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Hey, you, It's Rhea Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes. And then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up. Foreign. Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, Nonprofit Lowdown listeners, it's Ria Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Okay, Real talk, y'. All. I did not want to do this episode. I tried to avoid this topic like the plague. I did everything I could to not do this episode, including, but not limited to trying to organize my sock drawer. But here it is. I could not delay the inevitable. Today we are going to be talking about boards and the role of boards in fundraising. Now, the reason why I tried to avoid this topic is not because I don't think that boards are essential to a major gift strategy. Quite the opposite. I think they are fundamental to your success. However, the reason I avoided this topic is I think it gets into a whole other can of worms. I know that there are a lot of my colleagues out there that deal specifically with boards. And frankly, I'll just be honest with you, there's a lot of dysfunction when it comes to the board and exec relationship. Now, when it works well, it is a beautiful thing. But for every highly functioning board exec relationship, there are a hundred dysfunctional ones. So I kind of, I didn't even want to wade into this water because it just felt a little murky. But I realized that if we're talking major gift strategy, we cannot delay any further. So today we are talking about dun, dun, dun. Why boards and executives keep talking past each other about fundraising. So you're going to want to tune in, probably take some notes, and if you're a board member, you want to share this with your exec, you want to share this with your board. So let's get into it. Now. Let me start with an analogy for you. A picture, if you will. So imagine that you're in a car together and you're driving down the yellow brick road towards major gift success. And the board is in the passenger seat and the executive director is behind the wheel or whomever is responsible for fundraising in your organization. And let's just say that the car keeps breaking down or the car keeps ending up in a ditch. And the board says, you keep driving us into trouble. And the executive says, you're not giving me enough gas. And by gas, I mean introductions to prospects who can write big checks. Right? Just keep pouring that gasoline in on this ill fated journey. Both parties are exhausted. But here's the part that nobody wants to say out loud. The problem isn't the driver and it isn't the gas. The problem is the car. The system itself is broken. And until you look under the hood together, you're going to keep blaming each other for outcomes and neither of you can fully control. Now, I hope that provides some measure of relief to all of us. Because the truth is, we've all inherited a system of fundraising that was designed for a different era. It doesn't work today. I don't know if it ever really worked, but it's like the very definition of insanity. We keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And the fact is, we just have to acknowledge and say the quiet part out loud, which is the system is broken when we have a healthy fundraising system. Here's what boards are supposed to do, but they're rarely shown how to do it. In a healthy system, boards are not, listen to me. Not there to chase donors, write appeals, or magically bring in money. Like magical money fairies. Boards support fundraising by doing something far more important. They de risk it. I'm going to get into what that means. They de risk it and so they create clarity so the asking doesn't feel reckless. I'm going to walk you through what that actually looks like in a modern fundraising operation. So let me take a step back. For those of you who have heard any of my content, I talk endlessly and with great admiration for a framework that was developed by my friend Greg Warner called the Engagement Fundraising Operating System. I'm not going to get too into the weeds of what that looks like step by step. I think my previous podcast got into the details of that, but briefly. A lot of us have inherited this system where it looks like identification of prospects, then qualification of prospects, then cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. So it's a five step process. In the Engagement Fundraising Operating System, we actually have a six step process that is similar but not the same as the old model. So instead of identification, we have engagement. So first we're looking at who's engaged with us, who's opening our emails, who's coming to the things, who's responding, like who actually has shown some level of interest, then what's interesting is we break the qualification up into two stages, pre qualification and full complete qualification. So in pre qualification, we're looking at key indicators of major gift readiness like capacity, timing, reason, engagement, and finally consent. Do we have their consent to actually reach out to them? Then in the complete qualification conversation, we are asking for their consent and inviting them into a process. So one of the big problems that you all have out there is that you're chasing people who you've quote unquote added to your caseload, who have never consented to be in your caseload. And that's why they're not returning your phone