Relationship Fundraising 3 Steps to Getting Your Board Members to LOVE IT!

Step #1 – Make it easy

How many of you are confident sharing your organizations story? When I ask this question of board members who attend my seminars, there are never more than about a third of them that raise their hands.  This should be shocking, because the #1 role of a board member is to tirelessly promote their organization, school, or church in the community. 

What makes this even worse, is the Director and the board members themselves probably don’t realize this is the case.  It is unlikely that an individual board member will admit to the group or the Director that they aren’t comfortable talking about the organization.  They feel guilty, because for some reason they think they should just know.  They’re not comfortable asking for help.  It’s not that they lack commitment or passion.  They’ve probably never been presented with a user-friendly tool and training to give them the confidence to share the organization’s story with others. 

§  Tool #1 – Professional Case Statement – This is a one-page, two-sided piece of paper that articulates your story in a compelling, concise and consistent manner.  We call it the gathering place for your story.  It’s strategically developed to inspire people to want to help.  It includes your mission, vision for the future, unique approach, achievements, current priorities, how people can help and brags about all the people who sit on your board or are supporters in some way.  Board members have commented that this tool is pretty much what they need to carry around with them.  See my series of three blog postings detailing with how to develop a professional case statement:

  Blog: Part I- How to build the 10 sections of your nonprofit’s    professional case statement

   Blog: Part II- #1 Fundraising tool: Your professional case   statement

   Blog: Part III- Case statements

§  Tool #2 – Elevator Pitch – First, while the director or development staff person is supposed to know all the details about the organization, the board members ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW ALL THAT STUFF.   Second, board members and volunteers are better ambassadors than staff people because they are giving up time and money and aren’t getting paid.  They are driven by passion for the mission of the organization.  But they shouldn’t and can’t really tell the story the same way as staff people.  The elevator pitch helps the board members understand what the major themes are within the story and then they should feel free to tie those themes to the things that interest them the most about the organization.   See a sample elevator pitch

§  Tool #3 – alinea’s 3 Magic Questions – My last blog talked about these questions in great detail.  The purpose of sharing your story is to inspire people to want to give.  But inspiring them is not enough; there must be a next step or it’s frustrating for the potential supporter.  It’s not there job to figure out how to help.  Even if you’ve clearly laid out your vision for the future and what needs to happen to get there, if there is no more conversation, not much is going to happen.  The questions are:  (1) What do you think? (2) How do you see yourself getting involved?  and (3) Who else needs to know about what we’re doing?  If you try this, you will see how much can be achieved after one tour or during one conversation.   Read the Blog

Step #2 – Use the Tools

We don’t spend a lot of time on developing the tools.  We develop them so they’re “good enough” to use.  Our focus will be on getting the board members to start using the tools and share the story.  Sharing the story is what will increase awareness and resources, not the “marketing piece.” 

This is the hard part, because this is ABOUT YOU not the company and what you’re waiting for them to do.  The problem is, you haven’t done this before so you will be reluctant to get out there and start using the tools.  This is about learning a new way to think and behave and then developing a habit, and it takes a lot of support to accomplish this. 

I just viewed a recent TED Talk on U Tube by David Kelley.  The title of the talk is “How to build your creative confidence.” I immediately thought about the work alinea

does with our clients.  We don’t tell our clients what to do as much as empower them to be able to do it, and we use research-based approaches to do this.  When I listened to David Kelley talk about the psychology behind helping people overcome phobias, it reminded me of how some of the board members of our client organizations feel when we ask them to start cultivating relationships.  

It’s almost like a phobia.  There are board members that are just terrified of picking up the phone and calling a current donor just to say thank you and invite them to an event.  There are board members who have never even told their neighbors about the volunteer work they do and of course wouldn’t dream of asking them for support.  

We can talk about why this is – we are worried about damaging relationships – or we can just figure out how to help the board members feel confidence in sharing the story and making connections that could benefit the organization.   

Tool #1 – Expect to be uncomfortable -

This tool is a new habit of mindset.  You are learning something new, and when that happens, you become uncomfortable.  You’ve been there before when you start a new job, but you knew you would be nervous so you just plugged along until repetition and small successes develop your confidence.  It’s the same thing with being a board member.  You didn’t go to “board member school,” so you’re going to have to learn how to be an effective board member.  When you get uncomfortable, you will have to tell yourself to DO IT ANYWAY.  When you do it once, you get a little more comfortable.  Then you do it again, and you begin to really love cultivating relationships.  Two excellent books that provide some help understanding why this works are:  The Power of Habit; Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg and Subliminal; How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, by Leonard Mlodnow.

 

§  Tool #2 – Practice, sharing successes, and accountability – It starts with the first time.  As a board, give yourself homework and require everyone to report on how it went.  Also, add a regular agenda item called “community engagement.”  If you don’t commit to doing this, you won’t follow through, and you’ll get the same results you got before.  For example, have everyone commit to sharing the story with two new people each week and make observations about how people responded.  What kinds of questions did they have?  Were they excited?  Did anyone ask you how they could help?  When someone has a good experience, require them to share it with the group.  Celebrating each others’ small successes helps everyone build confidence to try it too.  Doing this weekly is important.  Remember that saying about it taking 27 days to develop a new habit?  Well, it’s going to take a lot of repetition for board members to do this naturally, and when they do, you’ll see significant results.

Step #3 – Tracking relationships and following up

If you actually try this, get ready, because the floodgates will open, and you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed with the generosity of people.  I’m not kidding.  If you do not follow through once you’ve initiated relationships with people who are inspired by the organization’s story, you will damage those relationships.

Put all the people your board members have inspired into a tracking document like excel or some other kind of data base that allows you to generate a weekly report of due dates and next steps.  Have each board member be responsible for cultivating three relationships and make sure there are next steps for each one, along with a due date.  The key to all of this is continuing to cultivate relationships.  At each board meeting, a report should be generated showing cultivation assignments for each board member and brief reporting on what’s been happening.  Board members will work with staff people to get the support they need. 

Following up with relationships could look like this:

• An email sharing a student success story. 
• A personal invitation to a student exhibition or other event. 
•  The receipt of a newsletter or invitation to an event.
• Scheduling a meeting to update the person on an initiative of interest to them.
• Asking their advice about a new program. 

The type of follow-up is not as important as the consistency of communication and outreach.  In addition to sharing good news about the organization, take the time to get to know the interests and priorities of the other person.  If you notice an announcement in the local business journal about their promotion, cut it out and send it along with a congratulatory note.  Care about the other person. 

If you decide to try these three steps to helping your board members LOVE RELATIONSHIP FUNDRAISING, please let us know how it goes.  Remember, it won’t be enough to just educate them on their role.  You must help them develop the confidence to do what you’re asking them to do. 

Deb