"Chunking Up"

I have worked on a couple of cases for support recently as well as beginning to plan a case for support workshop.  A valuable insight when constructing cases for support came to me,  as I thought these through.  The insight relates to a process referred to as “chunking up” drawn the field of neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

My first experience of creating a case was to “sell” the idea of building a new home for three medical departments.  On the face of it they were very different areas of medicine - obstetrics, lung disease and heart problems.  One big challenge was getting the medics to talk in layman’s language.  Another was drawing these separate threads together, so the advantage vital to writing a case for support.  To put it in language that will make sense to the potential donor.  To locatethe case in the donor’s world.

A breakthrough came over a working dinner with the eminent heads of the three areas.  They discussed their work, their ambitions, and their visions of the future. Then out of the conversation suddenly came an “Aha” moment. There was a common link in all the medical conditions they were practicing.[1]  From that rapidly came the name for the centre and much of the logic and language for the case for support.  Though we didn’t know it as such, the process that had just happened was “chunking up”.

Think of something simple.  Since we were talking of medics, how about “An apple a day keeps the doctor away!” What is an apple an example of?  A fruit.  What is a fruit an example of? A fresh food .  What is a fresh food item? Food. What is food for? Nutrition.  What is nutrition for? Health. What is health for? And so on.  This is chunking up.

You can chunk down too.  What is an example of an apple? Or chunk sideways.  What is another example of a fruit?  Edward de Bono made a career out of chunking sideways and coined the phrase ‘lateral thinking’.   Neither of these is as useful to the point I am making though as chunking up.

What is chunking up for?  Often when you start gathering together a case for support its hard to stop people talking about their own very personal point of view.  Yet as fundraisers we want to make a case that will work in the donors’ own world. That will match their hopes and dreams of a better world.

Take for a very simple example, repainting a classroom. What’s that an example of? Maintaining the school infrastructure?  What is maintaining the school infrastructure an example of?  Good school management.  What is good school management for?  Creating a good learning environment.  What is a good learning environment for?  Educating young minds. What is educating young minds for? Creating good adult citizens for the future. 

What is most likely to matter to a potential donor – the school infrastructure or the adult citizens of the future?  Yet how often have you read or heard people making cases that focus on the infrastructure, the hardware and not the effects or results of change.  Marketeers are taught to emphasise the benefits not the features of a product.  What I have outlined enables you to do exactly that for a case for support in order to make it persuasive and compelling to the donor.

[1]The link was inflammation. Human reproduction, most lung and heart diseases are all examples of inflammation.  Understanding how the mechanism of inflammation worked in the body could uncover what was behind many of the medical problems these doctors worked with.