MCC Toronto

I first met the leaders at MCC Toronto in 2008, doing creative direction for Pride Toronto. Ten years later, the capital campaign landed on my desk.

Serendipity is how the work arrives, sometimes.

Their record is not a small thing to hold. Forty-five years. Canada’s first legal same-sex marriages, performed at the church in January 2001. The Triangle Program, the only LGBTQ+ high school in Canada. The only sponsorship agreement holder in the country working exclusively with LGBTQ+ refugees. Webcasts reaching a hundred and forty-six countries where being yourself is still dangerous.

Which is exactly the problem. When everything an organization has done is the most important thing it has done, a case for support turns into an inventory. Donors don’t give to inventories. And we had two weeks.

A ten page document, print-ready, carrying endorsements from the Prime Minister, the Mayor of Toronto and a sitting MP — a document a volunteer could put in front of somebody without explaining it first.

Two weeks, brief to press. That constraint is not a boast, it is the job: capital campaigns run to dates that were set before anyone called a designer.

Elevation is still running. MCC Toronto reports $4.75 million raised in gifts and pledges against the $5 million goal. A case for support is one instrument in a campaign that takes years and dozens of people — but this is the one they put in a donor's hands first.