Development communications

Successfully raising philanthropic funds to support your organization requires a lot more than "making the ask." Moving prospects and donors closer to your organization, connecting on both rational and emotional levels, helping prospects to understand that an investment in your organization is the best way for them to realize a shared vision—are all important.

Internally, development officers need the content and tools to be able to qualify prospects, begin and advance dialogues, and connect organizational priorities to a prospect’s passion. They need to avoid “leading with the need” (a tactic that leaves the donor out of the conversation), or be led by a donor down a path that’s not aligned with the organization’s mission.

And operationally, it’s important that communications support the cultivation cycle: people new to you have different information needs than those who have been part of the family for decades—and it’s important to acknowledge these different and “distances.”

We collaborate to create development communications within a brand-building, and relationship-building context. It’s great if a capital campaign reaches its goal; it’s better if at the end of the campaign many more people understand what you stand for and mean—your brand. If your value and values are known (and resonate) before your annual appeal arrives, it’s more likely to be successful.

We work with a wide range of mission-driven organizations to create development communications programs that achieve near-term, tangible, measurable goals—capital campaigns, annual fund and membership drives, and the like—and also support longer-term, less tangible initiatives like planned giving and board development.

Across all engagements, we help to identify and promulgate different “ways in” to an organization—where institutional priorities and donor interests profitably meet; provide boards and volunteer leaderships with the thinking and tools to be effective ambassadors; engage staff who don’t have “development” on their business cards; and develop an architecture of print and digital communications that will advance a dialogue and begin and grow relationships.