🚀 Is your board more like a stubborn mule than a spirited stallion when it comes to fundraising? 🐴
On today’s edition of Nonprofit Lowdown, we’re diving into a burning question that keeps many of you up at night: “Why won’t my board fundraise?”😡
You’re not alone in this struggle—research shows only 41% of boards are engaged in fundraising. Shocking, right?
In this episode, we get real about the multitude of reasons why boards shy away from fundraising duties—from lack of awareness and understanding of their roles to deeper issues like money baggage. We discuss strategies to energize your board: assessing willingness and skill, empowering through training, and setting clear and achievable expectations.
💡 Discover:
How to diagnose and address the specific reasons behind your board’s fundraising hesitance.
Effective methods to transform your board from passive participants to active champions of your cause.
Tired of doing the heavy lifting alone? Tune into this episode for practical tips that will help you craft a board that not only understands their fundraising role but excels at it!
Important links:
https://go.rheawong.com/big-ask-gifts-program
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
Hey you, it’s Rhea Wong. If you’re listening to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m pretty sure that you’d love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes, and then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only, and fun raising inspo, because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone.
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Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today, I’m going to talk about a perennial question I get over and over again. Generally, I don’t really focus on this as part of my training, but it is such an essential part of building a major gift program that we have to talk about it.
And the question is, Topic of today is why the F won’t my board fundraise. This is a hot topic that a lot of people have questions on. I was reading some research prior to this call, and it turns out, according to a board source report, only 41 percent of boards are engaged in fundraising, which is mind blowing when you consider the fact that.
Boards have a fiduciary responsibility to fundraise. So we’re going to get into why boards are reluctant to fundraise and more importantly, what you can do about it. Now, important note here, even though the outcome is the same, that they may not be engaged in fundraising. There are a couple of different reasons why that might be true.
So we’re going to go through some of those common reason and help you to diagnose what the issue is. Now, the last thing I want to say before we jump into it is that we have to think about building a coalition of the willing. In other words, people ain’t going to do what they’re not going to do. If you imagine a four by four matrix, you have folks who have the will and have the skill, and those are going to be your, Key fundraisers.
You may have folks who have will, but no skill. That’s when you skill people up. Anyone who has no will and no skill or no will, and some skills are probably going to be in the people that you will love right out the door. So when we think about fundraising, when we think about being executive directors who are trying to move an organization forward, we can think about people who are either wins in our sale or anchors.
And truly the job is hard enough. You do not need anchors. All right, let’s get into it. Before I get into the top five reasons, I also want to reiterate a couple of issues. As they say, the fish sinks from the head. So if your board chair is not all in on fundraising, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that your board chair has to write the biggest check, but that’s always helpful, but your board chair has to signal to the rest of the board, what the expectation is and hold the line with you.
So the board chair has to be all in and set the tone. The board fundraising committee, and I get this question a lot. First of all, the board fundraising committee is not the committee that is solely responsible for fundraising. That is the whole board. What the board fundraising committee does is it sets strategy and it helps to keep the board accountable for the things that they said that they were going to do.
Now, I’ve had this happen where people say, not it, to being on the board fundraising committee or the development committee or what have you. And what people need to understand is fundraising is everybody’s job on the board. As a board member, you have a fiduciary responsibility and the legal responsibility to ensure the longevity and sustainability of the organization.
Nobody is exempt from fundraising. A question that I get a lot is. What about give and gets or give gets? So in my mind, it’s always give and get not give or get. The reason being that I think every single board member, regardless of their capacity should give at a level that is significant for them. Why?
Because money is energy. And if I, as a board member who allegedly, if I’m, if I believe deeply in the organization, I should be willing to put in some of my resources. Now, for some people that might be 10, for other people that might be 100, 000. I just think that every single board member needs to put in a sum that is personally significant to them.
Or, another way to think about it is something that is within the top three philanthropic priorities for them. Another reason is that it is impossible. Nay, might I even say hypocritical for me as a board member to ask other people in my network to give to something that I personally haven’t given to myself.
Impossible. So, let’s talk about give get. There are lots of schools of thought on this. Some people say that you should have a minimum of five. A give get other people say that it should be, uh, an expectation in a conversation with everybody around their personally significant gift for them. Here’s how I’m going to split the baby.
I personally established a give get of 30, 000 when I ran my organization. I had conversations with each of my board members and I let them know that 30, 000 was not the ceiling, it was the floor. We could tailor this to different people’s different capacities. For some people, 30, 000 was not going to be doable for them, in which case we adjusted.
