FundClass Archives:

How to get your board involved in fundraising

Edited Digest of FundClass Topic #19, October 1999

Facilitated by Kim Klein

Kim Klein has 20 years of experience as a fundraiser and consultant. She wrote Fundraising for Social Change and is the editor of the bimonthly Grassroots Fundraising Journal. Her specialty is adapting traditional fundraising techniques for groups involved in social change. She works mostly with nonprofits having budgets of less than $500,000. Her publishing company, Chardon Press, can be found at http://www.chardonpress.com

Common Board Problems and Some Ways to Solve Them

My name is Kim Klein and I will be facilitating the Fundclass for this session. We will focus on how to get a board of directors to raise money. To get us started, I will focus on some of the most endemic problems in getting board members to raise money. My assumption is that people in the Fundclass know why board members should be involved in raising money, and why they should give money themselves. I am going to start further down the road of board development, leaving behind what board members SHOULD do, because SHOULD rarely motivates anyone to do anything except feel guilty. Instead I will discuss how to get them to want to do their work, or at least be willing to do their work.

At any given time, I am serving on two or three boards, and I would recommend that if you want to have a working board, become a board member yourself for another organization. Remind yourself that the most committed and dedicated board member is doing their board work in their "free" time--after their day job, their family responsibilities, and their needs for sleep and sustenance have been met. In our busy lives, this often means that we do not have the time we need to be the kind of board members we most want to be. As staff working for a board, then, we must make sure that we use board members' time as wisely and efficiently as possible.

Also, every board member is different from every other board member. I often get calls from frustrated development directors saying, "The board does this" or "the board won't do that", but board members are not a Greek chorus. They don't speak with one voice, and they are not alike. Work with each person individually so that you can play to their strengths.

Having said that, let's look at the most common reasons organizations have problems in getting their board members to participate in fundraising:

1. Board members don't know that fundraising is part of their job.

When an Executive Director or Development Director complains to me about their board, I sometimes call each board member to ask them what they think their job is with regard to fundraising. Every time I find that the majority of board members say that they are willing to do a "few things", but are not aware that fundraising is part of their responsibility. No matter how many times you have told them, how many trainings you have sent them to, or how many articles you have passed out, board members do not want to know that fundraising is part of their responsibility, and you will need to repeat yourself dozens of times before they hear you.

2. Board members don't know what fundraising means.

Actually, I think the reason board members don't participate in fundraising is because they are not given clear instructions what they are to do. The more highly structured fundraising is, the more likely people are to participate. You should have specific timeframes, specific tasks, and clear reporting. If you want them to send letters to friends, give them a sample letter and tell them how many friends to send it to, by when, and what a personal note might say. If you want them to call members and ask them to renew their membership, set a time and place, give them a script, make them practice and make them work as a team. Sometimes staff are reluctant to be directive to their board members, not wishing to appear patronizing or bossy, which is admirable. However, it is much more frustrating for board members to know that they should be participating in fundraising, but to not know exactly what they should be doing.

3. Some people do the work, and some don't.

To some extent, this is a description of life itself. Some people work hard, some don't. Some get with the program, some don't. It is unrealistic to think that everyone will work equally effectively, so one way to solve this problem is to lower your expectations. Also, make sure that you have a very wide variety of tasks for people to take on. Rarely will all the board members be on the personal solicitation committee, but all the board members may well take on a variety of fundraising tasks, from stuffing envelopes, to calling donors to thank them for their gift, to writing articles for the newsletter, to entering data and so on. I have seen board members who swore they would die if they had to ask for money, who could ask for things that cost money without batting an eye. Figuring out what board members are willing and able to do will go a long way to solving the problem of some board members not working.

Who Should Make the Ask?

A question: When, if ever, should the staff member make the ask? And how do you best educate board/administration about this? If I had a dime for every discussion I have had with various board members and volunteers over who should ask, I would be wealthy enough to endow every group I ever worked with! This is a favorite pastime of board members after they finish their other favorite pastime of "I don't know anyone who can give." Their anxiety is understandable, as most of us have been raised not to talk about money at all, let alone ask for it. So, even though I started with a little teasing of board members, I have a lot of compassion for their situation, and the first step to resolving this question is to start by realizing that, no matter how much a board member may love a group, they will probably never really love fundraising for the group, and will tend (unconsciously) to throw up any number of reasons why they are not the right person to do the asking.

