What is it good for?
- To summarise the process you've been through to design your service or product
- To let stakeholders know what you need for further development
- To start conversations on capacity and the future of the product or service
- Ask for investment or funding
When to use it
At any stage during Develop - sometimes the pitch deck is helpful to get further funding for your project
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How to use it
Having a well prepared and enticing pitch will help you get buy-in for your product or service. It is something you can reuse and tweak for different audiences like stakeholders and funders.
Above you'll find a Pitch Presentation Template to help you develop your own presentation. Simply make a copy of this, and you're ready to go!
It’s worth having a read of the Interview with CAST’s Director Dan Sutch, who in a previous life was an investor in digital services and products. Dan talks about what makes a good pitch from an investors’ perspective. Here is a summary of 4 key takeaways:
- Align with the funder’s strategy Community tech has so much promise, but for most funders, it will be really new. Think about how you align what you are doing to the strategy of the partner or organisation you are pitching to. Is their mission linked to digital, community, or a particular social cause? Do the hard work to figure out what the funder’s strategy is and how you help them achieve it - not how they can fund you to achieve your goals.
- Sell your long term vision Focus on your why. What's the vision you're selling? What's the reason that people invest in what you're doing? Why should you and your team be the trusted people to deliver this project? It's easy to talk about what you need, what you've done so far, or what your next steps are. Sometimes we have too much detail. Keep your pitch simple and don’t forget your ‘why’.
- Champion the voices of your community There's nothing more powerful than the voices of the people you're working with. Try to bring those voices into your pitch. You could link to a video you have created for example where your community shares reflections on the challenge they face and the solution you are developing. You could share quotes or a recording from user testing. We know that community tech projects will take time to get to a stage where they are having real impact; bringing the voice of your community can help you bring to life the impact you hope to achieve and the impact so far. Keep bringing it back to your long term vision.
- Share success stories One of the challenges with being at the forefront of any kind of new community or new movement is that you've got to explain the movement just as much as your particular solution. This is an exciting new field and the more we can support each other, the more communities we will be able to support. Share success stories amongst one another. That's what's going to help us reach an understanding of how best to pitch this area of work to funders. Reflect on our design principle: be open. Let’s continue openly sharing with each other and feeling the benefits of open working.