My site has lots of ideas and strategies for catapulting your fundraising results, your board and your organization - all to new heights. It is my honor to help you in any way I can – as a trainer, blogger, consultant and coach to nonprofit leaders.

PLEASE sign up now for my newsletter to get regular tips and strategies to help you motivate your board and raise that money your organization needs.

Also do check out my new webinar series for board members to learn about friendraising and fundraising:

End Your Board’s Frustration and Nervousness about Fundraising

Train Your Board Members in Friendmaking and Fundraising

My New Fast Track For Board Members Webinar Series Will Show Them How

If you are supporting or leading a nonprofit board, I’m sure you want to see every single person on your board excited, engaged, involved, and working hard for the cause.

I’ve designed a series of webinars for nonprofit board members – in their language, from their perspective, with humor and practicality. And it gives them exactly what they need to know in order to be successful.

• March 11: How to be a Supremely Effective Board Member
  
• March 30: How to Become An Influential Advocate For the Cause
• April 22: How to Start the Conversation and Open Any Door in Town: The Art of Friendmaking for Your Cause
• May 13: Six “No Ask” Fundraising Strategies for Board Members
  
• June 3: How To Never Get Turned Down When You Ask for Funds and Support
  

The webinars will be all at 1pm eastern and will come with discussion questions to help turn your board into a fired-up, action-oriented friendmaking TEAM. Find out more here.

FREE AUDIO: “Asking for Major Gifts: How to Never, Ever Get Turned Down”

Here’s everything you need to know about successful solicitations and the secrets to get your donors to say “yes.” I hope you’ll take the time to listen to this hour-long session. Download it now and learn how to secure those most important BIG GIFTS!

You can find out more about hiring me to fire up your board for fundraising, present a keynote speech or seminar, or help you as a consultant.

Do check out my calendar of events for my upcoming monthly webinars, and definitely sign up for my newsletter!

Thanks again for visiting!

Gail

PS: You can contact me personally and connect on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. I personally respond to everyone who writes.

There’s so much confusion about the appropriate job of a nonprofit board member.

Lots of boards ask me to help them understand what their work really is. I often refer to a list that BoardSource created a few years ago that has become a reference in our sector.

Here’s the list. I’ll be discussing these responsibilities in my upcoming blog posts. There’s lots to talk about here! What do they really mean? How do you implement them?

Ten Basic Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards From BoardSource

1. Determine the organization’s mission and purpose. It is the board’s responsibility to create and review a statement of mission and purpose that articulates the organization’s goals, means, and primary constituents served.
2. Select the chief executive. Boards must reach consensus on the chief executive’s responsibilities and undertake a careful search to find the most qualified individual for the position.
3. Provide proper financial oversight. The board must assist in developing the annual budget and ensuring that proper financial controls are in place.

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One of my favorite blogs (For Impact) is talking today about making fundraising calls.

I hear so many times how excited my friends are when they manage to actually get the appointment.

In their excitement, they forget about planning the details of the visit.

I remember years ago when I was a beginning fundraiser at Duke University. I was walking down the street with the VP for Development at Duke. He was going to accompany me on a fundraising visit.

I was pretty excited but also nervous because he was the head honcho. And I will never forget what he asked me: “what are your goals for this visit?”

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Here are the number one, absolute essentials for writing a hard-hitting successful appeal:

1. Use I and you words. Keep it personal. Keep it between you and me. Make it intimate.

2. Give them detail regarding what exactly you need and exactly how the money will be used.

3. Show how the money will make an immediate and lasting difference.

OK – an example: a ballet company can write and ask for:

1. general support, OR

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The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported this week that some international relief organizations said their average gift size to help the Haiti crisis is smaller than after the tsunamis in 2004. The good news is that the number of gifts went up even if the size of the gift was down.

For example, (and I’m quoting from the Chronicle article here:)

In the first 10 weekdays after the earthquake in Haiti, Mercy Corps received 61,505 contributions, compared with 49,561 donations during the same period after the tsunamis. But the average size of the Haiti gifts was $109, compared with $208 for the tsunami gifts.

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Wow is this idea a hit with board members!

