 Welcome. Thank you for being here thrilled to have you spending your time with us today. Julie and I have Tracy van der Neck CFRE President with Phil com with us today to talk about creating a case for support so go ahead grab your pen and paper pencil if you think you're going to make some errors. We can also listen to this episode in many of our other channels that I'm happy to share with you later of what that looks like. Julia Patrick. Thank you so much. Julie is the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett ransom her nonprofit nerd but also your nonprofit nerd CEO of the raving group and we are so grateful to have the continued support from our sponsors. Thank you to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy nonprofit nerd your part time controller staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader as well as the nonprofit Atlas. These companies companies keep us going and growing that allow us to have such deep. We have actual conversations with thought leaders like the one that we are having today with Tracy van der Neck. We are marching towards our 600 episode, you can find us on pretty much any of the channels YouTube video, you name it just just kind of say into the nonprofit show and we show up, as well as podcast form so if you are a podcaster, go ahead and queue us up in any of your channels where you find your podcast, but today you're going to find a lot of good information from Tracy. Tracy, welcome back. Thank you. I love the time I spend with the two of you on the show. Well, we are so grateful to have you have your expertise. One of the things Julie and I talk about often, you know the nonprofit show was really supposed to be a two week endeavor, and it's now a 2.5 year endeavor. Thanks to so many of these conversations that really do keep evolving. So today we're going to talk about the case for support. But before we do that, can you tell us what a case for support actually is. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is the I'm sorry my screen just went crazy. It is the. It's basically the articulation for the reason that a nonprofit exists in most in the most basic form it's a document that you can use the donors that explains the issues and problems in the community to be addressed. The organization addresses them or plans to address them and what you need in terms of resources to make that happen. Now, a lot of people when they think of cases for support, they think capital campaign, we need a case for support to build this building but in reality, every nonprofit should have a case for support to validate and explain their entire mission and how they how they deliver on that mission, and then some organizations even break it down further and do a short case for each program area so that they have that validation for everything that they do. So this, I love what you said because I would say that for me, I do think of this as a capital campaign tool, but I love that you have pulled this together, because it is almost like an elevator speech in many ways, for a lot of folks. So, thank you for kind of giving us a different context. We're going to go through a lot of points. And it's, it's a lot of information in a short period of time. Tracy's been very, very generous to give us an outline form. You can do a PDF. So you don't have to freak out about writing as much as you can to get all of Tracy's wisdom on a piece of paper, you can reach out to us, and we will for free of charge, send you this PDF, so that then you can get it all in one place and it'll amplify the things that we've talked about and help keep you on track. So just email us reach out to us at info at American nonprofit Academy dot com. You can reach out to Tracy, or you can actually use any of our social media platforms. Okay, so Tracy we've got nine main points. And the first, I want to say two, they're kind of one but they're two talks about that. So the mission and the vision are really just at the beginning of whatever the year medium is. Most of the time it's, it's a document. Some organizations will then pull pieces out and make a video case for support, or make shorter cases for support for different particular things but the mission and the vision are very functional and they're just at the beginning of the written case and this outline that we're going to be talking about is really for the core document. The core document when we put it together. It's everything else can build off of it. I think you mentioned it at one point that you can pull pieces out to use for grant applications. These are key talking points for your board of directors and your staff. So we're creating that infrastructural document that you can use as a tool for all sorts of things. I love that so the mission and vision is already established by the organization correct and so we're simply pulling that in we're not changing we're not evolving. We're pulling in the mission pulling in that vision as it currently exists is that correct. Awesome. Okay, so move us into three situation or problem that we are addressing. This is whatever is in the community, whether your mission is arts based social services, whatever it is, it's describing what is out there that needs to be addressed a problem a situation. Many nonprofits when they're creating their case for support. They really want to just dive in and start talking about the organization. You know we do this and we solve this but the beginning of the case for support, you don't want to mention your organization at all. You want to focus on what the topic is. And if you don't mind, I'm going to read a short. A problem statement from an organization in Texas called one voice home. And I just think it's a good example of stating what the problem is. There Kate their problem statement is according to the University of Texas, there is an estimate of 79,000 child and young adult victims of sex trafficking in Texas alone. Now let's bring those numbers closer to home. In Lubbock, Texas, in Lubbock County, there have been over 350 cases of sex trafficking since 2015 with the youngest one being eight years old. In addition, there is not a facility that serves the survivors of sex trafficking who are minors