Patron researches the prospect, frames the strategy, drafts in CASL's voice,
then audits the draft against nine craft passes and measures the result:
vital signs chart the prose, a donor simulation reads the letter back, an
org-fact guard checks every CASL claim, and the whole read resolves to one
verdict — Ready, Review, or Rework. Dossier to send-ready in one place.
Built on codified fundraising practice, not generic AI.
From a name to a send-ready letter, in four stages.
Each stage is its own model call with its own job. The output of one stage
feeds the next, and every stage shows its work.
I.
Dossier
Web search across public sources returns five to seven verified
findings on the donor: employment, civic affiliations, philanthropic
history, wealth indicators, and recent activity. Every finding is
cited. Conflicts between sources are flagged for the fundraiser to
resolve.
II.
Strategy
Patron sets the Linkage-Ability-Inclination rating, the Moves
Management stage, and the Gift Table tier. If the dossier doesn't
support the ask, Patron repositions the move before the letter is
written. It also names the keystone: the one fact true of this donor
and no other, the position the whole letter is built on.
III.
Draft
The letter, one-pager, or full proposal. Written in CASL's voice,
grounded in CASL's programs and the Hub vision, with every donor claim
cited back to the dossier. Before the draft is final, a discovery check
asks one question: is there a line the reader did not see coming and
knows is true? If not, Patron writes it again.
IV.
Voice Audit
Nine craft passes run against the draft, six of them named for the
writers behind them. Each flagged passage is surfaced with the problem
it found and a suggested rewrite, for the fundraiser to weigh. Nothing
is silently changed in the letter.
After Barthes, Karr, Williams, Yagoda, Fish, Lanham.
After the draft · The measurement layer
Every letter gets read back, charted, and given a verdict.
The draft is not the last word. Patron measures what it wrote and resolves
the whole read into one call: send it, look again, or rework it.
Quality verdict
Ready, Review, or Rework, in two seconds. Synthesized from the
discovery check, where the ask falls in the letter, and the audit flag
counts. A real problem holds the letter at Rework; a clean draft clears
to Ready.
Vital signs
Donor focus, concrete detail, rhythm, and hedging, charted sentence by
sentence, with the expected ask zone marked. The emotional register is
measured from the words on the page, compassion against gratitude, not
guessed from the cause.
Signals after Brooks, Burk, and Goenka.
Donor simulation
The finished letter, read back in the prospect's own voice. What
landed, what fell flat, the questions she would ask, and whether she
would agree to a meeting. The reader, not the author, has the last
word.
Org-fact guard
A coded check, not a prompt. If the letter states a CASL fact that is
not in the verified set — an unconfirmed wing, a superlative, a
reach figure — the verdict is held at Rework until a person
confirms or removes it.
Why this is different
Not another generic AI fundraising tool.
Most AI tools for fundraising train on what already exists on the open
web. Patron trains on the practitioners who codified it.
The practitioners Patron is built on
Fundraising
Burk on what donors say they want back
Schervish on identification, not persuasion
Ahern on the donor as hero
Craft
Williams on making the subject do the work
Yagoda on stealing voices to find your own
Fish on what an opening line is for
Lanham on the read-aloud test
Karr on memoir's honesty contract
Barthes on the death of the author
What that means for the letter
A major-gift letter is not a marketing campaign. It is the closest
professional analogue to a private letter from one trustee to another.
The donor is the protagonist. The organization is the cause she enabled.
The ask is specific, named, and not buried.
The audit and the measurement layer are the parts of the pipeline most
AI tools skip. A draft is easy. Reading it back as the donor, charting
where it sags, and refusing to call it done until it earns a verdict is
the difference between output and correspondence.
Made for CASL
Built around CASL's four paths.
Every draft uses the names CASL uses internally. Not generic nonprofit copy.
Building on the wisdom of generations, CASL catalyzes the transformation
of individuals, families, and the community for an equitable future.
CASL Mission
Health
For seniors, caregivers, families.
Brain & behavioral. Family services. Preventative and coordinated
care. The programs a donor like Margaret Yip cares about.
Education
Early, school, adult, caregiver.
Tutoring, ESL, workforce, mentorship. The programs that follow a
CASL family across decades.
Human Services
Immigration, legal, housing, benefits.
The frontline services for new arrivals and elders. The expanded
intake space the Hub will house.
Impact & Advocacy
Insight, action, advocacy.
The Anti-Hate Action Center. Policy work, research, and the public
face of CASL's mission.
Begin.
Pick a preset donor to see all four stages and the measurement layer run
end-to-end, or enter a real prospect from CASL's portfolio. Drafts stay
private; only the people on the Cloudflare Access list can reach the studio.