So this was particularly true of subject matter experts. We had a couple of teachers on our board. Obviously, they were not going to be able to give at a 30, 000 level. For other people, 30, 000 was not a problem, and they could give more and also could tap their networks. And again, for them, we adjusted upward.
Let me tell you a quick story. I had a friend of mine who started an organization. She came out of Teach for America. She was used to a very sophisticated fundraising operation. In starting her nonprofit, out of the gate, she had a 25,000 give get. And I thought that was really bold. And I remember her shrugging and saying, that’s just what it is.
And the thing is, because she had set that level, she actually got it, even though there were lots of people around her telling her that was unrealistic. So the reason why I think having an ambitious give get signals to people the level of seriousness and the level of which you are wanting to play.
Because if you are. A serious person with serious capacity joining a board for, with a 5, 000 give is not signaling to me that you are significant. Another thing to consider is. When you are thinking about your board giving, I want you to think about, and again, this will vary, but in my case, I had my board giving 30 percent of my operating budget because it is money that you can count on.
So when you’re thinking about projecting out into the future, you have to be able to know what’s What money is coming in and particularly money that is coming in when you know that there are some low periods. So that generally tends to be around January, February, March after the holidays. So all that being said, I also think that there should be a clear expectation that in addition to the give, that there is also an expectation that you are inviting your network in.
And so we’re going to talk a little bit about why people might be a little squirrely about that. Okay. But my friend John Rinaldi once said this, and I think it’s good advice. Clear is kind. So I think a lot of the misunderstandings that we have as boards and executive directors is that we’re not clear about our expectations, their expectations, our expectations of them.
And without transparency, we can’t actually have a conversation and negotiate or agree or disagree. But when we’re swimming in the soup and we’re, uh, unclear about what we should be doing and what we can expect, then we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. So without further ado, let us talk about the five reasons why your award is not fundraising.
So let’s start reason. Number one, they don’t know they’re supposed to, I find that this happens most often with startup boards, who usually these are friends and family, people whose names get put down on the 501c3 paperwork. And then things are chugging along. And at some point the ED says, Hey, you know what you guys, you should be fundraising now, that’s a little bit of a bait and switch.
So here’s some questions for you to consider when you are vetting people to join your board, is there actually a vetting and selection process to identify appropriate board members? And when I say appropriate people with capacity. Interest, affinity and relationship and recency to the organization. Do they understand that fundraising is part of the responsibility of the board members?
Are they giving personally? And have you set annual expectations with them? So think about your own board and how they got brought on to the board. If these things are not true, here’s some suggested solutions for you. You can level set. Each board member about their expectations moving forward with an annual commitment letter and as a gift to you I have included a template in The show notes for you to download an annual commitment or I like to call it a board menu letter When you are recruiting new board members, I think you need to discuss the fundraising expectation frankly, and ask about any prior fundraising experience.
Again, you’re looking for willingness over skill. You can teach skill, but you can’t teach will. You should involve your development committee and nominated committee when considering new members. You should be clear about setting the expectation and give get for all new members, and you should also be willing to say no and bless and release those that are not interested in helping out with fundraising or being involved in any way.
And I want to talk about being involved because I think a lot of people think that fundraising means solicitation, but for all of us expert fundraisers out there, we know that solicitation is only a very small portion of the overall journey. What that means is that board members can be involved in things like Invitation and qualification, cultivation.
So the romancing, the building the relationship, the solicitation, if they choose to be, or the stewardship, which is the making them feel good after they give the gift and continuing to build the trust in the relationship. So being involved in fundraising doesn’t necessarily mean solicitation, though it can.
And I think this is part of the understanding that we need to help board members get to. Okay, let’s talk about the next thing. They have money baggage or rejection and feel like they’re begging. So I think this is a common misconception that a lot of people have, which is that if you have money, you have no baggage about money.
I have done my training for hundreds and hundreds of people, and I have yet to find anybody who didn’t have some kind of baggage with money or some kind of trauma around money. So one thing that I might recommend to you to consider is, have you asked yourself about your own money baggage and trauma before engaging in this work?
And have you ever asked your own board about how they orient towards money? What is the story that they tell themselves about money? Again, you know what happens when we assume, and I think because we might assume that, Just because they have a fancy job or because they have capacity or because they have wealth, that they don’t have any issues with money.
