Case for Support

Building a Comprehensive Support Base for Your School

Development is an ongoing process of identifying and cultivating relationships with individuals, organizations, corporations and foundations (individuals within those corporate entities) around the organization’s dynamic mission. It is matching the individual’s passion to the organization’s passion. Fundraising should neither be demanding, nor intrusive, rather it is should be winsome and spirit directed. The goal of the development effort is to establish and build a strong spiritual and financial support base for your school’s mission and vision. Such an effort grows organically much like a seedling develops into a stately shade tree. A vibrant development program grows slowly but comprehensively, drawing from a healthy root system. Relationships flower and bear fruit as they are nurtured through genuine care, ethical practices, mission-driven communication and proper stewardship of investment. A well-articulated and measurable mission (Case for support) coupled with Christ-like service and strict accountability comprises the essential components needed to garner sustainable support. Relationships with donors and prospective donors are reciprocal; time must be spent serving, involving, and listening to them.

Essentials for Development: People do not give to need; they give to vision.

• Database: The organization’s growing relationship with donors and potential donors is monitored through a database of all donors and potential donors. Each contribution and receipt is tracked, as well as all donor contacts.
• Institutional Case for Support: The “case” is the reason why an organization both needs and merits gift support, usually by outlining the organization’s programs, current needs, and plans.
• Individual Case(s) for Support: The specific reasons why someone should support your specific funding projects. Each individual case should demonstrate how a specific project specifically fulfills an aspect of your larger mission. There can be many individual cases at one time.
• Stewarding systems (care of each contribution.) Stewarding gifts includes the following systems: tracking, receipting, acknowledging, and reporting. A strict Code of Ethics must be upheld and all gifts used for their designated purpose.
• Time: It takes time to cultivate relationships, to get to know your donors and for them to get to know and trust you.
• Passion: Passion and enthusiasm for your mission, and the conviction that it is God’s mission, is contagious and a necessary ingredient for dynamic support.
• Research: Relationships are identified and cultivated through research. First, you must identify those that have interest in your mission. Secondly, you must ascertain if they have the financial and spiritual capability to support it. It is our task to strengthen the interest in and bond with our mission through relationship. Increased knowledge, involvement, and deepening relationships create greater degrees of ownership in your school’s mission. This applies to relationships with foundations, as well.
• Marketing tools (brochures, tri-folds, videos, letters) that tell your story in words in pictures—your mission in action.

Preparation for Development:

•  Develop a strategic plan for accomplishing your mission. All funding efforts should derive from this plan and should be prioritized.
• Develop prioritized funding goals and objectives—goals that are very specific, measurable and do-able.
• Develop a “Case for Support” for each funding goal. Each individual “case” should fit within your school’s larger “Case for Support.”

Preparing for Success

Drafting Your Case

Each case statement is a portfolio of prepared information that gives a comprehensive background of your “mission in action” in your school. It takes time and effort to draw this information together into one document, but once accomplished this information can be used repeatedly to build each “case” for a specific funding goal.

Case Resources:

Case “resources” provide the key information used to compile presentations for support such as grant proposals, brochures, direct mail letters, and annual reports. In short, case resources constitute a source of the information and arguments that make up the case and that are then used selectively to develop case statements and case expressions. Resources include, but are not limited to, the following information:

1. Mission, Vision and Core Values
2. Goals: general statements of what your school intends to do to address a problem or meet a need—that is, how it intends to act on the values expressed in its mission. A mission suggests multiple goals.
3. Objectives: the specific actions or steps toward reaching a goal. A goal will often suggest multiple objectives.
4. Programs and services
5. Governance
6. Staffing
7. Service Delivery
8. Planning and evaluation.
9. History

The first four “case resources” are the most important and take time and careful planning to develop. Potential donors respond to a dynamic mission achieved through specific and measurable goals and objectives, rather than statements of general need or an in depth review of the organization’s illustrious history.  Please download the attached pdf for access to all resources and worksheets.

Mission Driven Goals

Goals are general statements of the ways in which your school (in your international location) does address or intends to address the needs expressed in its mission statement. Goals (outcomes) tell people what your school is and will be doing.

Write four to six goals to guide your school in achieving its mission. Ask yourself the following questions: Do these goals follow from your mission statement? Can our constituents understand them?

 Defining Objectives

Objectives are not as general or as ambitious as goals. They describe precise results. They are specific statements about the ways your school is going to reach its goals. Objectives should be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Result-oriented
Time-determined

For example:
Although objectives and goals both address what an organization does or intends to do, distinguishing between them allows your organization to be clear about the good it offers and gives it a tool for better program management.

Consider this illustration: A food kitchen in your community might state that its goal is “to eliminate hunger from our community.” This is a lofty and laudable goal.

If you are a potential donor to the food kitchen you might ask how the organization will know when the goal is reached—or even if it ever can be reached. The problem is so large it is overwhelming. Its solution (elimination of hunger) is unreachable. You might conclude that the solution is so unlikely, therefore you choose not to give to the food kitchen because it seems like you would be throwing away money.

Contrastingly, the food kitchen might state that in light of its goal to eliminate hunger its objective is “to provide three meals a day, seven days a week, for at least 250 persons.” The result of this program can be measured. You, the potential donor, can know if in fact the meals are being served and to how many individuals. The ultimate solution might now seem reachable, the goal achievable. Objectives are quantifiable, measurable steps taken toward reaching a goal. 

Programs and Services

Your programs and services should be described in stories about real people, rather than as abstractions defined in cold numbers. Potential contributors will want to know how your mission is being accomplished in the lives of students, parents, and teachers—people! Stories give life and humanity to programs and services.

Who is benefiting from your work? The more comprehensively you can identify the benefactors of your programs and services, the more compelling your story. Think about direct clients and beneficiaries beyond those clients. Who else is better off because of your school’s work?

Start a file and collect examples about the positive things others say about your organization. Use quotations as testimonials, validating your mission in action. Testimonials from clients, community leaders, and donors validate your organization’s case for support by expressing how the organization helps people. Human-interest stories engage the hearts as well as the minds of your constituencies.

Describe the programs/services you offer and list the beneficiaries of each. For each description, list at least one story that gives warmth and humanity to your mission.

Writing your History

History is an important validation of the organization’s existence, but is rarely the most compelling motivation for philanthropic gifts. The central place in your case for support is your mission. In building the history element for your case, focus on the persons and personalities who created the human history of your school. A brief description of the founding of the school and its development over time can show the commitment of the dedicated few who gave birth to an idea, nurtured that idea, and grew it into a sustainable organization that benefits its clients and community.

Case for Support Comeplete Guide and Worksheets