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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. Welcome to nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, guys. Listeners, it's Rhea Wong with you once again with non profit Lowdown. All right, here's the deal. I have received so much positive feedback about my last podcast about boards that we're gonna do it again. So I want to say it again. Try not to do this, but here it is. Here we are. We need to talk about board members and fundraisings, particularly with major gifts. Let me give you a hot take on this. Your board isn't lazy. Your board is not trying to avoid fundraising. What they are trying to avoid is embarrassment. That's right. I said the quiet part out loud. They are trying to avoid being embarrassed. They are trying to protect their reputations. They're not avoiding fundraising. They're avoiding. They are avoiding embarrassment and social risk. So this is a quick podcast. Listen to the end, and if you get to the end, you will have some clear guardrails and a board roll that actually works. Look, I am speaking from the experience of having both been an executive director and a board member. And I've seen it from both sides, and I understand from both sides. I'm going to break it down from my perspective. From my perspective, here is the real problem. I'm just going to name it because it's something that we don't often talk about. In the mind of the executive director, there's a story that they tell themselves. And the story is, my board won't fundraise. No matter what I do, no matter what scripts I give them, no matter what emails I draft for them, they won't do it. And as an executive director, I get a little resentful. I'm like, I am out here doing all the things, filling out the grant applications, organizing the gala. All I need them to do is just pick up the phone and invite some other friend. Is that too much to ask? Am I asking for the moon out here? Here is the reframe that I invite you to consider. It's not that they don't want to do it. It's not that they don't want to help. It's that board members who are not actually engaged in fundraising or even resistant to fundraising have a couple things that might be going on. One, they may have their own fraught relationship to money. And I, I think this is the work that every single fundraiser needs to do out here in these charity streets, which is how do you unpack the story that you tell yourself about money? And it honestly doesn't even matter if you have a lot or you don't have a lot, or if you were raised with a lot or you weren't raised with a lot. We all have a story about money, and frankly, a lot of us have very dysfunctional stories about money. So that would be the first thing I would think about, is maybe they have their own money story. Even if from the outside looking in, you think that they might have a lot, it does not mean that the story is one of abundance. It could very well be a story of scarcity. Board members may not be doing what you need them to do because they're unclear on the expectations. They don't know what you want them to do. They were never recruited with the idea that they were expected to do. So they don't know what you're going to do with the names that they bring forward. Most board members think that fundraising equals solicitation. They're worried that you'll burn their social capital. And honestly, I get it. Nobody wants to run into your friends at the next cocktail party and have them ask, hey, why'd you give my name to so and so? Like, it's just super awkward now that they're calling me and asking for money. The truth is that a lot of fundraisers, if they do have a strategy, have not always laid the strategy out for, for their board members. And so the board members don't really know what to tell their friends other than, hey, this fundraiser is going to call at you. It's like, yeah, gee, thanks. Could you also just put a sharp stick in my eye while you're at it? And then one of the last reasons why your board member may not be engaged in fundraising is, and I don't blame anybody for this, they are allergic to transactional asks. Nobody likes to feel that they are just an ATM and nobody wants to put their friends in that position. And so when you position and ask, not that you would, because you are a sensitive and relationship based fundraiser, but essentially when it boils down to why don't you just ask your rich friends to come to this event, or why don't you ask your rich friends for money that feels transactional? So what I want to reframe here for you is not that your board doesn't see the importance of the mission. It's not that they don't want to be helpful. It's not that they don't think that you're out here working your little tush off. It's that they are avoidant when there is a systems failure, not a motivation failure. And if we dig one level down, what's actually happening psychologically is that they are afraid to burn their social capital because their social capital equals trust currency. As of this taping, it is February 11th, and right now, we have just been, as a public, on the receiving end of millions of Epstein files that have just been released into the universe. And what I find so very interesting about this, aside from the obvious terribleness of the situation, is the ways in which Epstein was able to curry favor through an intricate network of. Of careful relationships. And I think that is really instructive, because if you really think about it, this is how we all act. We all have a brand. We all have a reputation. We all want to make sure that we're seen positively by the people that we respect and like. And therefore, if you are asking me to make an introduction on an organization's behalf, essentially you're asking me to spend some of that carefully constructed, curated social capital that I have honed over time on your behalf. Now, if you ask me to do such a thing, there are a couple of things that you should be aware of, because this is what I fear as a board member. I fear looking foolish. I fear looking like I am just using people. I fear not being able to answer basic questions about what the organization does and why I care. And I fear that somehow a relationship might be damaged that I depend on, either professionally or personally. And these, frankly, are very real fears, because I think a lot of us have been on the receiving end of bad fundraising, and we've seen this happen in real time. So I want to take a step back and talk about what the role of the board actually is in fundraising. And it is the following. Staff executes, board de risks. So the mistake that I see a lot is that staff members make the mistake of thinking that board members are involved in the execution of the strategy instead. And I know a lot of you are out here, especially in the smaller shops, and you're like, well, yes, they should be involved in the execution of the strategy. What I would say is, they are not responsible for the creation and execution of the strategy. They are assets to be brought in at strategic moments in the donor journey process. But their main goal, their main value add, is that they de risk. So what do I mean when I say de risk? A couple different things. They're giving you, by association, a halo effect. So it's a halo of trust. Inherently, donors, when introduced to a fundraiser, are mistrustful. Not because of you, not because of anything personal, but because, of course, you don't know them, they don't know you. Your first thought is, what do you want from me? How are you going to manipulate me to get what you want? I think we need to get over this chasm