idea. I haven’t heard him mention it in a while, unless anyone else has.

I want to go back one slide, because I want to touch on something here: engaging donors with the case. I’ve done a lot of reading over the years around cases for support, because they are so intricate, and Jerold Panas, another very well-known, internationally recognized fundraising professional, wrote a book called, I think, “Making the Case.” I recommend it if you don’t have his book. He writes very simply, a quick, easy read. One of his ideas on how to engage donors with the case was, I thought, brilliant. Lynn is asking what the name of that book is. It’s “Making the Case.”

I wouldn’t recommend sending that whole internal document, because if I email it to you, you will see why. It is very large. So once you develop your case summary, Jerry Panas, [inaudible] is his name, recommended that you get some red pens and send the summary to the donors you’ve identified, with a big “draft” stamp on the case summary, and say you want their feedback on the case. How brilliant is that? So you call them. Number one, it’s an entree into actually getting an appointment, because you’ve sent this to them, so now you want to meet with them and go over their feedback and comments. But you’re really investing the donors and engaging them within your organization and within the case.

That old saying: ask for money and you get advice, or ask for advice and you get money. Well, this is one of the steps you can use as a door opener to visit with your donor. Solicit their feedback, make them feel they are a valued part of your organization, and actually get some buy-in and ownership. Not make them feel, but engage them in your organization and in your philanthropy program specifically. How brilliant is that? I thought it was a lovely idea, and worthy enough to go back a few slides and share with you.

But Tom Ahern had this concept called the marketing brief concept. I’m going to share why I thought it was a very important concept, and I actually have a marketing brief. I’m going to share the story behind that, and I can share it with you if you email me later.

Essentially, with the Sisters of Mercy, when I was working for them, I explained that they were unsure of what their case was, and this was a big about-face that we needed to make with the governing board, to say, “No, no, it’s not about the sponsored ministries, it’s about the care and retirement of the sisters.” Before I decided to flesh out the external case summary, I did the internal case, but I thought it was wise to visit Tom Ahern’s idea of what is called the marketing brief concept. Basically, Tom takes the marketing brief idea from the for-profit world, where marketing briefs are created regularly around how you’re going to market products. It’s the summary of it. So basically the marketing brief is just that: a summary of the internal case for support that you have just compiled.

You would not send the marketing brief to a printer, nor would you share it with a donor. Basically, the primary reason you would create a marketing brief is to gain support and approval for the case for support that you were planning to move forward with. It was a wise idea on our part, because rather than flesh out the case for support and have the sisters feel, “No, no, no, that’s completely the wrong direction, and here’s proof to show you why,” this actually provided them with a skeleton of the internal case for support, and they voted on the marketing brief concept as something acceptable to move forward into producing the actual case summary. It was that one step before creating the case summary where we wanted to seek approval and ask, are we headed in the right direction? Do you find that everything we have written thus far is something you can wrap your arms around and approve?

It was a very, very wise move, and I would recommend marketing briefs not just for cases for support but for all kinds of projects. It’s the summary of the project, the skeleton, taking all of those components, the governance, the staffing, the service delivery, the financials, and creating short snippets that you can get approved before you move on to drafting the case summary. I hope that’s clear to everyone. And again, I can share samples of each of these documents: the internal case, the marketing brief, the case summary, and then I can go as far as showing you the external collateral from the whole case process, so you can see what it looks like from start to finish.

Jamie is asking, before we move on to the next section, “Did you write this after the full internal case and before the external case?” The answer is yes. We wrote the marketing brief before the case summary was developed, to get approval for moving forward before spending energy on a document that may or may not meet standards. I hope that answers your question, Jamie.

Moving on, I want to share a little about the external case. Let me summarize what we had. We had the internal case, which is the encyclopedia. From there, what I’m recommending is the marketing brief concept that we provided just for approval. Once it was approved, we developed a case summary document, which is still somewhat internal, and we had that approved by the board of directors. That’s actually what the board approved. It did not approve the internal case, which stayed internal to the staff. Once the case summary was approved, we could develop what are called the external cases, and external cases are just that. They are made for external consumption. This is what you would share with your donors. This is the messaging that would go up on your website, and maybe on your Facebook or other social media. Certainly the basis of this would be your appeal letters and the messaging around why you need contributed income. Maybe even on reply or remittance devices and in your newsletters. You can use pieces of your case for support everywhere.

