Building the Perfect Fund Raising Pitch

1. Building the Perfect Fund Raising Pitch Kim Alter Will Morgan November 4, 2008

2. Outline • Fund raising presentation: the check list • Tutorial: effective presentation techniques • Assembling the perfect fund raising pitch • Real world examples

3. Fundraising presentation: The check list

4. Presentation check list • Open • Problem, Mission and USP • Business Summary & objectives • Target Market • SWOT • Market Analysis • Marketing (Product, price, distribution and promotion) • Business Model • Team • Financials • Money raised and The Ask • Risks and contingencies • Close

5. Tutorial:Effective presentations

6. Effective presentation techniques • The problem with presentations • What’s in it for you? • Flow structures • Linkages • Capturing the audience • Visuals and style • Customization

7. The problem with presentations • No clear point • No audience benefit • No clear flow • Too detailed • Too long • Giving paper copy of presentation in advance

8. How to effectively addressthe problems with presentations? • Grab your audience’s interest • State your objectives upfront • View presentation through the eyes of your audience • Focus on benefits on features • Logical flow and persuasion • Keep their interest • What’s in it for them?

9. ‘Audience Advocacy’ • ‘WIIFY’: What’s in it for you? • Link every element of a presentation to a clear benefit • WIIFY tests: What does is mean to ‘you’? Who cares? So what?

10. ‘Audience Advocacy’ • Don’t make them think • Research their needs • Resist the generic company presentation

11. Avoid the Data Dump presentation • Worst problem in presentations: no flow, no logic • Do the data dump before the presentation • Cluster your key concepts around the principal point(s) you need to make and create the main pillar(s) of the presentation • “B point”

12. Flow structures • Audience has only linear access to your content • Do not describe a forest, one tree at a time, with no apparent relationship between them! • Proven techniques to organize an idea in a logical sequence: flow structures

13. Flow structures for fund raising • Most efficient flow for fundraising presentations: Opportunity / Leverage • Opportunity: • For doing it better or differently • Because no one has done it like this before • Leverage: • Added value • Multiplier • Efficiency • More with less or the same

14. Linkages • Verbal transitions from one slide to the next • Reference the Flow Structure • Progressive agenda and bumper slides • Point B reinforcement

15. Capturing the audience ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression’ Jerry Weissman

16. Opening Gambits • Question • Factoid • Retrospective/Prospective • Anecdote • Quotation • Aphorism • Analogy

17. 90 seconds to launch • Opening gambit • USP • Introduce point B “pillar” • Tell them what you are going to tell them

18. Visuals and style • Presentation as speaker support • Less is more • Minimize the eye sweep

19. Building the slides • Bullets versus sentences • One concept per one-line title • Four one-line bullets per slide • Use similar constructs for each bullet

20. One-line title • Bullet • Bullet • Bullet • Bullet

21. Text guidelines • Create and maintain a consistent look and feel • Be consistent with fonts and case • Keep font size to a minimum of 24 or 28 points • Avoid abbreviations • Add shadows and bolding to make it more legible • Use sharp contrast • Avoid recurrent slogans, datelines, ‘confidential’ • Plenty of “white space”

22. Graphics • Minimize eye sweep • Use hockey sticks • Simplify and clarify legends and texts

23. Customization • Customize your opening graphic • Contemporize and localize your presentation

24. Assembling the perfect fund raising pitch

25. Elevator Pitch In 2-3 minutes: • What does your social enterprise do? • Why it is important? • What are you the one to do it? • What results you have had to date?

26. Structuring the flow • Initial brainstorming: do the data dump before the presentation • Choose the pillars of the presentation • Organize the ideas around the pillars to support the logic of the presentation

27. Presentation check list • Open • Problem, Mission and USP • Business Summary & objectives • Target Market • SWOT • Market Analysis • Marketing (Product, price, distribution and promotion) • Business Model • Team • Financials • Money raised and The Ask • Risks and contingencies • Close

28. Organizing the flow • Opportunity / leverage • 90 second to launch • Linkages and focus on Point B

29. Annex: 16 Different Flow Structures For Presentations

30. 16 Flow structures • Problem / Solution: problem and solution your company offers • Issues / Actions: one or more issues and the actions you propose to address them • Opportunity / Leverage: business opportunity and the leverage your company will implement to take advantage of it • Features / Benefits: series of product features and concrete benefits provided by those features

31. 16 Flow structures • Matrix: diagram to organize complex concepts • Parallel tracks: series of related ideas with identical set of subsets for each idea • Rhetorical questions:asks, then answers questions likely to be foremost in mind of audience • Numerical: Enumerates a series of loosely connected ideas

32. 16 Flow structures • Form / Function: single business concept with multiple functions emanating from this core • Case study: narrative recounting on how you solve a particular problem • Argument / fallacy: raises arguments against your own case and then rebuts them • Compare / contrast: series of comparisons to illustrate difference between you and others

33. 16 Flow structures • Modular: sequence of interchangeable similar parts • Chronological: ideas organized along a timeline • Physical: ideas organized according to location • Spatial: conceptual organization around a physical metaphor or analogy