The Case for Support: How to Build the Master Document That Anchors Your Fundraising Program
Table of Contents
What a Case for Support Actually Is — and a Distinction Worth Making (Section 1 of 10)
Why Your Organization May Want a Standing Case for Support — Even Without a Campaign (Section 2 of 10)
The Origin Story: Where the Case for Support Came From and Why It Still Matters (Section 3 of 10)
What Three Essential Thinkers Contribute — and How This Paper Builds on Their Work (Section 4 of 10)
The Art of Writing the Case: What Ahern, Joyaux, and Rosso Each Contribute — Applied (Section 5 of 10)
AI and the Case for Support: Easier to Draft, Harder to Make Excellent (Section 6 of 10)
Short, Medium, Long, and Verbal: The Four Versions and When to Use Each (Section 7 of 10)
How to Test Your Case Before You Use It (Section 8 of 10)
How to Deploy the Case — Including Before and During Donor Meetings, the Case Video, and the Case Landing Page (Section 9 of 10)
The Organizational Case for Support: A Complete Section-by-Section Template (Section 10 of 10)
Executive Summary
The case for support is a foundational document that should be anchoring a nonprofit's fundraising program — and many organizations do not have one. They have a website, a brochure, an annual report, and perhaps a campaign case statement, each produced by a different person at a different time, telling a version of the story that may or may not be consistent with what the others say. That incoherence tends to cost organizations donors, gifts, and credibility with every communication they send.
This white paper builds on the essential contributions of three thinkers who have shaped the field's understanding of the case — Tom Ahern, Simone Joyaux, and Hank Rosso — and extends their work in directions that practitioners in the current environment will find useful. It argues that the case for support serves organizations well beyond campaign periods, as a standing master document from which all donor communications can be consistently derived, with an internal comprehensive version and a shorter external version serving different purposes and different audiences. It offers a three-method framework for testing the case before deployment — a step that tends to surface the gaps that no amount of internal review reliably catches. It addresses the role of AI in case writing honestly, exploring both what AI does well and what it cannot supply, and why the organizational clarity that Joyaux describes and the donor voice that Ahern teaches matter more in the AI era, not less. And it describes how the case functions as a living cultivation instrument — used before and during donor meetings, as a source for grant proposals, as a legacy conversation opener, as a case video, and as a case landing page — rather than a printed document that is shared once and filed.
The paper closes with a complete section-by-section template that a development director can begin working from immediately after reading.
Section 1 of 10 — What a Case for Support Actually Is — and a Distinction Worth Making
The terms "case for support" and "case statement" are used interchangeably throughout the nonprofit sector, and the confusion between them, while common, reflects a genuine question about what the document is and what it is supposed to do.
A case statement is typically an outward-facing document provided to donors, grant makers, and community leaders to encourage investment — the polished, external expression of an argument — while a case for support can be understood as something broader: the internal master argument from which the case statement, and other fundraising communications, are derived, making the case for support the source and the case statement one of its outputs.
Many organizations have the outputs — a campaign brochure, a website, an annual report, a grant narrative — but less often have the source document from which all of these were consistently derived: a comprehensive, board-approved argument for the organization's existence and investment-worthiness that staff members, board members, and volunteers can draw from when communicating with donors. When that source document exists, the derivatives tend to be more coherent, and when it doesn't, they tend to drift — leaving donors who encounter the organization across multiple touchpoints registering the inconsistency even when they can't quite name it. Whether an organization builds that source document from scratch or develops it from an existing campaign case, the value of having it compounds with each new donor relationship it informs.
Section 2 of 10 — Why Your Organization May Want a Standing Case for Support — Even Without a Campaign
The field has traditionally tied the case for support to capital campaigns, and for good reason — a campaign without a compelling case is a campaign without a clear reason for donors to give at the level required. For many organizations, particularly smaller ones, or those early in their fundraising development, the campaign case is the organizational case, and that is a legitimate starting point. A well-crafted campaign case document does much of what a standing organizational case does, and an organization that produces one thoughtfully has done the foundational work this paper describes.
That said, organizations that maintain a standing case for support — one that exists and is kept current independent of any particular campaign — tend to find it useful in ways that a campaign-specific document cannot serve. The standing case functions as the document from which annual appeals, grant narratives, board presentations, major donor cultivation pieces, legacy giving conversation openers, and website about pages are all adapted. When these share a common argument, a common story, and a common vision — even when adapted for different audiences and purposes — the donor who encounters the organization across multiple touchpoints receives a more consistent and cumulative impression.