calls. Because. Because they don't want to be there, they never asked to be there. And yet because they've given money in the past, or because their friend said that they have money, or because Wealth Engine said that they have money, you've decided that they are in your caseload. It's like I remember when I was in high school and I had a crush on this boy named Alex. In my mind, he was my boyfriend, unbeknownst to him, however, so he had no idea that he was my boyfriend. In my mind then, instead of the traditional cultivation process where you as a fundraiser are kind of thinking about whatever things might be interesting to them, to quote, unquote, cultivate them, you actually have an engagement roadmap that is agreed upon that lays out the kinds of activities and steps that we have both agreed to build our relationship such that we then get to a solicitation. But it's not solicitation in the way that a lot of us have been trained, which is like I'm gearing myself for a big ask and then I get some amount of money out of my by face and frankly, guilty as charged. This is what I taught too, because this is how I was trained. But instead of that, we actually co create a proposal for funding. So by the time they see it, we've already talked about it, we've already talked about the amount, we already talked about the project, we've already talked about what would be in alignment. And then we move into the stewardship phase. The stewardship phase mirrors that of the cultivation phase, which is we laid out, we calendarize it. Okay, so that's a very brief explanation of the engagement fundraising operating system. I'm not going to spend too much time in that. But I will say this is. I want to walk through the ways in which boards should be engaged specifically with this framework. Now, the reason why a lot of boards lean out is that there's not a specific strategy for major gifts other than introduce me to rich people and I will ask them for money. Nobody is going to do that. That is not a strategy. That's coercion. So let's talk about each of these steps here. So let's talk about the first step in the engagement process, or what is known as the identification process. In the old model, engagement is not about asking at this point, it's about noticing. It's about noticing who's showing up. It's about noticing who's opening your emails. It's about noticing who comes to your events. Right. And so the boards help by signaling which relationships matter now, opening doors without pressure and giving social permission for conversations to happen. So this is where boards say, yes, this relationship belongs inside our mission. So without that permission, without those early indicators, staff either hesitate or they push too hard. Now, remember, just because someone is engaged, just because someone is identified as a prospect, doesn't mean that they're automatically added to a caseload. No, no. There are other steps to take beforehand. In fact, two other steps. So the second step after this is pre qualification. Now, I'm not going to get into the details of pre qualification, but essentially pre qualification is where we create mechanisms for people to raise their hand to say, yes, I actually am qualified on a basic level to be considered a major donor, because I've indicated that I actually have money to give. I've indicated that I have a reason. I've indicated that the timing is right. I've indicated that I'm engaged in some way. So the point of pre qualification is seeing who deserves time before we invest the energy. And the way that boards help in this step is that they align on what right fit looks like. They help to name which prospects align with our values, our timing and our reputation. And what they do is they help the staff stop chasing every possible dollar, because that is what leads to burnout. And so boards at their best are helping to discern, identify, and with great discernment, help the staff to focus their efforts and energy in a world of constraints. But we're not done yet, friends. No. No. Then we move on to qualification. And in the qualification step, we're asking deeper questions like interest, capacity, timing and motivation. And we do it on purpose. And this is where we ask consent. And the boards are helping us by normalizing curiosity instead of urgency and reinforcing that it's okay to learn before asking and offering reputational cover so staff don't feel like they're overstepping. They can be helpful in laying out what the process looks like, which is where fundraising stops being awkward. Then let's say someone has opted in, they have consented to be in your caseload. This is where cultivation begins. Where boards can be helpful in cultivation is stabilizing the relationship. So cultivation isn't about the dinners, it's about the continuity. Boards can help strategically by showing up consistently, by helping to reinforce the mission and ensuring the donors experience the organization, not just a staff member. So this is where donors stop boarding bonding to individuals and start trusting the institution because they see multiple faces of leadership along the journey. Then we move into the co created proposal for funding. And this is where boards make asking responsible. This is the moment everybody fears. This is the moment that we have all geared ourselves up to and that we feel nervous about. But it doesn't have to be this way. Boards help by ensuring that