Finding Money and Raising Funds 85 • Consult broadly with your faculty, chairs, directors, and advi- sory board members to identify priorities. From this you should develop a long list of unit needs. When consulting with your faculty, you need to make it clear that: 1) you want their ideas, 2) you need their expertise in crafting proposals, but 3) you can’t guarantee the results. A common misconception among faculty is that donors do indeed grow on trees, and that it is a simple matter of walking to the orchard at harvest time to gather schol- arships or an endowed professorship for a grateful department. If you are working in a mature operation where donors are plen- tiful and have been cultivated for decades, that might occur. But this is far from the norm. • Be clear about your own vision for your academic unit. The proposals from the faculty will provide you with a series of rela- tively specific needs that can be used to stimulate initial interest from a donor interested in making a gift. However, your donors are looking to you for leadership. Articulating your vision of how these items fit into the strategic directions that you have for your college will be important to the savvy donor. Pay close attention to initiatives outlined in any strategic planning or master plan documents for your unit or campus. Prepare a case statement that in a few pages describes the program, scholarship, or physical plant project that you want to acquire, and gives a persuasive rationale for it in terms of the mission, goals, and potential for student success within the college. Show how your initiative fits into the University’s master plan. Your University’s Development staff should be eager and able to assist you with drafting the case statement. In a sense, the case statement is a sophisticated sales brochure for the project to which you hope someone will contribute. Potential donors will want to see such a document. Once you have articulated your needs for your college, the search begins for the likely donors. Your Development Office can conduct research on their “capacity” or “capability.” Various software programs