The standing case also tends to serve the organization internally. It is a useful onboarding document for new board members, more compelling than an organizational history because it makes the argument for the mission rather than describing the administrative structure. It is what equips a new development director on day one. It is what a board member reaches for when a peer asks, "what does your organization do?" at a dinner party and they want to say something more useful than reading from the mission statement.
A standing case is worth reviewing annually and revising whenever the organization's programs, leadership, or strategic direction changes significantly. It is a living argument rather than an archival document.
Section 3 of 10 — The Origin Story: Where the Case for Support Came From and Why It Still Matters
The case for support as a formalized fundraising document has its roots in capital campaign practice from the mid-20th century, when major universities and hospitals first began conducting organized major drives that required a single comprehensive argument for investment.
Harold "Si" Seymour — whose 1966 book Designs for Fund-Raising (McGraw-Hill) is among the earliest serious treatments of campaign methodology — described the case in terms that remain useful sixty years later: "what you do and why you need and deserve support." That formulation contains everything — the mission (what you do), the need (why support is required), and the credibility (why you deserve it). Cases written since Seymour's book are largely elaborations of those twelve words.
Henry A. "Hank" Rosso, founding director of The Fund Raising School in 1974 — later the cornerstone of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy — developed the structural framework that many cases still use today. In Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising, first published by Jossey-Bass in 1991 and now in its fourth edition edited by Eugene R. Tempel, Timothy L. Seiler, and Eva E. Aldrich (Wiley, 2016), Rosso identified six questions the case should answer: What are the organization's opportunities or needs? How will the organization address them? Why is this organization well positioned to address them? What are the specific plans? What will it cost? What is the return on investment to the donor and to society? These six questions remain a useful structural framework for building a case, and they appear — explicitly or implicitly — in most thoughtful treatments of the subject that have followed.
The shift from campaign-only to standing organizational document has been gradual. The field has increasingly recognized that the case belongs outside campaigns, but the practical implications of that recognition — what the standing organizational case contains, how it differs from a campaign case, and how it functions as a daily development tool — have not been as fully developed as they might be. That is the gap this white paper aims to address.
Section 4 of 10 — What Three Essential Thinkers Contribute — and How This Paper Builds on Their Work
Three thinkers have shaped the sector's understanding of the case for support more than most. Their contributions are complementary and cumulative, and the approach in this paper builds directly on the foundation they have provided.
Tom Ahern:Turning Doubters Into Donors: How to Make a Compelling Case for Your Cause (Emerson & Church, 2013) and Seeing Through a Donor's Eyes: How to Make a Compelling Case for Everything from Your Annual Fund to Your Planned Giving Program with Major Gifts in Between (Emerson & Church, 2009). Additional resources and Ahern's e-newsletter on donor communications are available at aherncomm.com.
Ahern's contribution is centered on the writing — specifically the donor-centered voice, the AIDA formula (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), the emotional triggers that move donors, the "you" test, and what he calls the "curse of knowledge": the tendency of organizations to assume their readers already understand things that only insiders know. His directive to "make the donor the real hero of the story and shift the burden for achieving success to their shoulders" is among the more practically useful instructions in the literature on fundraising communications. This paper applies Ahern's craft guidance to the organizational case and extends it into the AI context.
Simone P. Joyaux, ACFRE:Strategic Fund Development: Building Profitable Relationships That Last (Wiley, 3rd edition, 2011) and Keep Your Donors: The Guide to Better Communications and Stronger Relationships (with Tom Ahern, Wiley, 2008).
Joyaux's contribution is organizational and philosophical rather than craft-focused. She argues that the case begins with organizational clarity — the visioning process, the values interrogation, the shared commitment to mission — and that a case written without that internal clarity tends to sound like a committee produced it, because a committee did. Her definition of visioning as "a lively process of sharing what people most care about in a way that creates enthusiasm and shared commitment, a collective sense of what matters to the organization" describes the prerequisite work that most organizations shortcut. This paper builds on Joyaux's framing of organizational clarity as the foundation for any effective case.
Henry A. "Hank" Rosso:Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising (Jossey-Bass, 1991; 4th edition, Wiley, 2016, edited by Eugene R. Tempel, Timothy L. Seiler, and Eva E. Aldrich).
Rosso is the philosophical origin point. His six structural questions are the backbone on which to build your case, and his view that fundraising is the servant of philanthropy — that the case for support is ultimately an expression of mission, not a fundraising technique — gives the case its proper moral grounding. I use Rosso's six questions as the structure for the template in Sec, 10.