the asks are contextual and not confrontational. They're there to help us make sure that the timing makes sense and supporting proposals that reflect a shared priority, not desperation. This is where asking feels aligned instead of risk. And then finally, stewardship. This is the area where boards could really shine. Boards are protecting the future. So stewardship isn't about the one off thank you notes. It's not about the naming rights on a building. It's not about the phone calls. It's about the continuity of meaning. And boards help by reinforcing gratitude without immediately pivoting to the next ask. They support long term relationship thinking and they ensure donors know that their gift mattered and what comes next. And this is where the retention happens, such that you're building a base of loyal fans. Bigger picture, the staff runs the strategy and the board is brought in at strategic points in order to de risk and support the strategy. Now here's why this breaks down. Let's call it the elephant problem. If you've ever heard the analogy of a bunch of blind men touching an elephant, this is perfect here because everyone is blind. Everyone is just kind of touching their own part of the elephant. So boards are touching one part of the elephant, execs are touching another and the staff are touching a third. But because they're blind, they don't actually see the elephant as a whole. And so the board might think that the elephant is just a long nose and the exec might think that the elephant is just big ears and the staff might just think that this is one big wrinkly animal. But without a view of the entire elephant, we don't have a clear picture of what this animal actually looks like. And so because we're only touching our little piece of the elephant, everyone is convinced they understand the problem but are only releasing a piece of it. Because if you don't have a shared view of the whole system, you end up fixing the wrong thing. So for example, the board might say we need more money and the executive might say we need more capacity and the staff might say we need clearer directions. All of these things are true and they're all incomplete without a shared reality. You can't tell who whether the issue is an engagement issue, a prioritization issue, a permission issue, a timing issue, or a follow through or a strategy issue. So everyone keeps adjusting their piece of the elephant and nothing fundamentally changes. I hope that analogy made sense to you folks. So having observed all of that and having worked with boards and hundreds of nonprofits all over the world, I want to present to you why I'm hosting my upcoming work session. So let me be clear. This is not a webinar. This is not a training. This is a work session. It's happening on Wednesday, February 11th at 12pm Eastern. We will put the registration in the show notes for you. What this is, is a work session that is designed to help boards and executives look at the same fundraising system, identify where the holes are in the system, and for the love of God, let's just stop blaming each other for outcomes created by a broken structure. It's not the execs fault, it's not the board's fault. It is the system's fault, or should I say lack of systems fault. And the takeaway from this session is that you'll walk away with a clear 90 day plan to stabilize the engine. So in this 90 minute session, we'll walk through the full engagement based fundraising operating system, we'll complete a live system diagnostic, we'll identify which stage is breaking down, we'll clarify what the board actually needs to do and more importantly, what it doesn't. And then we'll map the next 90 days in a way that feels responsible, not just reactive. But if you are listening to this and if you're a board member or if you're an exec to please hear this, do not come alone. If you are a board member, bring your executive. If you are an executive, bring your board member. If you're a staff member, bring your exec and a board member. So bring your board chair. Bring a finance or governance leader. Bring someone who helps hold the system. Because fundraising only gets safer when leadership sees the same thing at the same time. You can't fix what you don't share and you can't install a system where everyone is diagnosing a different problem. So if fundraising currently for you feels heavy or risky or overly dependent on one or two people, it's not a failure of effort. It's a signal that the system needs attention. So join us. It's a free session. I'm going to put the registration in the show notes. It's February 11th at 12pm from 12 to 1:30. There will be no replays. So. So please join us live and be ready to be brutally honest and be ready to work. Bring your board member or executive partner and let's just stop blaming the driver, the gas or each other and actually fix the dang car. You know what I'm saying? All right. I hope to see you there on Wednesday. See you next week. Hey fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my big Ask Gift program at riawong.com ask bag. Say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to confidence with my program. Get expert strategies and personalized support to secure those game changing donations. Don't let fear hold you back. Join me and take your fundraising to new heights. We're enrolling now@riawong.com bag that's rhea wong.com bag so if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.