Your New 8-page Case For Support?

Tom Ahern's case for support structure, now adapted into a simple 8-page format you'll love.

Brett here... There's a 1991 Jim Jarmusch movie Julie and I love called Night on Earth.

It's not well known.

You probably haven't seen it.

But Julie and I quote a certain line from it fairly often.

The movie is split into 5 stories featuring 5 taxis (in LA, NY, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki), their drivers, and their passengers, all happening at the same time one night.

​Winona Ryder plays the part of Corky, the first taxi driver to whom we're introduced. She's 19 at this time, so she looks especially young... as even today she's unusually youthful.

Sitting on a phone book to boost her up, Corky is "discovered" by a Hollywood talent agent as she drives her home from LAX.

The agent more or less says, "I can make you a star."

And Corky more or less replies, "Nah, I'm good."

The agent is astounded. This never happens. All the girls she meets are dying to become a movie star.

So Winona Ryder as Corky clarifies, saying she loves driving her taxi and she's not interested in Hollywood. It's just not her.

Which brings me to the line Julie and I often quote:

"Like Popeye says, I am what I am."

Why do I bring this up?

Because Tom Ahern is our personal Popeye the Sailor Man.

We often quote Tom.

We say,

"Like Tom says..."

For example,

"Like Tom says, WHY US, WHY NOW, WHY YOU."

He says this when he's explaining how to structure a case for support that will move donors to give — with the organization, the donor, and the urgency in mind.

Julie and I ravenously read Tom's book on the subject. It's called Turning Doubters Into Donors.

And we highlighted just about every page.

Now we've adapted what we've learned from Tom plus what we've learned from working with our own clients into a format you might want to try, because it's pretty simple and pretty straightforward. Rather like Popeye.

Your new 8-page case for support?

You'll notice below that we've taken Tom's proven case for support structure and adapted it for an 8-page case.

Does your case need to be 8 pages?

No, not at all.

It could be any length.

But 8 pages is long enough to be substantive and short enough to be economical. It's worked well for us, in some of the shorter cases for support we've written for our clients.

Also, you could adapt this formula, as currently each number below is meant to be one page long ... but you could make each number two pages long, or whatever.

Each of the following represents what to include on each page, and the red parts represent the headlines.

1.  Front Cover with image, title, subtitle, branding
   ​

2.  The Stakes: [and whatever the stakes are]
   ​

3.  The Problem: [and whatever the problem is]
   ​

4.  The Solution: [and whatever your solution is]
   ​

5.  Why [your organization]?​
   ​

6.  [on the importance of the Donor]​
   e.g., "You are crucial"
   ​

7.  [on the importance of Now] ​
   e.g., "The time is now​
   
   

8.   Back Cover with image, contact info
   
   

Want to see an example?

Here's a case for support we wrote and designed in an 8-page format.

 We hope you glean inspiration from it!