Board fundraising and networking are often neglected tasks. But as we all know, board involvement is crucial to building a sustainable and successful nonprofit.
Creating accessible resources, offering adequate training, and showing appreciation will encourage board members to participate in fundraising obligations. Below we share a bit more about these three pillars to increase board member engagement and fundraising participation.
Prepare All Information in a Fundraising Kit
Give your board members the resources they need to be successful. To assist in your board member’s efforts to engage donors and sponsors, you should provide them with an outreach kit, a FAQ, a one sheeter about your organization, and any other information you think might be useful.
The easier you make it for your board members to fundraise on your behalf, the more likely they are to do it. In the outreach kit, we suggest including a sample introduction email that can be copy and pasted and a “script” to use when soliciting donations in person.
Include Board Member Appreciation in your Media Marketing
Share some love for your board members through your digital marketing efforts – this could be something as simple as an appreciation post on social media and in your newsletter, or you could highlight them on your nonprofit’s blog. Chances are, they’ll share the love with their network raising awareness for your nonprofit organization, ultimately increasing your nonprofit’s brand within their network and beyond.
Provide Effective Onboarding Training
It will be challenging to convince others to provide resources to your organization if your best agents – the board members – don’t know what your nonprofit does and how it benefits the community. Therefore, it is essential to provide your board members with training both on what your organization does and how it helps the community. Starting your board members off with a strong understanding of your mission and the benefits will create an environment where board member fundraising efforts can thrive.
It is also critical that you remember, your board members have the contacts and believe in your mission, but they likely aren’t fundraising experts. To equip your board members to fundraise, you will need to provide them some training. While hiring a professional trainer can be useful, it is not necessary or available to every organization. Instead, think about what you can do to ease the fears associated with fundraising and provide your board members opportunities to practice, like roleplaying or shadowing.
To sum this article up, we remind you that recruiting board members who believe in your nonprofit’s mission is critical when thinking about improving board engagement. Once you have the right people in place, providing your board members the necessary tools and resources will effectively improve their fundraising efforts.