Because you had the messaging approved and you’ve written it all down, the messaging is clear. It does not vary from grant proposal to website to what you’re saying on social media. You really go back to the case for support and use the approved document for everything else. Most often what I see is that groups create all of these things in isolation, and they’re not consistent in messaging. So what I am recommending is: create the case for support first, and then use it as the basis for creating all of this external collateral. Again, I can share samples from start to finish of what the external case looks like for this particular organization.

I hope that’s all been very clear. We covered a lot of territory in a very short time, so let me recap. We defined a lot of the critical case components. We talked about where the case fits into the fundraising cycle, and I hope by now you know that it’s the first thing you should do as a new development person: ask, “Where is the case for support?” and if there isn’t one, create one. And if you’ve been in your office for a while, get off this webinar and say, “Hey, where’s our case for support? Let’s pull it out and look at it, or let’s develop one.” Then we talked about the different components that go into the case for support. I shared a little about how we can put the case for support to work: engaging our board in helping to craft and refine it, sharing it with our donors, and using it as the elevator-speech basis for our board members to become ambassadors. And then we talked about moving beyond the internal case to things like the marketing brief concept, the case summary, and then the case expression.

That concludes our overview of cases for support. What I’m going to do now is start taking some questions, because there are a lot of folks out there who have questions, and I will try to get to as many as possible. You can continue to type them into the questions-and-answers box. I also want to hear from you in the questions-and-answers box what you learned during this webinar and what you intend to take back to your office immediately, hopefully as soon as you get off, before you even check your email. Write down three things you can take back to your office and implement right away. Someone is asking for my email. You’ll see that shortly. Now is the time for some questions and answers. Steven, I’m assuming the questions are in the questions box and you’ve compiled them. Let me go ahead and take some, if you don’t mind.

Steven Shattuck: Go for it.

Robin Cabral: I think we have a few minutes, is that correct?

Steven Shattuck: Yeah, we’ve got about 10 minutes, I’d say. Yeah.

Robin Cabral: All right, great. Cheryl is wondering what types of employees participate in creating the case. I always believe program and fundraising are integral. When I create the case, Cheryl, I have often brought the program people in and asked them to review the programmatic pieces. Particularly as the consultant, I don’t know if I’m getting it right, number one. And number two, I want to make sure that the program pieces, particularly what donors are going to be funding, accurately represent what the organization does. The executive director needs to approve the case for support first, before it gets forwarded to the board, but program people would be helpful, and finance people. I’m meeting with a finance person next week to look at the financial component of the case for support for an organization I’m currently crafting one for. If you have a volunteer coordinator, that might be a great person to provide some feedback, or a human resources person on staffing. Just let me know if that answered your question, Cheryl.

Grant is asking how important the board of directors is to the fundraising process and how you relate this responsibility to them. I say the board is critically important to the fundraising process. It’s one of their expectations, or it should be in their job description, number one. But I hesitate to say that fundraising is all about asking. A culture of philanthropy needs to exist, and board members need to understand that there are all sorts of roles for them to play within development. I don’t think that happens often. Relating that responsibility is probably another webinar that I’ve done, but it happens when you onboard them, in the screening interview, when you orient them, when you bring them to their first board meeting. All of this should be done in advance, even before they become a board member. When they’re considering candidacy, expectations should be made clear.

Tracey is asking... we answered Tracey’s question about history and board leadership, so I hope I got that for you, Tracy. And then Amanda asks, how do you test the case? What does that actually look like, and how long should it take? I described how you test the case with donors. With board members, share it with a select group whom you’ve pre-identified strategically. We don’t want to send it to all board members, because that wouldn’t be a good idea, or at least that has happened to me and has not been a good idea. You want to strategically determine who on your board would really be an advocate for understanding the document and refining it, and share it with them, and then share it with donors and with the executive director.

Amanda continues and asks, are there any statistics on how much having and using a case matters to fundraising buy-in, or conversely, what is the impact of not having a case? I don’t know what the statistics are, to be quite honest with you. It’s a great question and I would love to research it. But if you do not have a strong case for support, I can guarantee you that your messaging is probably going to be all over the place, and that’s going to impact how well you fundraise. Not only that, but have you really worked to refine your philanthropic messaging so that it’s compelling and urgent enough? That’s what the case for support process does. If you haven’t undertaken that process, I can guarantee it’s probably not going to be as compelling and urgent as it could be, and that will definitely impact how donors respond to your messaging.

