Hi everyone! A bit of help needed if you can please? Has anyone had any experience in creating a case for support for the arts and leisure? I've only ever worked for 'emotive' charities in the past (such as children, cancer, disability) so creating a compelling and emotional case for support for a charity that isn't obviously emotive is a new one for me.

We do provide some wonderful community services and are focussed on improving our cultural offer, alongside health and wellbeing and how the arts and leisure contribute to this, but the money we raise from the community essentially keeps our doors open. Our community projects (the brilliant, emotive stuff we do provide) are funded mainly from trusts and grants, so we can't in any good moral sense state that donations from the public will pay for these.

Unfortunately, the general consensus here is that people's taxes should go towards keeping the buildings running, as they are council owned. That's just not the case however, as they are run by the Trust so we are responsible for them. The council do fund us to an extent, but fundraised income is badly needed in order for us to continue to operate.

I could write pages and pages on strategy, vision and objectives of the charity, but that won't make people donate to us. I'm on my own here as the solo fundraiser and am trying to educate my colleagues across the Trust on how to be more charity minded and feel confident in asking for donations. The majority of our front of house staff don't actually know what donations go towards however, so can't answer any questions from supporters. How do I turn 'running costs' into an emotive hook that I can feed down to everyone here?

Any help/advice/articles/reports/examples would be very gratefully received! Thank you.