The practical answer to the question, "Who asks?" is twofold. Ideally--and this is something staff must push for--the person who knows the prospect best should do the asking. A staffperson may be that person. You may be asking your friends, and you may be the main contact a prospect has with your group. Don't be afraid to ask. Sometimes staff feel strange asking for money that will come back to them in salary and benefits, but if you are good at your job, and you care about the group, then you deserve to be paid. If a board member or volunteer knows the prospect best, then that person should ask. If that person refuses, then we go to Plan B, which is that someone else--preferably another volunteer--asks using the name of the person who knows the prospect. In other words, we are always trying to use a contact to set up the meeting and the request.

A Sane Fundraising Schedule

There are many things that drive people out of fundraising, but one big one has to be the constant need to keep 100 balls in the air. Although there is no way that I know of to avoid that feeling of having too much to do and too little time to do it, you can make your schedule more manageable by how you schedule fundraising.

Take your fundraising goals and strategies and put them on a calendar, so that each strategy begins and ends. For example, start the year with a direct mail campaign from Jan. 5- March 1. Use December to get it ready. Roll out your acquisition appeals during this time. Starting March 1, begin planning your special event which is July 4 while keeping up with thank you's generated by the mail appeal and foundation deadlines.

After the event is over, begin planning your fall major donor drive. In other words, each strategy has a time on the calendar and does not run all year. Do not work with more than two strategies at any time. Some stuff is ongoing--thank you's, newsletter, board meetings. But not everything has to be ongoing.

Use your board members in small time frames also. The major donor committee works for 8 weeks and finishes the campaign, and then doesn't do more major donor work until the following year. Rather than being so spread out and scattered, focus on one or two things and do them in-depth and well. When people know that their time will be well used and respected, and that when they are done, they are done, they will be less likely to be dodging your phone calls and using up a lot of your time hedging on their commitments. You in turn will be less frantic and will not lose time fretting and running to stay in place. It may be hard to believe, but the old adage, "Slow and steady wins the race" is actually true for fundraising.

Discussion and Feedback

Re: Common Board Problems and Some Ways to Solve Them

Liz Brown wrote:

Here's something that helped a board I was on: the development director had everyone bring rolodexes, as well as collect annual reports and other materials like symphony programs that list donors, and she had her own collection that she brought in. We devoted a portion of 2 or 3 board meetings to prospect identification. Each board member filled out a form on prospects we identified, including information on what our relationship was, info about them and their potential giving capacity,which step(s) we were comfortable taking, from signing and adding a personal note to an annual fund letter to calling to arranging introductions etc. When more than one person identified a prospect, we determined through discussion who would be the best contact. Everyone left each meeting with a specific commitment related to their 5 top prospects. Staff followed through with appropriate materials/reminders. It was an enjoyable, productive, educational exercise, especially because this board's meetings were usually all business, and this was more informal.

Susan Malott wrote:

I concur completely that it must be the board's responsibility, yet so often they think otherwise and are perfectly happy to push this job onto staff. I am currently struggling with that precise issue with a Boy Scout Council about to embark upon an capital campaign. They are finding every reason in the book not to get involved, but to hire a professional to do it all for them.

I believe that every board member who cares about the organization can find some role to play in the fundraising plan. Not everyone has to "make the ask". The board is the body that creates the plan which spends the money. They must also be responsible for ensuring that the organization has the available resources to pay for it or they create an untenable situation.

Fundraising Committees

Sandy Sweitzer wrote:

The public library where I work is about to start getting into private fundraising, and I think your model is good because it so clearly differentiates the types of fundraising that need to be going on all the time. Since we are just getting started, I have to keep reminding the board we aren't ready to ask for major gifts, since we haven't asked for minor ones yet! I'm trying to build relationship --they want to ask some rich guy they know (who has never given to the library) for 1,000 bucks. Acquire, retain and upgrade is my mantra (thanks to your book) and perhaps by setting up the commmittees this way it will become theirs too.

Get rid of your fundraising committee

Kathy A Moore wrote:

Almost two years ago we did away with our fundraising committee. Our motivation was around Board member burn-out and realizing that the fundraising committee was on overload year 'round, while other Board members were ducking out of fundraising activities altogether. So we restructured our committees around their activities: special events, corporate giving and entrepreneurial efforts. While it's still been a bit of a bumpy process and it's certainly not perfect, I think this has allowed folks to select fundraising activities that are more in line with their skills/interests/goals. In addition, we recognize that not all these committees need to meet every month. Their activities are tied in with timelines and thus folks might be able to select activities related to their life schedules (e.g., our CPA can't participate in activities in the late Spring, etc.).

Where does the job of fundraising lay?

Mary Kay Reed wrote:

So, where does the job of fundraising lay?

