As I said, it's all there. The structure is fine.
However, as a reading experience, it's an uphill slog ... through briars ... on a hot day ... without water.
The opening ΒΆ scores at a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 12 (there is no 13 in my scoring software; once you reach 12, you've pretty much lost your audience). It has a reading ease score of 14 out of 100. Those are hardly surprising scores for academic prose. But they are terrible scores. Those scores make the prose unfit for public consumption.
The grade level should be no higher than 9 (good direct mail scores at the 6th grade level). The reading ease should be somewhere north of 55. Grade level has nothing to do with vocabulary, by the way. It has to do exclusively with the ratio of short to long: short words to long words, short sentences to long sentences. The LOWER the grade level, the FASTER the brain reads. It's a simple skill anyone can master.
As it stands, this draft presents to the reader a lot of mental labor. Obviously, when you're asking for money, you don't want to get off on that wrong foot. It's not that they can't understand it; heck, they all went to Big Cheese U. It's just that it's no fun. And it's slow. And it's a dumping ground for every corporate buzzword in the book.
Also, the donor is not the hero, so there's no real emotional gratification. All he is is a life support system for a wallet. Talk about uninspiring....
I searched the case for the term "you." That is by far the most important word in sales and marketing. It appears twice in the draft case. I searched for "we," which indicates a high level of self-absorption. It appears dozens of times.
Well, those are my initial thoughts. This draft is a backgrounder that a competent writer could turn into something. But what she would turn out will sound very different than what you have so far. And I wouldn't touch it without a firm promise that you wouldn't change what I write, except to correct an error. That, and a $5,000 advance.
Thank you for sharing your stuff with me. It takes guts. Please don't take it personally. This is my professional view.
Warm regards,