The case for support: chapter and verse

As any good Jewish boy would, I love enthusiastically belting out a tuneful hymn in church. But in this blog I want to tell you about a time my church-singing went a little wrong. Then when you read on you’ll realise why I’m telling you about it here. So, I was at a wedding a few years back. It was actually quite a serious ceremony, so when it came to the first hymn, I was delighted to see it was one I knew well from school days. More than ever, I went for it with real gusto. It was all going rather well, but then just as the verse was reaching its climax, and I was interpreting the emotion of it with extra crescendo, something rather embarrassing happened. You see, in the middle of that climactic line, there was a word missing. Just one syllable, in fact. But it was enough to throw me off completely, and, frankly, I made a bit of a fool of myself – and the acoustics carried it far and wide. Not like all the other more restrained singers in the congregation, who were able to pull back from mortification. Have you guessed why I’m telling you about this cringe-worthy moment? That’s right – I wasn’t singing from the right hymn sheet. And that brings me to the point of this blog: There’s an internal document that every charity needs to write or to revisit regularly. It’s the case for support. Here are some of the questions it should address: What is the need for our charity’s work? How do we meet that need? Why is our work importan