Where this paper extends their work:
Building on these three foundations, this paper develops several areas that practitioner experience suggests are worth more specific treatment. It makes the case for a standing organizational document that exists independently of any campaign, addresses the internal/external distinction between the master case and its derivatives, provides a testing framework that helps organizations evaluate the case against real donor responses before deploying it, addresses AI's role in case writing with the nuance the current moment requires, and describes how the case functions as a cultivation instrument across the full range of donor touchpoints — including the case video and case landing page — rather than primarily as a printed document. For practitioners who want to go deeper into Ahern's approach specifically, Capital Campaign Pro (capitalcampaignpro.com) offers accessible case-writing guides that build on his methodology. The AFP (afpglobal.org) also maintains case-related resources in its resource center.
Section 5 of 10 — The Art of Writing the Case: What Ahern, Joyaux, and Rosso Each Contribute — Applied
The three thinkers describe what a case should accomplish. This section addresses how to produce one — in the sequence that tends to work well in practice.
Start with Joyaux's prerequisite: organizational clarity before organizational argument.
Before anyone opens a word processor, the organization benefits from being able to answer the foundational questions that Joyaux's visioning process surfaces: What do we most care about? What is the specific future we are working toward? What values are so central to this organization that we would rather lose funding than compromise them? What do we believe about the people we serve — their strengths, their capacity, their dignity — that shapes everything we do?
These are not rhetorical questions. They tend to require real conversation among board members, senior staff, and the development team — and the answers produce the raw material from which the case is written. An organization that cannot answer them clearly is likely to produce a case that sounds like a mission statement from a committee, because its thinking is at the committee stage rather than the conviction stage.
Apply Ahern's craft: the donor-centered voice throughout.
The case for support is written for the donor, not for the organization. Each section benefits from beginning with the donor's perspective — what they care about, what they want to accomplish, what difference they want to make — rather than the organization's perspective. Ahern's "you" test is a practical editing tool: count the number of times "you" (addressing the donor) appears versus "we" and "our" (describing the organization). A case where "we" appears three times as often as "you" tends to be an organization-centered document rather than a donor-centered one.
Ahern's AIDA formula — Attention, Interest, Desire, Action — applies to the case's overall structure: the opening story captures Attention, the need and opportunity build Interest, the organization's solution and evidence create Desire, and the specific investment opportunity invites Action. The emotional triggers Ahern describes — hope, compassion, duty, faith, love — are not manipulative devices but honest appeals to the values that make donors give in the first place.
The "curse of knowledge" is a persistent challenge in case writing. Insider phrases, acronyms, and assumptions about what the reader already knows tend to make the case less accessible and less persuasive. The stranger test described in Section 8 is a useful remedy: if someone unfamiliar with the organization cannot understand a sentence, that sentence may be failing regardless of how accurate it is.
Apply Rosso's six questions as the structural skeleton.
Rosso's questions — what are the needs, how will they be addressed, why is this organization well positioned, what are the specific plans, what will it cost, what is the return — map directly onto the seven-section template in Section 10. They are the logical architecture that helps ensure the case makes a complete and persuasive argument rather than a collection of organizational facts.
The strength-based versus deficit-based framing question.
The field has moved in the past decade away from deficit-based case writing — "these people suffer and need your help" — toward strength-based framing — "these people have strengths and opportunities that your investment can help unlock." The shift is both ethical and practical. Deficit framing can reduce the people an organization serves to their needs rather than acknowledging their full humanity. Strength-based framing tends to offer donors a more inspiring role — not rescuer or savior, but partner in realizing what is already possible.
This does not mean glossing over the problem. The case should clearly articulate why the need is real, urgent, and significant. But it can frame the solution in terms of opportunity rather than desperation — "here is what becomes possible" — and that framing tends to resonate more durably with donors.
Protecting the case from the committee.
Ahern observes that cases often emerge from internal review processes with "the edges scrubbed off" — the language made more cautious, the ambition made more modest, the specificity made more general in an effort to offend no one and inspire no one. One useful remedy is to identify a single primary author who owns the document's voice and to treat internal review comments as input rather than directives. A board member who wants to add three paragraphs about the organization's founding is offering input. The author decides what serves the case and what dilutes it.
Section 6 of 10 — AI and the Case for Support: Easier to Draft, Harder to Make Excellent
The craft guidance in Section 5 — Joyaux's organizational clarity prerequisite, Ahern's donor-centered voice, Rosso's structural skeleton — matters more in the AI era, not less, and understanding why requires an honest look at what AI can and cannot contribute to case writing.
Artificial intelligence produces a structurally complete first draft quickly, covering the standard sections with adequate generic language and addressing Rosso's six structural questions with a reasonable approximation of donor-centered framing. For an organization that has never written a case and doesn't know where to begin, this is genuinely useful as a starting point — far better than the blank page.
