Know Your Donor. Know Your Donor. Know Your Donor.

● The budget details. So here is where you get into what it will cost to do all of this. Be sure to include all the costs, including overhead — both overhead of the project itself and an allocated portion of your organization's overhead.

● The gift plan. Now you come to the part of the ask where you lay out the plan for the donor and how you are proposing she will respond financially to this need and the proposed solution. I call it a gift plan because it may be a single gift you are asking for, it may be a series of gifts over time, it may be a combination of cash and non-cash inputs, or it could be a combination of any of these or other ways the donor proposes to be involved. That's why it's a plan. It's a forward-looking, longer-term thing.