And I think that would be a missed opportunity for a really substantive conversation. So here’s some things that you can do about it. You can walk them through a money mindset training similar to what you’ll find in my book, Get That Money, Honey. You can also publicly celebrate wins. Now, assuming that most of your board members are high achieving and particularly those here in New York City, high achieving type A.
personalities, we like to get gold stars. And so we need to, this might sound familiar to people who raise children. We need to celebrate and reinforce the behavior that we want and discourage the behavior that we don’t want. Unfortunately, so many of us spend so much time watering the weeds and not the flowers, which is to say we obsess and we think and catastrophize about the things that we don’t want versus celebrating and Uplifting the things that we do want.
Another thing is we can have our development committee involved in mentoring and coaching other members of the board and finally help them understand that what we’re asking them to do is really help us be out in the world, making friends that they should be talking about us and being enthusiastic about the work that we’re doing.
We’re not asking them to solicit. We’re asking them to share enthusiasm. Third reason, they don’t know what they’re supposed to do. Now, this goes to the question of training. Many executive directors, myself included, were not trained in fundraising. We didn’t understand the frameworks. We didn’t understand what the process is.
And so when we’re asking our board members. When we ourselves don’t have the training that we need to be effective fundraisers, and we’re asking our board members to go out and they have not received the training. Then I think we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment. So the best thing that I could do here is to suggest that a, you familiarize yourself and get training.
Incidentally, that’s what I offer in my big ask gift program. So we’re recruiting for that. Currently for our June 13th cohort, but get trained yourself. So you understand what you’re asking for. You understand how you’re going to move people along the process. You understand that fundraising is a relationship and a trust building exercise, not a one time transaction.
So. Incidentally, just in case you didn’t know, when we think about the fundraising cycle, about 5 percent of it is identifying. So literally who are my donors? About 5 percent is qualifying. So are they people who want to be engaged? 45 percent of the journey is cultivation, the relationship building stage, and only 2 percent is solicitation and the rest is stewardship.
So. For a lot of people, this is new information and it actually takes the pressure off because I think a lot of people jump to solicitation. They think it feels icky. They think it feels transactional and it really does feel transactional if you haven’t built a relationship. So helping board members understand the whole cycle may help them to understand where they might best fit in, where their skills and interests might be best suited to plug into the process.
Now, a couple of other questions to consider. Does my board know what they’re supposed to do? Have you set goal setting and an ongoing evaluation system for your board members? And are you clear about the different activities that they can be involved in? Because if the only option you ever give them is to be involved in solicitation, you’re missing out on an opportunity to engage them in A, areas that they feel comfortable in and B, areas that are much needed within the cycle.
within the process. So here are some suggested solutions. At the beginning of each year, have each board member meet with the board chair or the member or member of the development committee to sign a letter which details both their contributions for the year and the activities that they want to be involved in.
You create time at board meetings to publicly check in on progress. By the way, have your development staff provide support and actively manage board members activities. So your board members are busy people. They don’t necessarily have time to project manage. So you’re, Team is going to be responsible for helping to set them up and project manage.
That means checking in. That means drafting emails that making it easy for them to do business. And again, people are not going to do what they’re not going to do. So you can co create a menu of activities with them. Again, I’ll include a board menu of activities in the show notes for you to download that you, they can literally check off what they say that they will do.
And then you just help them to, you just project manage the process. So they’re able to do what they. Okay, the fourth reason that board members aren’t engaged in fundraising is they don’t have the right training, materials, or guidance. And so what I mean by that is, here’s something to consider. Have you provided the appropriate training for board members to do what is asked of them?
And by that, do they understand the process? Have you provided any training? Fundraising training for them. Have you provided them with talking points and opportunities to practice? This is key because assuming that a lot of them have never done fundraising before, you, they will probably need to practice, not just have the quote unquote talking points or, Pitch deck or elevator pitch.
Have you provided updated materials and made it easily accessible, i. e. you know, a portal or Google drive that they can download. Are we monitoring and managing the process? And do we have leaders in the board who are modeling the behavior we want to see? So here’s some suggested solutions. You have to dedicate at least one board meeting per year to fundraising and skills building.
We want to create opportunities for them to practice talking about the organization. We want to give them time one on one to get them in touch with their why about being involved in the organization. Let me tell a little story. So I’m the kind of person who, if I’m excited about a book I’ve read or a movie or a new Netflix show, I’m I will tell literally everybody about it because I just, if I love it, I want other people to have an opportunity to love it as well.
This is the kind of enthusiasm that you want to engender in your board members, that they are so enthusiastic about your organization, that your organization has given them something of value so much that has touched them, inspired them, or made them feel like they were making a difference. You want them to be able to spontaneously you.
Beyond the world talking to their folks, we want to spend time at board meetings, sharing stories of fundraising success. Again, gold stars celebrate the flowers, not the weeds. And you also want to make sure that you’re providing compelling, timely, and accurate marketing materials. What I mean by that is a lot of times people have janky looking materials.
