How To Handle Nonprofit Board Members That Won't Fundraise

Here’s How To Handle Nonprofit Board Members That Won't Fundraise:

Recognize that board fundraising is crucial to the success of your charity.

Create an advisory board for its advice, guidance and wisdom and also to serve as a feeder to your board recruitment efforts.

Use it to open doors, solicit gifts, and provide strategy.

Make sure each board member realizes that fundraising is a key part of his or her board fiscal responsibilities as much as other responsibilities.

Know that many individuals, foundations, corporations and government funding sources will first look to see if a board is giving and getting before their own support will be forthcoming. They ask themselves: “If your board members (who hold the legal and fiduciary responsibility for your charity) don't support your charity financially and contribute to its fundraising efforts, then why should we or anybody else?” 

Pick the right “fundraising” board members in the first place.

Recruit affluent and influential board members who are skilled at and comfortable with fundraising in the first place and very capable of doing it.

Recruit ones with plenty of easy access to major potential donors in their own peer networks. 

Choose ones who have the ability to serve as a model for others and set the pace with/encourage others with their own personal and corporate gifts.

Never recruit board members for whom yours is not their only charity or least most significant charity.

Avoid recruiting board members with other significant charitable obligations or too many time commitments.

Stress fundraising expectations and set clear goals in the board recruiting, on-boarding and orientation process.

Create clear fundraising guidelines and expectations from the outset.

Create a culture of fundraising not only within the board but also throughout the entire organization and its management, staff, volunteers and vendors.

Train each of your board members collectively and individually to be great fundraisers.

Have a seasoned fundraising consultant teach your board fundraising preferably at a weekend retreat or a board meeting focused upon fundraising.

Try a “buddy system” that pairs your “least comfortable with fundraising” board members with those “most comfortable with it.”

Try pairing experienced fundraisers with inexperienced ones, so you can create meaningful mentoring for them and avoid anxiety getting the better of them. 

Get your board to be part of the donor identification process, cultivating potential donors or stewarding existing donors to create donor loyalty.

Board members can decide which part of fundraising is the best fit for them.

Have ask-deficient board members recruit potential donors to come to events.

Board members who still remain uncomfortable with gift solicitation can also contribute by researching and identifying potential donors, “courting” potential donors or stewarding and thanking existing donors to create donor loyalty.

Board members can be asked to host events in their homes to invite prospects to for cultivation.

Board members can also play a key role in soliciting in-kind donations and pro bono services from individuals, institutions, and corporations.

Board members can also bring new resources and skills into the organization through their own networks to further the charity’s mission.

Consider using “Board Thank-a-thons” to get board members more comfortable with fundraising. November because of Thanksgiving is a great month for scheduling these marathon telephone calling sessions in which board members simply thank major donors and record donor responses and reactions on forms later entered into your donor databases. With these, you can have board members express gratitude to---and get to know---your major donors---while thereby further cultivating these prospects.

Create a fundraising culture that encourages your board of directors to take a genuine lead in setting key examples as both major givers and major askers, fully participating 100%, and thereby allowing your organization to be assured of achieving its mission.

Plan to spend a considerable amount of board time training your trustees if this is new to them.

Visit each board member individually to learn more about the ways each could be of service.

Discover the reasons for any reluctance to fundraise

Ask board members to pair up with someone they know who has experience fundraising to work with them as a partner.

Its members should be recruited with an explicit mandate to assist with fundraising.

Enforce term limits.

Another way to improve board fundraising is to increase board diversity.

Get as much fundraising help from your board as possible.

Ask absent board member why they don’t attend.

Ask bored board members why they are disengaged.

Strive to make board meetings and board governance less about micro-management concerns and more about macro ones---the interesting, meaningful and larger issues that truly matter---in other words, about how to create the brightest possible future for the organization.

Get a board fundraising and development committee going to focus on raising funds.

Get your board governance committee set up.

Establish board expectations and standards for board fundraising performance.

Evaluate board members annually for their giving and getting.

Expect all board members to make significant gifts and actively fundraise.

Make these expectations known prior to having them join your board.

Enforce this board “Give, Get Or Get Off” policy.

Offer trustees a menu of opportunities for how to get involved.

Have board members help with making stewardship calls and set up meetings with prospects.

Get each board member to host an "at-home" event to introduce your mission to their friends and family and colleagues and contacts.

Work with board members to determine which fundraising projects they would take the lead on.

Make sure that each board member views fundraising obligations seriously.

Show your unproductive board members the door.

Have board members do regular annual self-assessments. 

Update your board on consistently regarding the status of your fundraising.

Report to your board regularly the funds received, prospective donors identified, potential shortfalls or surpluses incurred and the implications of these factors.

If your best efforts to get a board member to fundraise fail, find a graceful way for that trustee to leave the board but stay involved in another position, such as committee member or volunteer.

if a nonprofit is already saddled with a non-fundraising board, and lacks guidelines, or direction, you either need to start with what you have and build in new expectations, or start over.

Suggesting that an unproductive board member be shown the door isn't always as simple as that sounds but it should nonetheless be your objective.

While some say it may be unrealistic for most nonprofits to assume that every board member they recruit will be influential and comfortable with fundraising OR have easy access to potential major donors, nevertheless that needs to be your focus and your goal.

If you don't want your board member to feel a higher allegiance to any other nonprofit, that also limits your pool of experienced board members.

An advisory board often can be a great first step in improving your pool.

Even one truly strong board member can help to turn a board around.

While creating a culture of philanthropy takes dedication, planning, teamwork and patience, it should be uppermost in your mind.

Hire a fundraising expert to work with the board to help increase their knowledge of fundraising responsibilities, their enthusiasm for fundraising and their ability to participate in fundraising.

P.S. Anything else that YOU would add?

The author, Dr. John B. Charnay, CEO of Charnay and Associates in Greater Los Angeles, is a top nonprofit fundraising advisor who has raised over a quarter of a billion dollars during his distinguished career. He has been in charge of numerous successful major fundraising special events. He often strategically advises board chairs and facilitates board fundraising retreats and has effectively trained numerous boards and development directors and their staffs in fundraising. He has extensive experience teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels at leading universities throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including USC, UCLA, CSUN, FIDM, Woodbury and Pepperdine. Additionally, he is an award-winning public relations professional. He has been a strategic PR advisor to many famous celebrities and Fortune 1000 CEOs. Additionally, he serves as a trusted strategic philanthropic advisor to numerous high net worth individuals & families & family offices. To meet him and ask for his support, invite him to be LinkedIn (email in profile) and contact him today!