What if board members won’t respond to my emails? Well how long are your emails? How many subjects are you covering? Are you being interesting and mercifully brief? Here are the rules for emailing board members:
First, email to them as often as you need to. Don’t set them up high on a cloud and stay away from them because they are the “board members.” That being said, don’t EVER send needless emails to board members. Keep them very very short and to the point and action oriented.
Remember it is your job (I hope) to provide staff support to your board members in the area of fundraising. If they have volunteered to do something, then by ALL MEANS follow up on it and remind them. DON”T let them off the hook unless they tell you that they just can’t follow through.
Second. Make your messages mercifully brief. Carefully edit OUT every extraneous word. The more white space the better. The shorter the better. The first 16 words are the most important because they will show up on their blackberry and those words will determine whether your board member is willing to scroll down to read the rest.
Third. Only one subject at a time in an email. If you load up your emails with many topics and make it into a long report, busy people are likely to put it aside becaseu they assess that it will take too long to read quickly. And then they probably will never get back to it. The 16 second email is a great rule. Don’t ever send an email that takes longer than 16 seconds to read. Better yet, make your email so short that it can be read on a blackberry.
