Making the perfect ask is tough. Even the most rational or articulate advancement professionals can find themselves on the receiving end of polite but bored nods in meetings and a “Let’s move on” response from colleagues, donors, or alumni.

I can feel a bit of your pain. I’ve spent decades in the communications and writing world, including leading Dartmouth College’s magazine for nine years. Along the way, I learned about convincing messaging—ultimately writing three books on rhetoric and persuasive writing.

So I’m here to help. Actually, the philosopher Aristotle is here to help. Though he was one of the most rational people in history, he understood that logic alone rarely persuades. The most important element in rhetoric, he wrote, is the speaker’s ethos, or projected character. In other words, the key is whether your “audience”—a committee, a donor, a senior vice president, or an auditorium full of colleagues—likes and trusts you.

I first discovered Aristotle’s brilliant advice while wandering through the library at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.). I’d been in the job for six or seven years, and the magazine had won awards and gotten excellent marks in alumni surveys. But I had yet to receive a raise beyond cost-of-living allowances. I began spending longer and longer lunch hours moping through the stacks, flipping through books at random. 

One day, I found myself in a dim corner where half the fluorescent bulbs had burned out. A dusty, maroon-red volume attributed to John Quincy Adams sat at eye level. I flipped it open and found the man’s signature. More important, the book contained some answers in a set of lectures on rhetoric that Adams, then a U.S. senator, taught to first-year students at Harvard University. Those led me to Aristotle’s original rhetorical textbook, which the ancients considered the chief of the liberal arts. That book was a revelation: Nothing was the matter with these people at Dartmouth. The problem was me. I was projecting the wrong character.

For the next 20 years, I spent every free moment studying rhetoric and bothering scholars around the world. While the discipline has been undergoing a revival in academia, we shouldn’t forget its original purpose: to allow people to make decisions together and to enable individuals like you and me to enhance our ethos by gaining the trust of others.

To achieve this golden ethos, Aristotle listed three basic elements: phronesis (“practical wisdom”), eunoia (“disinterested goodwill”), and arete (“virtue” or “excellence”). I call them craft, caring, and cause. Together they enhance people’s trust in your problem-solving skills, their belief in whether you have their best interest at heart, and—most important—whether they think you live up to their shared values.

CRAFT: Use Meetings Wisely

If you’re in advancement, practical wisdom (or craft) is almost certainly a strong point for you. But craft means more than your qualifications as a fundraiser or alumni relations officer or communications writer. For instance, a newly hired Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist may have no clue what to do to enhance an institution’s online alumni news. To get people to respect your craft, you have to convince them that you have the right stuff to solve particular problems. But in rhetorical terms, there’s an even more important factor: whether you and your colleagues and leaders actually agree on the problem to solve or the goal you’re supposed to be carrying out. 

When I was at Dartmouth in the 1990s, the goal seemed simple. At that time, alumni were upset with the administration over several issues and giving participation had plummeted. When alumni got together and sang the alma mater song, they shouted the line “lest the old traditions fail.” I figured it was the magazine’s job to cheer them up without looking like we were shoving public relations messaging at them. So I tried to set a loving, slightly irreverent tone, showing Dartmouth warts and all. The administration, on the other hand, thought that alumni simply weren’t sufficiently knowledgeable about all the positive ways the institution was changing. By the administration’s standards, I was practically unwise; they may have seen my craft as insufficient. By working to solve a different problem without agreeing on a common one, I had projected a weak ethos. 

Instead, I should have used a powerful rhetorical instrument: the meeting. In your meetings, try shutting up. Speak minimally until the end, and then say, “This is what I’m hearing.” Quote others by name, then frame the conversation around the issue that enhances your point of view. If you do this routinely in regularly scheduled meetings, people are more likely to see you as someone with practical wisdom.

A more aggressive way of changing the conversation is to ask for the frame. Suppose the economics faculty proposes raising millions for an econometrics data center. Ask, “Is that what this is really about? Or are you talking about something broader and more profound?” Imagine if everyone started throwing around terms like “decision metrics” and discussing new ways to teach data literacy. Even economists might think you practically wise.

CARING: Solve the Priority Problem

Aristotle wrote about the concept of “disinterested goodwill,” which may seem confusing. Disinterested doesn’t mean “uninterested” or “apathetic.” What the good philosopher meant is that to win people’s love and trust, you must get them to believe that you have their interests at heart. You have no skin in the game, no dog in the hunt. 

Every skilled development professional knows this instinctively: The prospect should believe that the discussion is all about fulfilling her dreams for (check all that apply): supporting their alma mater, strengthening a field of study or a sport, buying immortality, or endowing tuition funds for students in need. The conversation is all about the donor; it’s not about your scary fiscal-year goal or your institution’s desperate need for scholarships. Every advancement professional I’ve met has a story to tell about the faculty member who assumes that donors are like maple trees, just waiting to be tapped for syrup to pour on the professor’s own particular project. 

My daughter knew at an early age the rhetorical advantage in exploiting her parents’ needs. We were walking through our little town when she said, “You look tired, Daddy. We should sit down.” She pointed to the door of the Ben & Jerry’s across the street. Wanting ice cream, she framed the argument around my apparent fatigue. Nice rhetorical disinterest! 
If rhetoric had a motto, it would be “It’s not about you.” It’s about tapping into your audience’s own interests, beliefs, and expectations—making your choice the obvious one. 