of distrust, like we're a used car salesman. Now, obviously, this trust factor, this chasm is bridged much faster if I'm introduced to you by somebody that I trust. So what I do is I transfer the trust that I have for this person, person A, over to person B. And so board members can de risk by a credibility transfer. The second way that they de risk is warm context. So every single board member should be able to tell a story about, here's why I personally care about this mission. For all of you listening, if you are considering an upcoming board meeting or an upcoming board retreat, I highly recommend that you do some work to help boards articulate why this matters to them. And that does not mean making them memorize an elevator speech. It means helping them to create a brief introduction about why this matters to them personally. Three another way they de risk is permission based connecting, not coercion. So what that means is when they're out in the world, they are asking their friends and family, do I have your permission to introduce you to someone? Right. We want to work in a consent based way. The last thing we want to do is to push someone into a situation without their consent. This is true for the entire way that I conceive of major gift fundraising. It should be consent based, right? Your donor should know what you're doing. They should opt into a process. They should agree to be on a journey with you. Otherwise, from the beginning, you're operating from a place of distrust. So consent based. And then finally, strategic support at key moments, not busy work. If you have a board member who's sitting there offering to do things like clean up your database or stuff envelopes, please try not to let them do that. Where they can really shine, where they can add the most value, is to help support you in the face to face frontline fundraising. That could look like accompanying A donor on a site visit that could look like accompanying you on a solicitation, that could look like making a warm introduction, that could look like doing some stewardship, right? So you want to be strategic about their time, energy and reputation. The point here is that boards don't need more courage, they need guardrails. Let me talk about what I mean by guardrails. If you think about fundraising like a game, every game needs rules. And so by creating these parameters and rules of engagement, board members have a much clearer sense of what to expect. So here are some board safe rules that you might consider implementing at your organization alongside your board so that everyone is on the same page. 1. No surprise asks board members donors. Nobody ever walks into a solicitation without being told in advance that it is a solicitation. Right? We really want to focus on consent and transparency. Nobody ever walks into an ambush. 2. Board never solicits a loan. Now, this can vary. There are some board members who feel very comfortable soliciting, but for those that do not, you can say the rule is that the staff owns the ask and the board supports supports the context. 3. Board only invites when they can protect the relationship. So making it clear to your board members when a relationship is owned by them and when a relationship is owned by the organization. This helps because again, nobody wants to be in an awkward position where they make the introduction to someone and the person says that they want to opt out and the staff continues to contact them, it makes it very awkward for the board member. However, I will also say that it goes the other way too. If, for example, someone does make a donation, in my mind, the organization now owns the contact. Now, the contact at any point can say, I no longer want to receive information or I'm no longer engaged or take me off your mailing list. But once they make the donation that is a step forward, that the board member is no longer allowed to say you have to delete them off your rules or whatever. And then finally the guardrail is that every board action has a script and a next step. We want to make it easy to do business. So if we are relying on our board members to reach out to their friends and we haven't provided them with the script, or we haven't provided them with a clear next step, or we haven't provided them with the link to book a call with me or whatever it is, or here's the link to the invitation to the gala or whatever, then you're asking them to do too much. And frankly, if you don't make the road easy for them to do a thing. They're likely not going to do a thing. Here's some mini scripts that you can use. For example, here's an intro email. I'd love to introduce you to X because this organization matters to me. Because why not a solicitation? Just a hello and a quick story. Once they make the introduction, the board members can then follow up and say anything you're curious about after meeting them. At that point, the prospective donor can then choose to step forward or step away. We want to make sure that everyone feels safe and that everything is consent based. Now the other way that we can make sure that board members are clear about their role in fundraising are some minimum board expectations. And again, if we haven't made our expectations clear, we can't be disappointed when they don't meet them. It's like having kids. You have to set your expectations out clearly. My recommendation here are some minimum expectations that I would put forth to the board for consideration. One, a pipeline review per month, every month, 15 and 20 minutes. I would expect the board to be engaged at looking at the names in the pipeline and providing context and some color around moving people through the pipeline or in some cases taking them out of the pipeline entirely based on what they know about them. 2, 1 Introduction per quarter or one stewardship touch per quarter. This is essential because our boards are the main driver. Think of your boards as ambassadors in the world. If you have ambassadors in the world, you want them to continue to bring new people into the fold. If they're not either bringing new people or helping you hold on to someone, they are not really doing their job as ambassadors. And then the third, and this is just a minimum show up for one moment, that matters. So often I see board members being on the board of organizations that they haven't really felt the magic, right? They haven't gone on the site visit, they haven't met the kids, they haven't seen the work in action. And so I think it is a very a reasonable expectation that board members need to at least touch the program once throughout the year. That could look like a site visit. It could look like coming to a celebration. That could be a volunteer, but it should be a requirement of board membership. If the board rule is vague, then it becomes optional. You need to set out the terms of your expectations. Finally, if your board is engaged, if your board is not engaged, don't guilt them. Design for safety. If this is resonating for you and you want a little bit more clarity about how your board members can help you secure more of those major gifts. I invite you to book a donor growth evaluation call with our team. We'll walk through your current situation. We'll help you to identify areas where you can grow and if and when it makes sense, we will invite you to consider joining our Big Ask Gift program until next week. Get that money honey. Hey fundraisers looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my Big Ask gift program@riawong.com 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 riawong.com bag. So if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.