Mecca Billings Nelson, major gifts and fundraising management expert

Shabbir, Sarah, and Mecca Billings Nelson at the demolition site of WildCare’s soon-to-be-built hospital. Shortly after this shot was taken, one of us promptly injured ourselves with the sledgehammer on a broken piece of plaster.

A big part of our work involves learning how to speak to an audience in an engaging manner over the long term.  This involves teaching an organization to talk about its work in a way that is moving, passionate, and required.  We then testi each idea and change tactics based on the results.  Some of our best-loved ideas have gone down in flames, but that’s the difference between science and superstition, and we practice science.

One of the biggest surprises has been that these stories, primarily crafted for low and medium dollar donors, are extremely useful for high dollar donors, capital campaigns, and board cultivation and maintenance.   Our partner Mecca Billings Nelson, who is a veteran of capital campaigns and managing fundraising and development teams, describes it like this: “The Cause Stories team helps us to tell mission-focused stories that underscore the importance of a new facility during a capital campaign. In this way, the storytelling takes the focus of a capital campaign away from simply bricks and mortar into a compelling and emotional case for the future of an organization that can only be achieved through a new or renovated facility. These storytelling techniques are essential for the major gift fundraising that takes place during a capital campaign, and they can inspire incredible acts of generosity from individual major donors and also foundation and corporate major donors. Thanks to the Cause Stories team, we are able to effectively transition the conversation with prospective major donors from ‘why do we need the building’ to ‘how soon can we build the building’ to help the organization move forward.”

You can tell from our shoes that we’re really not going to use these tools. We leave construction to professionals.