within 300 miles in any direction of love it. Now that statement is a couple of years old so the numbers have probably changed but the biggest thing to note there is that your own nonprofit was not mentioned once. It focuses specifically on where there's a hole in the safety net in the community that needs to be addressed. And that was powerful. Right. And so what what I really like to hear to thank you for mentioning that the agency was not actually mentioned. The purpose that nonprofits exist in the first place is to help provide a solution to a community problem, and that spoke to the greater problem, and then drove it down into that Lubbock County in Texas, and how that was so central to the community in which this case for support is is written for so great example I'm so glad I'm so glad that you shared that example with us. What about the financial impact let's move into point number four, the financial impact prop the problem has on the community. Let's take a little bit of digging for the organization unless they've already done their research, but basically you're describing okay you you've described what the problem or issue is to be addressed. Now let's look at how does that issue going on, how does that financially impacts the community. So on the outline that everybody can download an example is. Say we have an organization that helps people who are experiencing homelessness, and their county has over 2000 homeless individuals in their county at that point. So what are the financial implications of that. What services to those people use it are they more likely to get sick because they're sleeping outside without access to facilities if that's the case if they get sick are they more likely to go to the community room, in which case they may use an indigent fund, which is covered by taxpayers. Now that was sort of a domino explanation that I just gave you there about what the financial impact is and sometimes it's a direct financial impact and sometimes it is a tangential or inferred impact. For example, an organization that helps fund AEDs in a state, their financial impact is not of their AEDs it is how many people are having out of hospital cardiac events. So what they do. How does that affect long term care, insurance premiums, all of that so it really is connecting what you do in this, in this micro section to the macro financial impact on the community. I do a little more digging and research into these numbers and I love that domino example. That was perfect. I tend to look at, you know, CDC guidelines I also tend to look at the census to see you know what are some of these numbers because that is an ever changing, you know, data, it's hard data. You can cite it. Should we cite this information in the case for support. I would say yes. Okay, because even though today we're talking about the content, the verbiage that we're doing, your case for support is likely going to be designed into a nice piece with callouts and quotes so you might have a call out or a quote from the American Cancer Society or something and of course you want to attribute that to them. Additionally, here are United Way and I don't know if it happens where you are are United Way publishes a yearly report called the Alice report it's asset limited income constraint people who have jobs, but are still in working below the poverty level and needing to use services. So for nonprofits in our area. That report is very useful when identifying what the financial impact is so finding whatever that type of report is in your community in addition to the census that Jared mentioned is the easiest way usually to get that information. Amazing. I mean I can think of going to your municipality, your governor's offices because the government, you know, state county governments they have this data they have these things that they track I mean you can pull I would think Tracy the more external data that you can collect and and and navigate the stronger your case for support is right. That's true. We, we should say here that every nonprofits case for support is going to look a little bit different, because some nonprofits will have a mission that you can absolutely identify what that financial impact is in the community and other nonprofits, you're just not going to be able to see it right as in a delineated way is that so it's perfectly fine to have a smaller section for financial impact and spend more time on another section so don't feel like because you have the outline that it has to follow it to the letter it definitely should be tailored for your everybody's organization. Let's moved into now the proposed solution so we've we've talked about the mission, the vision, the situation that's been addressed the financial impact of the problem. So now how do we talk about our specific proposed solution to the problem. There's a couple things that you want to highlight here, whether it's a capital campaign, or whether it's for your organization as a whole. Now is the first time in a case for support that you're actually mentioning your organization, you talked about all those things that Jared just listed, and you're finally getting to. Okay, now here's what we do. So the proposed solution is yes the services you offer, but it's also discussing why you are valid why your organization is the right one to deliver those services. So you have the people with the right credentials on staff. Is it that your position with the right community coalition to be able to address identifying address root causes. So, you are not only expressing here are the programs that are addressing the need or the problem that we talked about, but here is here's the backup for why we're valid to be delivering on this. And as you mentioned the people because I was going to ask that question honestly Tracy, you know how much does our team managing this proposed solution. How much does that need to take place in the case for support as a previous grant writer and really looking at oftentimes having the bio of the program team or the leadership team that oversees, you know the overall agency. Should we include those team bios or credentials as you said how much of that or should we even, you know, talk about that. Great