ProSpeak: A Not-So-Common Understanding of Fundraising and Common Sense

Like a skillful consultant working for his or her client, your charity is on an assignment for your donors. Your job is to make your appeal part of your donors' common sense about their world.

Start with what they know — our basic human needs for food, shelter, health, love. Explain your uncommon understanding of the needs you represent through stories, pictures and metaphors. Bring your audience to a new level of shared understanding of what these needs are and how they can be met — through your work. Tell the story so well that it becomes "just common sense" to your donors: When this need arises, your charity is the obvious solution to the problem.