Often, however, your choice competes with a whole raft of decisions. “I love my college, but the climate is changing, and children are suffering in Ukraine,” a donor might think. This is a classic priority problem. Few calls to action, such as a philanthropic ask, are either/or decisions. Donors face a variety of decisions. Where will their money do the most good? The solution lies in making a clear interest link between your constituents’ desires and your institution’s outcomes. 

Back when I worked as an editorial director in the heyday of newsstand magazines, my editors and I would pore over data to see what interest links we could make with stories. At one of those magazines, Runner’s World, I hired a marketing firm to study whether runners ran for fitness, competition, or the sheer love of running. We found that beginner runners ran for fitness, and those who stuck to the sport eventually transitioned into a love of running for its own sake. This allowed us to emphasize weight loss on covers while assigning long narrative pieces in the feature well to boost subscription renewals among the more experienced runners. 

The same principle could help determine the content mix in colleges’ and independent schools’ communication offices. Consider ditching unreliable reader surveys, and instead spend the money on determining just what your audience wants in a relationship with your institution. What’s their interest link? Do alumni of various ages and backgrounds see their alma mater as a club or a cause? A link to their past or a vehicle for the future? A place for advancement of knowledge or the nurturing of future useful citizens? In these information-overloaded days, the priority problem is an attention problem. The interest link is more important than ever.

CAUSE: Show Off Your Virtue

Of the three critical elements of character, Aristotle believed cause, or arete, ranks first. I’ve found this to be increasingly true as our society becomes more tribal, separated by social media and politics. Arete (pronounced AIR-uh-tay) translates into both “excellence” and “virtue” for good reason. If your reputation has a healthy amount of cause, then colleagues and audiences believe you to be the best representative of your tribe. You uphold its values. 

While cause is the element most likely to get people to want to trust your opinion and follow your direction, it also happens to be where most of us get into trouble. Our so-called “cancel culture” has everything to do with arete. Say something offensive to a wide enough audience, and you reveal that you don’t share the same values. Which means to one tribe that you’re a bad person who should be banished. 

But arete works on nonpolitical levels as well. At Dartmouth, I couldn’t understand why faculty members weren’t fond of the magazine. Weren’t we doing a great job? By all key performance indicators—alumni giving rates, surveys, awards, attendance at club events—the magazine was killing it. Or at least it wasn’t making things worse. 

The faculty begged to differ. Professors complained to me that the magazine’s cheeky tone and unabashedly large space for class notes was decidedly unscholarly, even anti-intellectual. One dean, a brilliant man who later became the president of a college, suggested I publish an issue entirely in German to “make a point.” Years later, I realized that the faculty wasn’t being unfair to me. They simply held different values. I wasn’t part of their tribe. 

Communicators, whose job it is to reach out to various audiences, face this problem all the time. In creating content showing a dynamic institution—that is, a constantly changing place that keeps up with evolving societal norms—we risk alienating the audience that believed the institution had been just perfect in their day. Alternatively, content that uses stereotypical stock images of multiethnic groups may alienate some of the very people the images are supposed to attract.

Advancement professionals face the same problem, of course, since some of the wealthiest groups can be the most institutionally conservative. The difference in values can help explain why it may be easier to fund a new gym than a multicultural center. Someone who values tradition and stability is understandably resistant to the prospect of paying for change. So what do you do? How can you polish your cause to varied audiences, including teammates and colleagues, making everyone think of you as representing their highest values?

The first thing is to understand those values and the language that accompanies them. You can start with your own office. A marketing team that favors jargon like “KPIs” (key performance indicators), “CTRs” (click-through rates), and “consumer journeys” values analytical approaches and technical expertise. They’re less likely to respect an outsider who fails to understand, if not share, their love of numbers and processes. If during a development meeting you hear phrases like “lovely person” and “sharp as a tack” and talk of birthdays and children, you know you’re dealing with a team that values relationships over the technical aspects of stock transfers and charitable lead trusts. 

In rhetoric, such shared value terms are called commonplaces. The ancient Greeks thought of speech and thought as a kind of geographic terrain. The more closely you occupy the middle of that terrain, the more you’ll be accepted as one of the group. 

To appeal to prospects who are resistant to change, communicators can speak to shared traditional values. When profiling a prominent graduate, consider highlighting the professor who exerted the most influence on that person. That way you emphasize the traditional core of education: mentor and protégé. 

By paying close attention to the values of a group and showing how you honor those values, you practice a key persuasive skill called decorum. This character-based form of agreeability is far more interesting than the mandatory politesse of advice columnists like Emily Post and Miss Manners. Rhetorical decorum is the art of fitting in; the Latin decorum literally means “fit,” as in “suitable.” In persuasion, as in evolution, survival belongs to the fittest. This is why salespeople wear terrific shoes or why a 16-year-old will sneak out of the house to get a navel ring.

Work to understand a group’s values and respect them, the ultimate win for your rhetorical character. By practicing craft, caring, and cause, you’ll convince others that you can solve most every problem (craft), you care enough to go out of your way for others (caring), and you represent their most deeply held values (cause). They can’t help but like and trust you.