If the answer is "the Director of Development", then I hope you have a very well-known and well-connected DD! Seems like this is way too much burden to place directly on the shoulders of one person.

If, on the other hand, your answer is "the Fund Development Committee", I hope you rotate those people on and off that committee regularly. If I were a member of a so-named committee, and I were told that it was solely the committee's responsibility to raise funds, I would detest the other board members who got off so easy!

Saying that it's the responsibility of every board member to raise funds doesn't mean that every board member has to go out and beg. It simply means that everyone can contribute something to the process!

Boards Not A Fundraising Vehicle

Timothy Jaques wrote:

I agree that in small NFP's the board must as a matter of necessity get involved in fundraising. I'm doing this myself right at the moment, for the simple reason that the organization in question does not even have my limited background in dealing with some of the scoundrels who prey on NFP's seeking to raise funds. Fundraising is by no means my primary role, but in this case I simply have to help do it.

However, you can have board members wearing volunteer committee member hats, even if in essence they end up reporting to themselves on their fundraising efforts. This is not an ideal situation or a desirable one because then the board members, generally volunteers, spread themselves too thin in their volunteer time. For instance, I quit board and "hands on" volunteer positions with two other organizations and it took some persuading to convince me from quitting a third. I'd rather do one thing right than half a dozen things half-baked. Board members fundraising is only a necessary evil dictated by lack of human resources. Sometimes the President of the corporation has to sweep the parking lot too but I'd prefer to have a janitor to do it.

There is plenty to do in the governance of a corporation to occupy the time of a board as a board. The board should not be distracted from this. I don't want rich people on boards because of their money. If I want them there at all, I want them there because they got rich because they have smarts in running companies. Otherwise, I don't want them on the board interferring with the governance process.

In most small NFP's the board is entirely elected by the membership, so the only way to get Sugar Daddies on such a board is to convince them to pay membership dues and then convince the membership to elect them. In my experience in small NFP's the membership is suspicious when the board appoints other board members even when the bylaws permit it -- they figure since the organization is small there is no problem in having a GA to vote and fill the vacancy. They generally like to let the board work in peace but they like to believe that it is their elected representatives, answerable at an election, who are doing the work. Members do not like celebrity boards, seeing them as glamour pusses come in to bask in the glory of a worthy cause. They tend to like board members who have spent their time in the trenches, if that warlike metaphor doesn't further offend you. No different than soldiers respecting officers who were promoted from the ranks on the basis of merit.

There is nothing in any of the excellent suggestions posted so far that couldn't be done by a specific fundraising committee or group of committees answerable to the board pursuant to written policies in that regard. It's on these committees in an advisory capacity that I would place all the Sugar Daddies and glad handers, to get best use of their talents. I'd much prefer they show their commitment to the cause by paying dues and becoming voting members, but if they want to just help raise funds I'd live with it. If the board has an understanding of the fundraising process it should be for the purpose of ensuring that the fundraisers aren't doing anything that will get the corporation into any trouble. I suppose that I might live with an advisory non-voting position on a board for someone to advise the board on proper fundraising, but the ED should be reporting on and monitoring that anyway.

What ED's and others who promote board fundraising forget, or prefer to ignore, is the legal liability of individual board members for ignoring their legal duty to govern the corporation. It's irrelevant that you were too busy fundraising to look to the task -- you should have resigned rather than let it go undone and that is in fact what I did. It isn't the ED who gets hit with a D & O liability suit. The ED is a person to be respected as a person and as an employee, but in the end is still an employee, and the staff isn't going to dictate to me on matters that affect my personal legal obligations and liabilities. That's quite apart from the moral obligation to the members who elected the board.

Re: Boards Not A Fundraising Vehicle

Karen Morgan wrote:

A rebuttal--and talking points for anyone needing to make this case to anyone:

Actually, the board is responsible for governing the organization and for ensuring that it succeeds in its mission. This includes ensuring resources--and that means fundraising!

In addition, board members are personally responsible-legally liable-for their organization's financial solvency. So again, fundraising is a responsibility that all board members should take very seriously.

In organizations with paid staffs, its easy to confuse this with the role of the Director or Development Director. It's the board's role to set fundraising targets and goals and to figure out how they're going to be met. It's the staff's role to do the nuts and bolts, but the board's role to assist and to be the public face.

Two other reasons why the board is so critical:

1. Funders view board involvement in requesting funds as evidence of an organization's credibility and strength. Board members have a unique role in this regard as volunteers.

2. Few organizations have enough staff to handle programs and fundraising. To raise the funds they need, the staff needs assistance, and they also need contacts.