What AI has more difficulty supplying is organizational specificity, authentic voice, the particular story of a real person served by the mission, and the emotional conviction that tends to move a major donor — and this gap matters because AI drafts are often competent enough to be approved and used but undifferentiated enough to produce a limited fundraising response. An AI-drafted case that has never been tested against a real donor's reaction can circulate for some time without generating the response its authors hoped for, technically meeting the standard of "we have a case" without quite fulfilling its purpose.
Joyaux's prerequisite work — the values interrogation, the visioning process, the precise articulation of what the organization most cares about — is what supplies the specific content that AI cannot generate on its own, and Ahern's craft guidance is what transforms that content into something a donor actually feels, which is why the organizational clarity Joyaux describes and the donor voice Ahern teaches become more necessary as AI takes on a larger role in first-draft production, not less.
How to use AI productively in case writing:
Use AI for structure and first-draft efficiency — feed it the organization's mission statement, program descriptions, impact data, and a description of the intended audience, and ask it to produce a first draft of each section. Then apply the human work: replace generic statements with specific ones, reframe organizational claims in donor-centered language, replace abstract outcomes with concrete human stories, and apply Ahern's "you" test until the document reads as though it was written for a specific person rather than a general audience.
A useful AI prompt for case writing: "You are helping a nonprofit write a case for support — the master internal document from which all donor communications are derived. The organization is [description]. Its primary programs are [programs]. Its most compelling impact evidence is [evidence]. Its vision for the future is [vision]. Write a first draft of the [specific section] using language that puts the donor at the center — use 'you' to address the reader frequently, lead with the problem from the perspective of the people being served, and close the section with a clear statement of what a donor's investment will make possible." Then inject the specific organizational content the AI cannot supply.
With the writing approach understood and the AI context established, the next practical question is what form the case should take — and the answer is not one form but four, each serving a different audience and moment in the cultivation arc.
Section 7 of 10 — Short, Medium, Long, and Verbal: The Four Versions and When to Use Each
One of the more common practical questions about the case for support is whether to have a short version or a long version. The answer is both — plus two others. The case tends to be most useful when it exists in four distinct versions, each serving a different audience and purpose, all derived from the same internal master document.
The long version: the internal master case (8 to 20 pages)
The internal master case is the comprehensive organizational argument — it contains all seven sections of the template in Section 10, includes supporting data and evidence, and is designed to be read by board members, senior staff, development team members, and campaign counsel rather than handed to a donor, making it the source document from which everything else is adapted. At 8 to 20 pages, it is thorough enough to be complete and concise enough to be read by a board member with reasonable time to invest, and it benefits from board approval, a clear date, and annual review.
The medium version: the external case statement (4 to 6 pages)
The external case statement is the donor-facing adaptation of the internal master case. It contains the opening story, the statement of need, the organization's solution and evidence, the vision, and the specific investment opportunity — written in Ahern's donor-centered voice. It tends to omit the organizational background, financial detail, and internal planning content that belong in the internal case but would burden a donor reading a solicitation document. At 4 to 6 pages, it can be read in a single sitting and left behind after a major donor meeting. It is the document most people mean when they say, "our case for support."
The short version: the case brief (1 to 2 pages)
The case brief is the one-to-two-page distillation of the full case into its most essential argument, answering three questions — what does this organization do, why does it matter right now, and what does a donor's investment make possible — in a format useful for initial donor conversations, board member peer-to-peer asks, follow-up after a first phone call, or a new donor welcome packet. It benefits from being visually engaging enough to hold a reader's attention for a few minutes, which is often the realistic window for an unsolicited document.
The verbal case: two to three sentences
The verbal case is what board members, staff members, and key volunteers can say out loud when a peer asks, "what does your organization do and why should I care?" Many practitioners will recognize this as a version of the elevator speech — the 30-to-60-second organizational pitch that entered the fundraising vocabulary in the 1980s and 1990s as shorthand for the impromptu moment when a professional shares a brief space with someone worth cultivating. The verbal case is that same concept, updated and improved in two ways: it is explicitly tied to the written case as its shortest derivative rather than being prepared in isolation, and it follows a more useful structure than most elevator speeches did — one sentence naming the specific problem, one sentence describing what the organization does about it, and one sentence describing what has happened as a result. That three-sentence structure, practiced and delivered with genuine conviction, is a cultivation tool that the organization deploys most frequently and tends to prepare least carefully.
Training board members on the verbal case is a worthwhile investment for a development director, and it works well as a brief recurring exercise at board meetings rather than a one-time orientation item. With all four versions understood, the question of how to evaluate any of them before they are deployed deserves direct attention.