Here’s the deal – what I find is that board members don’t, repeat, don’t know what to say about their cause. This may come as a surprise to smart staff members, BUT it’s TRUE!

(If you don’t believe me, then ask one of your board members what they say to people about your organization.)

I’ll bet that maybe only two or three of your board members have any sense of how they want to share the story of their favorite organization to their friends and the rest of the world.

The problem is this:

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Ah, death by strategic planning!

Don’t get me started on how AWFUL and what a TIME WASTER strategic planning can be. At least the way we do it in the noprofit sector.

I am organizing a “hard-hitting, hands-on planning session” with an organization that has been wandering aimlessly for a few years. They wonder why they can’t raise money? Here’s the answer – their vision is not juicy enough to get excited about.

Here’s our agenda for our planning session: (I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent!)

• Reconfirm Good Cause’s vision and mission.
• Reach consensus on what Good Cause wants to do in order to implement its vision and mission in the coming year and in the next 5 years. (broad framework here for the longer time period.)
• Identify strategic directions and set some firm goals around each direction.
• Answer the question: “how will we know if we have been successful?”
• Determine the critical success factors that will make or break the new goals.
• Agree on the board’s role in creating success for Good Cause and what each person is committed to doing.
• Set next steps so that the staff can flesh out a complete operational plan for the coming year.

I had to tell the staff – you can TRUST me that it will not be a WASTE of time. I told her that I will not facilitate a meeting that I wouldn’t attend myself. : )

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I am reading my favorite blog today, the Agitator. The authors Roger Craver and Tom are “direct response” guru’s (remember it used to be called “direct mail?” Now it’s much more sophisticated direct response.)

They are citing an article by Denny Hatch about the best way to write “marketing copy.” That’s the technical term for the wording we use when we write appeals, brochures, email broadcasts and our fundraising materials.

Denny is apparently an old pro at marketing and copywriting. He says that we need to be sure to do the following things:

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The New York Times today ran an opinion article about a new study from the national organization Feeding America.

The study showed that one in 8 Americans sought emergency food aid last year. (This is 37 MILLION PEOPLE!)

Lord have mercy, as we say in the south! They are feeding one million more Americans a week than they were in 2006.

Hunger is alive and well in America, it is awful to say.

The need is so very clear. All over our country and the world, there are people desperately in need.

We fundraisers and nonprofit leaders are on the front lines of the battle for safe, decently-fed, healthy families in our communities.

If you ever start to…

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Donors are always carping on the whole issue of “overhead.” They act like it is a terrible thing that their funds would go into the black hole of “administration.”

BUT we need to take the bull by the horns and take charge of this discussion.

We have to educate our donors on the importance of investing – not only in direct program work on the ground – but also in the infrastructure of our organizations.

You have to explain to donors that infrastructure funding is really important too – it keeps the lights on, pays for staff and computer systems – so that the good work on the ground can happen.

I think when you explain this…

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I think we approach our board members ALL WRONG.

We nonprofit folks have this idea that our board members should be devoted to the cause 24/7. And when they place other priorities in front of our to-do list, we are disappointed in the least.

I hear a lot of complaining about board members. “My board members won’t raise money,” the executive director sadly whispers to me. “They won’t even open doors,” another friend confided.

I thought to myself, well do these board members think they are supposed to raise money or not? I could have bet a case of beer that the staff’s notion of what board members were supposed to do was not at all the same as the board members’ idea of what to do.

My nonprofit friends think, “Of course board members are supposed to raise money!”

But the board members are probably thinking secretly to themselves, “I’ll do anything BUT ask for money.”

Is there a conflict here?

And here’s the rub. There is bound to be disappointment on one side or the other unless there is a frank conversation about what you need your board members to do.

If you want your board members to help in fundraising –

And if you do need them to “raise money,” then you have to give them a format for this work. You have to tell them exactly how to do it and make it easy for them. They need a lot of encouragement and hand holding, and that’s fine! They aren’t the “hardened professionals” that we are.

So DO be realistic about your expectations and treat your board members like you’d want to be treated. They are volunteers. Wonderful, well meaning community volunteers. But they are untrained. They are not fundraising professionals. Treat them like the real people they are.

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