News & Insight

25th November 2015

Making the Ask – The Invitation

This is sometimes called ‘the invitation’. It’s useful to commit this part, once you gave settled on the appropriate words, to memory. The ask script is as important as your vision and mission statements.

Here are two examples:

We should like to ask you to consider making it possible to give every child a basic education by making a gift of £X to the NO CHILD IN THE COLD campaign.

We should like to ask you to consider making it possible to end poverty by making a gift of £X to the Stop Poverty campaign.

Notice the building blocks to the ask:

1. Start with the plural pronoun – ‘we’ – it’s much stronger in many ways. Implicit in the ask is an invitation to join in; to become part of something.

2. To ask you – this is the verb you should use.

3. To consider – not ‘give’ yet

4. Making it possible – this makes a link between the gift and the act of giving and achieving the vision (focus on the impact)

5. Then comes the ask ‘by making a gift of’

6. This should be for a specific amount towards a specific purpose

In the case of naming opportunities, the ask could also include the suggested appropriate reciprocation. For example, ‘in recognition of a gift of £??, we (notice again the ‘we’) should like to recognise this by naming the building/ ward/room in your honour in perpetuity.

The next blog in our Making the Ask series covers the role of silence and listening.

Making the Ask is a core part of our Foundations in Philanthropy course. For further details click here or call Alistair on 07884 196423