Sandy asks, so the external case may be made up of different parts of the internal case, for example, for a grant for one area of the organization versus entire organizational support? Yes, yes, yes, you got it, Sandy. You got what this is all about and how you can take and use it as you need. As I say, cut and paste in this day and age for different collateral pieces, grants being one of those.

Danielle asks, “Some board members say our organization doesn’t grip at heartstrings. How do I show them that our cause is worth pursuing and that people will donate?” One thing I did not say in this webinar, and this is a great question, Danielle, is that I often include client testimonials. I refresh those yearly as well. They’re the stories that you would consider sharing in your appeal letters, those emotional stories that add heart and soul to your statistics, your finances, and your governance. They are the stories that will grip at heartstrings, and yes, those too should be in a case for support. If you email me for samples, you will see how I’ve incorporated those into the internal cases.

Do we have time for any more questions? I know we’re at 1:52 because we’ve got a lot. Holy moly.

Steven Shattuck: Why don’t we take one more? Robin, would you be willing to answer questions maybe via email, since we can’t get to all of these?

Robin Cabral: Oh, absolutely. Do you mind if I put up my contact? Oh, thank you very much.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah, please.

Robin Cabral: Absolutely. If I don’t get to your questions, feel free to email me, and for those samples as well. Janet asks, “If using a consultant to assist in creating a case for support, about how many hours and at what cost would this be?” That’s a great question, and it all depends upon the complexity of the organization. How many programs and services do you have? What does your organization consist of? I’ll give you an example, Janet. I spent the whole summer, primarily July and August of last year, working on a case for support for an organization that I’d be willing to share samples of. The case was approved in late September of last year by the board of directors. It took about two months with dedicated consultant time, about one to one and a half days per week of my time spent on drafting their case for support. I hope that gives a good gauge. I’m going to stop here and turn this over to Steven, but please email me any more of your questions, and I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you on the phone or via email to see if we can get you some answers. Thank you very much. This has been wonderful.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah, thanks to all of you for listening for an hour. I know it’s quite a busy time of year with year-end coming up and events, but we definitely appreciate you hanging out with us for an hour. And, Robin, we owe you our thanks as well. This is a lot of great information. Thanks for sharing all your knowledge with us. It was great.

Robin Cabral: Absolutely, I’ve enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

Steven Shattuck: Well, do reach out to Robin. Obviously, she is a wealth of knowledge. I hope you all will email her and hit her up for some of those resources, follow her on Twitter, and all that good stuff. We’ve got some other great resources on our website as well, so you can check out some of our freebies there. I will be sending out the recording and the slides, in case you didn’t already get those. You’ll get those within a couple of hours here, so don’t worry about being able to review the content. I’ll get those in your hands for sure.

We’ve got our annual conference, BloomCon, coming up in February of next year in Phoenix. If you are in the Southwest area or you want to see any of these awesome speakers, we’ve got Adrian Sargeant, Claire Axelrad, Kivi Leroux Miller, and Kent Stroman headlining our one-day event. Check that out. We’ve got some special early bird pricing going on right now. We’d love to see you in Phoenix if you can make it. If you can’t make it, our webinar series is going to keep on going.

We’re taking next week off, but we have a couple of good ones coming up in November. We’ve got Gail Perry in two weeks, and in about, I guess, four weeks from now (I can’t believe it’s almost December), a really good one. If you haven’t put together any of your year-end giving plans yet, I know it’s getting close to the wire, but it’s not too late. Check out that one on November 30th, when Alice Ferris and James Anderson, quite the dynamic duo, are going to be talking about last-minute year-end giving strategies. They’ve got some good ideas for you. Register for that if it’s interesting to you, and hopefully we’ll see you again on another Thursday webinar.

We’ll call it a day there. Just look for an email from me later this afternoon with all the goodies, and hopefully we’ll talk to you again soon. Have a good rest of your Thursday, have a safe weekend, and we’ll talk again soon.

Robin Cabral: Okay, thank you, Steven.