Section 8 of 10 — How to Test Your Case Before You Use It
Testing the case for support before it is deployed is a step that tends to surface gaps that internal review does not reliably catch — gaps that can mean the difference between a case that moves donors and one that technically satisfies the requirement of "having a case." Skipping testing (as many do) is a mistake, one that you must prevent from happening. Of course, if you are just going through the motions, then by all means skip doing it.
Four testing methods, in order of priority:
Test 1: The Stranger Test
Give the case to someone completely unfamiliar with the organization — a friend, a family member, a colleague in an unrelated field — and ask them to read the external case statement. When they have finished, ask three questions without prompting: What does this organization do? Who does it serve? Why does it matter? Record their answers.
The gaps between what the organization intended to communicate and what the stranger actually understood are among the case's most useful revision notes. If the stranger cannot identify the organization's core mission in their own words, the mission section may not be as clear as it seemed from the inside. If the stranger cannot identify who is served, the program description may need more specificity. If the stranger cannot articulate why the work matters, the statement of need may be assuming knowledge the reader doesn't have. The stranger test is not a sentiment measure — it is a comprehension test, and it tends to be more illuminating than any amount of internal review.
Test 2: The Donor Focus Group
Convene three to five current major donors — people who have already given at a meaningful level — and ask them to read the external case statement and respond to it as readers rather than as supporters. Useful questions: What moved you in this document? What felt generic or unconvincing? What was unclear? What was missing that you expected to see? Does this document match why you actually give to this organization?
Major donors who have already given are well-positioned editors because their responses can predict how unconverted prospects might respond — and they have the organizational relationship that allows them to be honest in ways that prospective donors cannot yet be. A current major donor who says "this doesn't capture what I love about this organization" has just told the development team something worth hearing.
Test 3: The Readability and Voice Assessment
Apply three specific measures to the final draft. Count the number of times "you" (addressing the donor) appears versus "we" and "our" (describing the organization). In a donor-centered case, "you" tends to appear at least as frequently as "we." A ratio of three "we" for every "you" is a signal that the document may still be more organization-centered than donor-centered.
Calculate the average sentence length. Ahern consistently recommends targeting a 7th to 8th grade reading level for donor communications regardless of the donor's sophistication — clarity is appreciated by readers at all levels. A document with average sentence lengths above 25 words may be losing readers in its complexity.
Identify instances of jargon, acronyms, insider language, and abstract organizational vocabulary. Terms that require sector knowledge to understand can distance the case from the donor. "Trauma-informed care," "capacity building," "systems change," "theory of change" — these are meaningful internal concepts that tend to need explicit definition in donor-facing documents.
Test 4: The Digital Survey
A digital survey of the case draft reaches a broader audience than a focus group, produces quantifiable data alongside qualitative feedback, and can be deployed quickly and at little or no cost. It is particularly useful for organizations that cannot easily convene an in-person focus group, that want a larger sample than a small gathering provides, or that want to track how perception of the case changes as it is updated over time.
The survey should go to 15 to 30 current donors, board members, and community stakeholders who know the organization reasonably well, and it should be anonymous to encourage honest responses. SurveyMonkey (surveymonkey.com) and Google Forms (forms.google.com) are both free or low-cost and familiar to most nonprofit staff. Typeform (typeform.com) produces a more polished survey experience and is worth considering for organizations that want the survey itself to reflect the quality of their communications.
A useful survey includes a brief introduction explaining that the organization is developing its case for support and wants honest reader reactions; the external case statement as an attached document or embedded text; and five to eight specific questions covering comprehension (what does this organization do, in the reader's own words), resonance (what moved them most), gaps (what felt missing or unconvincing), credibility (whether the evidence of impact felt compelling), and readiness (after reading this, how likely is the reader to want to learn more about supporting the organization). Results should be reviewed before the case is finalized, and the survey findings are worth retaining as institutional knowledge about how the case lands with readers over time. Once the case has been tested and revised, the question becomes how to put it to work across the full range of situations where it can deepen donor relationships.
Section 9 of 10 — How to Deploy the Case — Including Before and During Donor Meetings, the Case Video, and the Case Landing Page
The case for support is most useful when it is treated as a cultivation instrument deployed across donor meetings, cultivation sequences, grant applications, board presentations, digital formats, and video — rather than as a printed document that is shared once and filed. This section describes how.
Before the donor meeting: what to send, when, and why
What to send a prospective major donor before a meeting, and when to send it, depends on where the donor is in their relationship with the organization.
