How Your Board Can Help You Fundraise for Giving Hearts Day

How Your Board Can Help You Fundraise for Giving Hearts Day

With Giving Hearts Day in full swing, it can be easy to get swept up in the day-to-day responsibilities that come with executing what, for many organizations, is their biggest fundraising campaign of the year. Whether you’re an executive director moonlighting as a fundraiser or a development director leading a dedicated fundraising team, it’s important not to forget about one of your greatest fundraising secret weapons: your board.

In this month’s issue, we’re going to review how you should be thinking about leveraging your board for maximum fundraising impact and some best practices for how to put them to work on your behalf.

In all the years of training, workshops, and presentations we’ve done at the Impact Foundation, by far the thing we get asked about the most is boards. It’s not uncommon to hear from a board that they expect the executive director or development director to raise all the money, and it’s equally common to hear staff say that fundraising begins with the board. Needless to say, it’s a point of contention within many fundraising teams.

While traditional fundraising training can put board members in uncomfortable situations with their personal networks, we take a different approach. We recognize that the board’s first responsibility isn’t fundraising. It’s to hire and empower the CEO, followed by ensuring that the organization has the resources it needs. To succeed in engaging the full board of directors in fundraising, you must find a way to accommodate different personalities, set clear expectations for their roles, and determine how the activities of those roles lead to generating revenue and advancing overall fundraising results.

We believe this approach will save you time and improve outcomes in the long run, but cultivating a fundraising culture among your board takes time. Here are 10 fundraising principles for your board to follow:

10 Fundraising Principles for Boards

• The board speaks as a whole — with one voice — or it doesn’t speak at all.

• Board members must be willing to assume some calculated risks.

• Balance the board with the three Ws: wealth, wisdom, and work.

• Every board member is expected to give to the organization in a manner that is meaningful to them.

• All board members should participate in filling out prospect lists. The name of the board member does not need to be used with the prospect.

• The board of directors should give or raise 40 percent of the campaign goal in a capital campaign.

• All board members should provide contact names and donor referrals and enlist friends to attend and participate in events.

• When you contribute to assist in staff work, it is as a volunteer, not as a board member.

• Make sure there are clear expectations for how board members are to support fundraising in their individual areas of interest.

• Board members respond best when solicited by a board peer. Any solicitation of board members for donations should be done by a fellow board member and not a staff member.

Put it into Action

Instructions: Ideally, you should align your board’s activities with what your organization needs. Whichever target your organization is lacking — recruit, retain, reach — or whatever target the board and staff would like to see an increase in, there’s a place for the board to participate. This moves the board and staff onto the same side of the table and acts as a simple and effective barometer

• If not enough new donors are coming into the pipeline (recruit), then increase the amount of board participation in “Activate.”

• If not enough donors are staying (retain), then increase the amount of board participation in “Appreciate.”

• If you’re not raising enough major gifts (reach), then increase the amount of board participation in “Align.”