Why Your Nonprofit Needs a Case for Support
Need a quick tip to help your nonprofit raise more funds? Start by writing a strong Case for Support in your marketing and fundraising campaigns.
The Case for Support, also known as a Case Statement or the Case, is a dynamic document that presents compelling reasons why your organization deserves support and the urgent needs that support will meet. It is dynamic because it can serve various high-level purposes. You can use a Case for Support in your marketing, fundraising, recruitment, and staff/volunteer onboarding efforts.
Here are three ways that your nonprofit can benefit from a good Case across various departments:
To raise more funds:
During one of our educational webinars - Ask With Purpose: How To Write Your Best Case For Support Ever - our host Diana Hoyt, Author of Formula for Fundraising: Embrace Your Donors For Greater Success and Director of Fundraising Consulting at Arreva gave a firsthand account of how writing a Case for Support helped an organization acquire new donors.
According to Hoyt, the Case wasn't even the final draft. It was just a test version.
She had sent it out to five non-donors, promising to call back within a certain period to get their opinion on its content. But before she could follow up, two of the non-donors sent her two 4 figure checks and notes expressing that they were impressed with what her nonprofit was doing.
If your nonprofit is serious about raising funds like Hoyt's, then it needs a Case for Support. But your Case doesn't have to be limited to fundraising campaigns. In fact, it should be the starting point for all your marketing and corporate communications. The goals, purpose, values and strategic direction included in the Case must resonate with the content in your brochures, websites and social media.
To attract and keep a passionate team:
According to Nonprofit Standards - the 2019 annual benchmarking survey by The BDO Institute for Nonprofit Excellence - 66% of nonprofits rated staff retention and recruitment as a top challenge. And "nearly 24% ranked a disconnect from the mission as a high or moderate employee satisfaction issue." Yet for every nonprofit, people's power and commitment remain critical to success.
Fortunately, with an effective Case for Support, your nonprofit can start solving this issue and tap into the power of skilled and passionate prospective board members, volunteers, and employees. In our webinar, Diana Hoyt revealed how a nonprofit where she once worked was able to recruit new members to strengthen their weak board. In Hoyt's words, "We had no problems recruiting board members (by using a Case For Support)."
But why are Cases such an effective recruitment tool for nonprofits? It's because they answer the question, "Why?" By revealing why your nonprofit's objective matters, Cases for Support naturally invite prospects who share your worldview to join the cause. The best-selling author, Simon Sinek expresses this in his book, Start With Why,
"The truth is, almost every person on the planet is passionate, we are just not all passionate about the same things. Starting with WHY when hiring dramatically increases your ability to attract those who are passionate about what you believe. Simply hiring people with a solid résumé or great work ethic does not guarantee success."
To improve team performance:
What problem does your nonprofit solve? And how does solving this problem benefit society? Do your board members and volunteers know these benefits?
Unless the answers to these questions are clear, your nonprofit's performance will suffer, especially in its fundraising and marketing campaign. But you can fix this by writing a good Case for Support.
A good case will emphasize the pressing needs that your nonprofit wants to address, why it's uniquely positioned to achieve it and how it will do so with the right resources. It will also clarify, persuasively and succinctly, how your target community and donors will benefit when you succeed. This information will provide a basis for consistency in team members' interpersonal relationships and their interaction with the community.
How to write an effective Case for Support.
Learn from our FREE educational webinar Ask with Purpose: How to Write Your Best-Ever Case for Support with Diana Hoyt, Author of Formula for Fundraising: Embrace Your Donors for Greater Success and Director of Fundraising Consulting at Arreva.
You'll discover:
- A reliable process to writing a Case for Support that transforms your fundraising and marketing.
- The critical elements that every Case for Support needs to achieve its purpose.
- The biggest mistake that most writers make in their Cases for Support.
For a free digital fundraising and donor relationship management consultation and demo click here.