This does not reflect well on you or your board members. You want your board members to put out materials so good looking, so compelling, snazzy, that they feel really good about sharing it with their friends. Let me also talk about why board members are not bringing their friends to the table. Frankly, it’s because they don’t trust you.
And I don’t mean you personally, I’m sure you’re a lovely person. What I mean by that is because they are so much in this mode of fundraising equals solicitation, they are afraid that you will embarrass them. And. What that looks like is, gosh, if I give Bob’s information to this organization and they hit up Bob for a donation, and I see Bob at the Christmas party or the next barbecue, and he says, Hey, did you give my name to X, Y, and Z organization?
It can look bad. It can be embarrassing for your board member and for Bob. Our social capital and the trust that we have with others is the biggest Most valuable asset that we have. And so a couple of things here to help you out. Number one, be super clear with your board members about what you intend to do with these names and the process that you intend to follow, and be clear that.
You will communicate to these folks that they can opt out at any time. Second, have your board member be part of the process if they choose to be right. Some of them want to send the introductory email. Some of them want to be at the coffee, whatever it may be. What you need them to know is that you are going to be careful.
with their personal relationships and that you are not going to do anything to erode trust between them and their friend. And so part of that is helping them to walk through the process and that you’re crystal clear about what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it. And at what point, because trust me, if I were, if I was on a board and someone asked me to just give up my list of friends, I wouldn’t do it unless I knew absolutely what you intend to do with it.
So just a quick tip there. And then finally, why board members are not engaged in fundraising is that they’re not fired up and emotionally committed to it. So here are some questions to consider. Are your board meetings exciting? Is your board involved in important initiatives? Do you spend time making your board members feel special, appreciated, and loved, and are your board members sufficiently connected to the program?
So oftentimes. What happens in a board meeting is that you walk in, at least this is what happened to my board meetings. I sent out the board book a week ahead, and then we spent the rest of the time basically reiterating everything I put in the board book. It was a colossal waste of my time. Meanwhile, my board members are sitting there listening to me, which again, was such a missed opportunity because I already knew what I knew.
I didn’t know what they knew. And so we moved to a consent agenda and spent the bulk of our time in Conversation, high level generative conversation. If you’re interested in this, I would highly recommend that you check out my podcast with Bill Ryan. I’ll put the podcast episode in the show notes. But boards are generally, they operate at three different levels.
Fiduciary, which is as it sounds, what, what are the problems? What’s the budget, et cetera, et cetera. Strategic, which are higher level strategy questions about where are we going, how are we getting there, et cetera. And then the third mode, which is rarer, is the generative level. And the generative level is around sensemaking.
It’s around framing. It’s around understanding. Asking the questions that we should be asking. And that’s the level at which it gets juicy. This is the level at which board members hearts and minds are really engaged. And so I would really recommend that you give Bill Ryan’s podcast a listen. Here’s the thing, board meetings are boring if you are talking most of the time.
This is an opportunity to not only have board members engage with each other, but also engage with big juicy questions. And it’s also important to remind them why they love you in the first place. So I would recommend at the beginning of each board meeting to have a mission moment, whatever that looks like for you.
So for me, I would invite a student or a parent to come in and talk a little bit about the difference that the organization made in their lives. Help them remember. Help them remember why they fell in love in the first place. Also, you shouldn’t ask for help. You should, you should frame it as taking responsibility for helping implies a power differential taking responsibility for implies accountability.
And finally, really, and this cannot be underscored enough, make your board meetings dynamic and generative so that you build a sense of purpose and teamwork. The other thing that I would say too, is don’t forget that you While you may know all of the board members individually, they probably don’t know each other very well.
Maybe they see each other once every quarter. Take the time to build the relationship between them, because the more that they know and trust each other, the better they will be at working together. I’m including some of the podcast episode and podcast guests that I think would be best suited to help you with board fundraising, along with the free template that I’m going to Put in the show notes, I would say finally that major gift fundraising is nearly impossible to do without the buy in and participation of your board.
So if you’re serious about raising major gifts and you’re having some blockages with that, definitely check out. Big ask gift program. It’s my group coaching program. It’s a six month program that is designed to get you results to jumpstart your major gift fundraising. We’re accepting applications now for June 13th start date.
Check it out on my website at RheaWong. com also in the show notes. So hopefully this helped you shoot me a note at hello at Rio Wong. com. If this is helpful for you, or if you have any other ideas about other episodes that you want to see in the future until then, have a good day.
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