The Endowment Handbook

4Making the Casefor Support and Marketing Endowment

This chapter enables you to:

• Articulate the role of a case for support in building endowment.
• Understand the process of writing a case for support and the roles of various contributors.
• Determine whether a case has the content to substantiate and differentiate a cause and resonate with donors.
• Translate the case for support into a variety of marketing messages and materials.
• Identify the audience(s) for endowment marketing and address their interests.

Why should a donor give to endowment? After all, every cause strives to meet immediate needs and fund important initiatives today. How can an organization ask for future support without undermining urgency and securing current support? If a donor decides to give to endowment, how will their funds be managed and deployed to make a difference? And why should one particular organization be entrusted with the endowment, when there are so many others devoted to the same cause? A strong case for support (a “case”) will answer all these questions and more, and then become the bedrock for all endowment marketing.

Start with a Compelling Vision

Big gifts stem from big ideas. Most gifts to endowment are “big,” although the definition of “big” may vary depending on the cause and the donor. So the best rationale for endowment is rooted in a big, visionary idea captured in the case. For a land conservancy in Appalachia, it was the urgency of ensuring perpetual protection for acres of ...