For a first cultivation meeting with a prospective major donor who has limited prior knowledge of the organization, the case brief — the one-to-two-page short version — three to five days before the meeting tends to work well. This gives the donor enough to arrive with baseline familiarity and perhaps a question or two, without creating the impression that they are expected to do substantial homework before a relationship has been established. Sending the full case statement before a first meeting is often premature.
For a cultivation meeting with a donor who has been giving for several years and is being moved toward a major gift conversation, the full external case statement seven to ten days before the meeting can open the conversation at a higher level — framed explicitly: "We wanted to share how we have been thinking about our next chapter before we sit down together. We would welcome your reactions." This gives the development officer a natural entry point: "Did anything in what we sent resonate particularly — or raise questions?"
For a meeting that is specifically a campaign planning conversation, sending the case ten to fourteen days in advance with a specific invitation — "Please share any reactions or questions this raises for you. We genuinely want your perspective before we finalize our direction" — can set the tone for a more substantive conversation.
During the donor meeting: seeking buy-in, not just sharing
The purpose of the case for support in a donor meeting is not primarily to inform the donor of the organization's plans. It is to test the case against the donor's own values, priorities, and perspective — and to give the donor a genuine sense of authorship over the argument the organization is making. A donor who has had a hand in shaping the case tends to be meaningfully closer to investing in it than a donor who has been presented with it.
This requires a conversational approach that is specific and genuinely curious rather than presentational. Not "here is our case, what do you think?" — which can invite superficial courtesy responses — but questions that open real conversation:
"Does this capture what you believe is most important about our work?" "Is there anything in how we have framed the need that doesn't match what you have observed in this community?" "When you read the vision section, did it feel ambitious enough — or too ambitious?" "Could you see yourself as part of what we are describing here?"
These questions tend to do several things simultaneously. They give the donor a genuine sense of co-authorship. They surface the donor's own values and priorities in language the development officer can draw on in subsequent cultivation. They build the kind of relationship investment that tends to precede a significant gift. And they test the case against a real major donor's perspective in ways that improve it for subsequent conversations.
The meeting benefits from ending with a specific next step that the donor names wherever possible: "Would you be willing to share this with one other person whose perspective you trust?" "Would it be helpful to meet with our executive director to discuss the vision in more depth?" A donor who has been genuinely consulted on the case is several steps closer to becoming one of its significant investors. Used this way, the case is a relationship-building tool.
The case in grant applications
The case for support is a useful source document for grant proposals. The statement of need, the description of the solution, the evidence of impact, and the organizational qualifications in the case map directly onto corresponding sections of most foundation application formats. A grants manager with a current internal case can adapt proposal narratives more efficiently — and the proposals tend to be more consistent and more persuasive because they draw from a single, carefully crafted organizational argument rather than being assembled from scratch for each application.
The case in legacy giving conversations
The vision section of the case for support — the organization's articulation of the future it is working toward — tends to be a natural opening for a legacy giving conversation. A donor considering a bequest is considering a relationship with the organization that extends beyond their own lifetime, which means they benefit from believing deeply in the organization's future, not only in its present. "Let me share our vision for where this organization is going for your input," is a natural turn for a deeper conversation. Further, the vision is a natural lead-in to "We hope you will be a part of that. Have you thought about how your commitment might extend beyond your own giving?"
The case video: what it is and how to get one
A case video is a short video — typically five minutes in length — that translates the organizational case into a visual and emotional format. It is not a promotional video, a program overview, or an organizational history reel. It follows a structure that mirrors the written case: it opens on a human story (one person, one moment, one specific outcome), moves to the problem that created the need, introduces the organization's response and evidence of impact, and closes with an explicit invitation to the viewer to become part of what happens next.
The case video functions as a cultivation tool across multiple contexts — embedded on the campaign landing page, played at the opening of a major donor meeting, embedded in cultivation emails, used at board presentations for new trustee orientation, and cut into shorter clips for social media. According to Wyzowl's 2025 State of Video Marketing report, nonprofits that use video in fundraising campaigns tend to see meaningfully higher engagement than text-only appeals, and video completion rates on two-to-three minute nonprofit films run in the range of 45 to 62 percent when the opening seconds are compelling.
Three paths to producing one, in ascending order of cost and production value:
Internal production using available tools. A case video can be produced using a smartphone, a lapel microphone (approximately $30 to $50), a simple ring light (approximately $25 to $50), and free or low-cost editing software such as DaVinci Resolve or CapCut. The result will not have broadcast production value but can be genuine and emotionally effective if the story and subject are compelling. Cost: under $200.
