Involving Your Board in Fundraising with Elizabeth Abel
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We constantly hear that if you don't have a fundraising board, you won't be able to raise funds as an organization. I don't believe that! In fact, I’ve had a lot of fundraising success without board fundraising. I know - call all the “gurus” and report this sacrilegious statement!
BUT, I also don’t believe that you should try to get your board members to fundraise. It is definitely a nice to have and usually worth the effort.
So, how? How do we build a board that is all the things we require in leadership (subject matter experts, lived experience, community members) AND get them to love and embrace fundraising?
In this episode of The Small Nonprofit Podcast, we talk to Elizabeth Abel, about how to motivate board members to fundraise. Elizabeth is the Senior Vice President at CCS Fundraising, a global fundraising consulting firm for nonprofits and an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania. She has designed, advised, and directed development initiatives and capital campaigns that have collectively raised nearly half a billion dollars, positively impacting tens of thousands of lives.
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Myths that Elizabeth wants us to walk away from:
Board members can’t be involved in fundraising. Board members can be one of the greatest assets to any nonprofit's fundraising efforts because they champion your mission, engage their networks and they provide financial support.
Board members should focus on major gifts. Board members can be engaged in different fundraising activities. You need to figure out how your board members want to be involved in fundraising, find out what are their strengths? And then how can you create that synergy that allows them to be fantastic multipliers and fundraising ambassadors?
Corporate giving is better than individual giving. According to Giving USA 2021: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2020, individuals drove 69% of total giving in the US, which was about $324 billion. Corporations are estimated to have declined by 6.1% in 2020 to only about 17 billion. So there is a huge gap between where people think corporations are and where they are relative to individuals.
Elizabeth’s Tips on Engaging Board Members to Fundraise
Fundraising Ambassadors. They bring a diverse set of experiences and skills and talents. And yes, many of them do have potential avenues of new support that can further generate revenue, but they're multipliers of all that you're doing programmatically, operationally and of course your philanthropy.
Recruiting and Engaging Boards. Many people just don't necessarily know what's expected of them so you can begin with setting expectations and educating board members in their role in fundraising.
Best practices. When considering how our board members can support our fundraising efforts, we want to prioritize relationship building. Elizabeth uses small events to engage and connect with donors as an example.
Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode
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“So I think of board members as fundraising ambassadors. So what does that mean? Well, board members are one of the greatest assets to any nonprofit's fundraising efforts because they champion your mission, they engage their networks and they do provide financial support. But the real thing that they are is they are multipliers. Board members are natural storytellers and advocates in your local community. They bring a diverse set of experiences and skills and talents to the table. And yes, many of them do have potential avenues of new support that can further generate revenue, but really they're multipliers of all that you're doing programmatically, operationally and of course your philanthropy ”
“ It's figuring out the ways in which your board members want to be involved in fundraising, what are their strengths? And then how can we create that synergy that allows them to be fantastic multipliers and fundraising ambassadors? ”
Resources from this Episode
