How to Answer the Most Important Question of Every Investor

Nick Fellers | July 25, 2007

One of the most important questions of every investor asks is

“WHERE does the money go?”

Parenthetically, they’re also asking “WHY does it go there?”

In our all of our recent trainings, we have boiled down the PRESENTATION to PURPOSE… PRIORITIES… PLAN.

‘PRIORITIES’ is where we answer the question about “Where does the money go?” (Use of Funds). One of our metaphors for this answer is YOUR THREE BUCKETS. The three Buckets represent the most important priorities to be funded. These symbolic ‘buckets’ literally represent the ‘HOW’ you do ‘WHAT’ you do.

Lately, we have been illustrating the three buckets as three connected circles. Regardless of the visual or the design, the important thing is to have three things that can be simply stated to create engagement and dialogue.

Some examples might include:

Research
Education
Service

Education
Training
Disaster Relief

Students
Faculty
Campus

Note: The students/faculty/campus example works for every school.

People
Programs
Place

This last example (PEOPLE, PROGRAMS, PLACE) is a very simple way to capture almost every FOR IMPACT ORGANIZATION’S PRIORITIES.

P.S. One terrific way to see if this works is to take your Operating Budget and see if you can “fit” almost every line item into one of your Three Buckets.

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