A regional video production firm with nonprofit experience. A professionally produced two-minute case video typically runs $3,000 to $8,000, including pre-production planning, one or two shoot days, and a final edited master with social media cuts. The production timeline from kickoff to final delivery runs approximately 30 days. Regional options exist in most markets, and firms that specialize in nonprofit storytelling tend to produce stronger results than general-purpose production companies. A search for "nonprofit video production" in your region is a reasonable starting point.
A national nonprofit video specialist. Larger firms that specialize in cause-based storytelling typically run $15,000 to $40,000 for a full case video. At this level, the production includes multiple shoot locations, a professional scriptwriter, broadcast-quality cinematography, and original music. This investment may be appropriate for campaigns with goals above $5 million, where the video will be shown to donors considering lead gifts. The video script draws from the written case — the video is produced after the written case is complete, not before.
The case landing page: what it is and how to build one
A case landing page is a dedicated page on the organization or campaign website — not the homepage, not the about page, not the donate page — that presents the organizational case in a digital format designed to move a prospective donor from awareness toward readiness to give.
Five specific components tend to work well: the embedded case video at the top; the case narrative in short, readable sections with subheadings below the video (actual page text that a reader can engage with without downloading anything); two or three specific donor impact statements by gift level, written in outcome terms; one to three authentic donor or beneficiary testimonials; and a specific, relationship-oriented call to action — not "donate now" but something that reflects where a cultivated prospect is likely to be, such as "schedule a conversation with our executive director" or "learn about naming opportunities."
The page is distinct from the donate page, which is transactional, while the landing page is relational — designed for the donor who is seriously considering a significant gift and wants everything in one place to inform their decision. How to build one: any modern website platform supports this as a standard page, and the key decisions are about content and structure rather than technology. The page tends to work better when it is not in the main navigation — accessed via direct link from cultivation emails, board member outreach, and printed case materials rather than from the homepage menu — and the donate button should be present but need not be the page's primary visual emphasis. With the deployment repertoire in hand, what remains is the practical instrument that makes all of it possible: the case document itself, built section by section.
Section 10 of 10 — The Organizational Case for Support: A Complete Section-by-Section Template
The template below is designed for the internal master case — the comprehensive source document described in Section 7. Each section includes the specific questions that tend to produce the content for that section, making the template workable for a development director sitting down to write or revise for the first time.
Practitioners who want to compare additional template approaches will find two worth reviewing. Capital Campaign Pro maintains a publicly available case for support guide at capitalcampaignpro.com/blog/case-for-support that is practically oriented and draws on extensive campaign experience. The AFP resource center at afpglobal.org maintains case-related materials for members. Both offer perspectives that complement the approach here. The template that follows is specifically designed to serve the standing organizational case as the internal master document described in this paper, drawing on Rosso's six structural questions as its skeleton and Ahern's donor-centered voice guidance as its editorial standard.
Section 1: The Opening Hook
Purpose: Capture the reader's attention and emotional engagement before making any organizational or programmatic claims.
Template questions: Who is a compelling person your organization has served, and what happened to them because of your work? Describe that person and that outcome in three sentences, written from their perspective rather than the organization's. What did they experience before your organization was involved? What changed? What is possible for them now that was not possible before?
Writing guidance: This section tends to work best when it is no longer than one short paragraph. It is the case's entry point, and its job is to create an emotional connection before the reader has any information about the organization. It need not name the organization — that comes later. It should tell a story, briefly and specifically, that makes the reader want to know how this outcome happened.
Section 2: The Problem or Opportunity
Purpose: Establish the need the organization exists to address — with enough specificity and evidence that the reader understands both its scale and its urgency.
Template questions: What is the specific, documented problem or unmet opportunity your organization exists to address? What does the data say about its scale in your community? What are the human consequences for the people you serve? What happens if the problem is not addressed — to individuals, to families, or to the community? Why is this problem pressing now?
Writing guidance: Strength-based framing tends to be more effective here — frame the people you serve in terms of their strengths and the opportunities that exist for them, not only the deficits they face. Local, specific data tends to feel more real to readers than national statistics. Avoid jargon. This section should help a reader who has never heard of your organization understand why it needs to exist.
Section 3: Your Solution and Why It Works
Purpose: Describe what the organization does in response to the problem, and provide evidence that it works.
Template questions: What specifically does your organization do to address the problem described in Section 2? How does it work — what happens, in what sequence, for whom? What evidence do you have that it produces the outcomes you claim? What outcome data — not just output data — can you point to? What external validation exists for your approach?
Writing guidance: Leading with what changes for the people you serve, and explaining the program as the mechanism that produces that change, tends to be more persuasive than leading with the program itself. "Ninety-four percent of the students in our program advanced at least one full reading level in a single school year" is an outcome statement. "We run a tutoring program for 200 students" is a program description. The first raises money more reliably than the second.