question. Absolutely. A lot of times what an organization will do is they'll create the main body of their case for support. And then however you design it whatever it's going to look like maybe it's a booklet and the last page of the booklet is a folder. So that you can then insert relevant pieces if you're going to see a particular donor that you know is interested in a particular program you can insert something from that program. And as you just described, you can also input bios of the relevant people, especially if you have, if it's a school and you want bios of the professors, right, if it is a scientific organization and you want to show the validity of who is is working on that specific solution, you can add those pieces in, because not every donor is going to be interested in every single piece and that is something that we should we should mention here is that even though this is you know it's an outline it's identifying information. It's describing why your organization is valid to deliver on this mission, but we have to keep in mind even though it's a tool that we're using and giving to donors potential major gift donors. We have to keep in mind that it can't all be the financials and the numbers, we need to infuse the emotion and the story along with it. So the problem statement that I shared from one voice home is a good example of that, especially because a lot of times as we know donors, a family may make a decision together on who they're going to give to. Yeah, so a case for support you want it to appeal to the type a brain personality that is just going to want to see the numbers and then stop talking about it right and it's going to appeal to the person who really cares about learning whose lives are going to be better because. Great example. Glad you mentioned that go ahead Julia. You know so that I'm fascinated with and I think that kind of leads us into number six because there's a financial solution or I should say financial impact with the solution so it's not just eradicating the expenses up front. I mean that we talked about explain this because it's it's not just like okay problem went away and we solved it. Right. It's actually, it can be generative. Is that what you're saying. Absolutely. And that's one of the things that we take into consideration when you're drafting the different pieces of your case for support is. Exactly. Do you mark as how do you know when you've been successful. And is it outputs, which is how many number of people you serve, is it outcomes, which is a little bit wider, and it's a change that you can visibly see, or is it impact that is something community wide that is harder to pin down specifically just to your organization, but that has that lasting impact on the community so a lot of the sections of the case for support. You do want to as a Stephen company would say begin with the end in mind what what does success look like. So keep that in mind as you're creating these sections. The financial impact of the solution on the community can be a little bit harder to pin down. So if any nonprofits are going to shorten up a section, or even leave it out all together this is probably the one, because it's easier to quantify what financial impact has on the community, but you may not yet know what the financial impact the solution will have. And so if they do include it it may not be, you know, it would be, we're not per prognosticators. We can't say or it's going to save this amount, unless it's a very direct correlation. So it may be more of a nebulous description of the financial impact that it will have on the community so this is probably the the section that either gets left out or that is altered the most because it's the hardest to pin down. It's kind of more of a narrative. Okay, number seven don't don't don't. The fun this this is where you get to the meat and potatoes right. Yeah. So this is an important one. And I think we've all probably talked to nonprofits, when they tell us what they do and they, we say, Great, what do you need, what do you need to make that happen. And a lot of times there's this this frozen panic look of. I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. So nonprofits need to have an answer to that the board needs to have an answer to that so it's the three of us have mentioned it before when we've talked together, nonprofits should never budget with a poverty mentality, you know you don't want to budget for like the least common the least possible way that your organization can work. You want to budget for the optimal version of your organization and potentially for the next few years. So, as you outline your solution. You need to be able to create a budget to potentially include in your case for support that says for us to be successful and achieve what we're trying to achieve with these programs and solutions. We need X amount of funds for this year to operate at the optimal level. And if you're planning on expansion, or any type of additions in the next two years include those as well because if you're talking to a forward thinking donor, who wants to know what the future of your organization organization is going to be, you need to be able to tell them what your strategy is what your long term aim is, because many larger donors will look to be potentially seed money that can make that happen. But if you don't know if you don't have a number pinned down, you can really miss an opportunity there. Yeah. How do we do this budget breakdown and I think that's number eight in your tip is really looking at the budget breaking it down. I love that you said the word optimal right we're not looking at the minimum we're really looking to optimize the solution to the community problem. So how do we incorporate that into this budget breakdown. That's a really important point because so many nonprofits are so used to creating budgets on a shoestring. It's like they do everything they can to create the smallest budget possible. We throw that out the window. You are going to address this problem in the most effective way, you can't do it with the least possible amount of resources. So the budget breakdown will will include basically everything that you need to make it happen. Some