Moving Raw Ideas Around – or Editing as Fundraising

Spent a day editing various documents and realized, for each of them, that the ideas were all there – just jumbled together. 

Some of my work was inventing an outline system that separated big ideas from means.  That ordered recommendations so that a followed b.  That made sure, to get down to a level of detail, that the break on the first page happened at a point that the reader had been given enough intriguing “meat” to make the effort to turn the page.

Presentation details, sure.  But essential to content perception – yep.

And why is this relevant for fundraising?

Because when you’re asking someone else to invest in your ideas, you’d better be clear on what’s first and what follows.  The higher the stakes, the more your vision and clarity about what it’d take to get there, matters.

There’s lots of great vision out there.  We see nonprofits all the time with fantastic visions.  Hey – there are 30,000 nonprofits in New York City, and hundreds of thousands more in the rest of the country – and many have fabulous visions…especially those led by fresh founders!

The real separator is those that have the drive to adapt to the real world and figure out what it takes to move that vision the first steps into fruition.

Moving raw ideas into background and foreground.  Editing as the process of opening up vision into a real plan to move forward.

The red pencil as a primary tool of fundraising.

Get your sharpeners out…