Section 4: Why Your Organization — Why Now
Purpose: Establish the organization's distinctive credibility and the specific reasons why now is a good moment for investment.
Template questions: What makes your organization's approach distinctive from others addressing the same problem in your community or field? What is your track record — how long, at what scale, with what cumulative impact? What external validation confirms your credibility — awards, press coverage, peer endorsements, funder confidence? Why is now a particularly important moment to invest?
Writing guidance: This section answers the donor's implicit question: "Why you?" It is not a competitive claim against peer organizations — it is a confident statement of the specific capabilities and track record that make your organization a sound vehicle for this donor's investment.
Section 5: The Vision
Purpose: Articulate the future the organization is working toward — the world as it might look when the mission has fully succeeded.
Template questions: What does your community look like when your organization's work has fully succeeded? What is the specific, ambitious future you are working toward? If you had everything you needed, what would be different in ten years? This is Joyaux's visioning question at its most direct: what does the organization most care about, articulated as a picture of the future rather than a description of the present?
Writing guidance: Vision statements that describe what the organization will do tend to be less powerful than those that describe what the world will look like as a result. "We will expand our programs to serve 500 students annually" is an organizational goal. "Every child in this city who falls behind in reading will have access to individualized support before the end of third grade" is a vision. The difference is between institutional ambition and community impact, and donors tend to respond more durably to the latter.
Section 6: The Investment Opportunity
Purpose: Translate the vision into a specific, concrete opportunity for the donor.
Template questions: What does the organization need to accomplish the vision described in Section 5? What will a donor's investment make possible — in outcome terms, not budget terms? What does $10,000 accomplish? $50,000? $250,000? How does the donor's investment connect directly to the outcomes in Section 3 and the future in Section 5?
Writing guidance: This section describes what the donor gets to accomplish, not what the organization needs. The donor is not funding a budget line — they are making something happen in the world. Making that concrete and specific tends to make the ask more compelling: "Your investment of $50,000 funds the full cost of our reading intervention for 40 students in a single school year" is more motivating than "your gift supports our programs."
Section 7: The Donor's Role
Purpose: Complete the case by inviting the donor into a specific community and describing what it means to be part of the organization's work.
Template questions: What does it mean to be a supporter of this organization — what community does the donor join, what impact do they share, what recognition or relationship do they receive? What specific difference do specific gift levels make? How does the organization steward and celebrate its investors? What is the natural next step for the donor?
Writing guidance: This section converts the case document into a cultivation tool by closing with a specific invitation. Rather than a generic "please give," a specific, warm statement of what the donor's involvement will mean and what the organization will do to make that involvement rewarding tends to work better. The call to action names a specific next step — a conversation with the executive director, a site visit, a meeting to discuss named gift opportunities — rather than a direct request for funds. The relationship deepens; the funds tend to follow.
Conclusion
The case for support is not a document that gets written once and filed. It is the organizational position about why it exists, why it matters, and why an investment in it is worthwhile — and it earns its value by being used: in board meetings, in donor conversations, in grant proposals, in annual appeals, in the case video that plays at the opening of a cultivation meeting, and in the landing page where a prospective donor spends twenty minutes on a Sunday evening deciding whether to call the executive director on Monday morning.
Building it does not have to be complicated. It requires honest answers to seven questions, one clear-eyed writer, and the willingness to say something specific rather than something safe. The organizations that write cases that move donors are the ones that say, in plain language, what they believe about the people they serve, what they have accomplished, what they intend to accomplish, and what the donor's investment will make possible. That is not primarily a communications challenge. It is an organizational clarity challenge — and the template in Section 10 is one way to meet it.
Begin with Section 1 of the template. Write the story of one person whose life is different because of your organization's work. If that story comes easily — if you know it well and believe in it — the rest of the case tends to follow.
If your organization does not yet have a current, written, board-reviewed case for support, this paper offers a path to fill that need. The template in Section 10 is designed to be used immediately. Share it with your executive director and board chair, and consider sharing the full paper with anyone in your organization who talks regularly with donors — because the case for support is not only a development department document, but it is the organization's position for its own existence, and the more people who know it, believe it, and can express it naturally, the more consistently the organization will raise the funds it needs to do its work.
Reflection: What is the most challenging part of building or maintaining your case for support — and what has worked best for your organization? Share your experience in the comments section of the website.
A Note on Use
This white paper is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with executive directors, development directors, board members, and campaign committee members who may find it useful — provided the author's byline remains intact: By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA. Reproduction in publications, training programs, or institutional materials requires attribution. To request permission or discuss reprint rights, please reach out through the contact page.