organizations worry about putting staff or any overhead in there. However, you can't, you can't operate and you can't make anything happen without those dollars to. So whether you include pieces of overhead in each of the program categories, some new nonprofits if they need equipment to get started they they may put line items. I encourage don't put too many light items you know we're not drilling down to every desk bubble thing here but you do want to have at least a few categories of what the budget is so that it's it's clean. It's easy to read if you include it in your case for support, but that you can it also leaves you the opportunity to maybe have a little bit of narrative on the same page that says you know this is where we are now. If we're successful or when we're successful. And then here's the things we're planning to do in the next two years that would take X amount of money. And those things you want to include on there absolutely. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you said there. The staff because I keep thinking about oftentimes we put the cart before the horse, but reality is we cannot even move the cart without the horse, right and so our horse essentially is our staff executing implementing evaluating all that we do, which takes us to you bringing down with tip number nine Tracy on an appeal for funds, which can be the hardest thing especially for new nonprofits to make themselves do. If you've done all the work putting together this document, all the research all the thought that comes into the way that you describe the problem and your solution. It's a huge missed opportunity to not appeal for funds. Now it doesn't have to be, you know some huge one page thing. It can literally be just a description of with your investment or with your donation. These things can happen lives can be better. An example. I believe it was American Cancer Society but I apologize if I'm wrong on that. They, they used to use a tagline called sponsoring birthdays. If your donation helps us with the science and the research and the support for people who are living have cancer. And because of your donation, there can be more birthdays for people we work with also. Oh my God, I'm like. Exactly so. So in appeal for funds doesn't have to be you know a hard like car sales kind of appeal for funds it can be just a reiteration of here's how you can make people's lives better. Because with in the industry that we work in working with donors especially donors who have the means to give larger gifts. People want to help, but they don't always know how to do it they always don't know how to go to go about it. So the nonprofit is basically the conduit that allows the people who want to give to help better the situation or improve the lives of the people that need it. So it's, it can be just a few lines at the end. But in the printed end of the document, but then you're going to be taking this document and going in meeting with people and using it as a tool. Then it becomes part of your conversation about what you need in terms of resources and making the ask so you not only have to have it in writing but you have to be prepared to to say it out loud and to talk with the person about it as well. You know, this has been amazing and I love how you navigated us through these nine steps. Again, this is a lot of information. This outline is magic. I mean you have really given us a gift today, Tracy to hand over this information. Not only just Tracy give us the outline but in this outline, she kind of gives a reflection on what this means so your team can take a look at this it might be a refresher. Certainly you can view this, this episode of the nonprofit show in your archive to get a better idea or amplify some of the things that that Tracy's talked about. It has been a magical thinking piece to have you here because this is how we get things done. And if we don't know these tools at Tracy, we can't serve our communities as well as we can. Absolutely. It is definitely one of the most important tools that a nonprofit can have to aid in their fundraising. Yeah, amazing. Well, you are a gem, my friend, I want to make sure that we put up Tracy's information here. President of Phil com Tracy is a wonderful writer on her website she has some really insightful pieces that help you understand how you and your team can move the needle and get things done. Tracy, I love that you're very straight to the point. You give us tools, you help us understand why we need those tools, and how to use them in a multi channel effect. I think sometimes we think we have to do all this work and then it just sits there on a shelf. Yes. What is it perfect is the enemy of good enough. It's like, you have to get make something happen if you, if you spin and spin trying to make it perfect it might never happen, but you need to get those tools out the door that's for sure. Great advice as we wrap this up. Tracy Van der Neck. Thank you for sharing and being a thought leader with us today on the nonprofit show. Please do check Tracy's website out it's right here in front of you for those of you podcast www of course Phil phil little dash com.com so Phil com.com with a dash between the Phil and the calm. Thank you Tracy we're so grateful to have you. We're also extremely grateful to continue these episodes thanks to the supporters of our sponsors, which are The American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy nonprofit nerd your part time controller staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit Atlas. If you liked what you heard, please reach out to Tracy, please look for this in the archive as also with the podcast. Share this far and wide and make sure that you do ask for this download of how to write your case for support so again, thank you Tracy for your, you know, extreme generosity with us today and we hope to get you back on again. I look forward to it. Thank you ladies. Thank you so much and thank you to all of you who joined us today to help make our community stronger and better. And as we leave you today we want to remind ourselves and our viewers to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here again. Thank you everyone. Thank you Tracy.