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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 podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I'm going to talk about a perennial topic, which is how can I get my board to get engaged in fundraising? Now, I was inspired because I did a recent coaching call with my clients about this very topic and a lot of really juicy things came up. So today, I want to start today's episode with a question, and I want you to sit with it for a second. Here's the question. When was the last time one of your board members, proactively, that means without being nudged, without being reminded, without sending a calendar invite, actually did something to help bring in money for your organization? For some of you, that may have happened recently. If that is the case, I'm so happy for you. But I know having talked to lots of you out here in non profit land, that a lot of you, I'm guessing you've heard crickets. It's probably not because your board members are lazy or selfish or they don't care about your mission. It's something else entirely. And so today we're going to dig into what that so something else actually is we're talking about why boards don't fundraise and more importantly, exactly what you can do to change that. Because I promise you, there is a way through this. It's not fast and it's not magic, but it works. Let's get into it. So part one. The real reason your board won't fundraise. So here's the first thing I really need you to hear, and I really want this to land Most board members think that fundraising equals solicitation, equals asking people for money. And that's it. That is their entire mental model of what fundraising is. And when they picture themselves doing that, like calling up a friend or going to a dinner party or cornering someone, they know, they feel embarrassed, they feel awkward, they feel like they're going to owe somebody something. And honestly, that is completely normal human reaction. In fact, One of the biggest fears I hear from board members is that their friend is going to come up to them and say, oh my God, why did you give my name to so and so? She pressured me into a donation and now I resent you. So I'm here to tell you that that fear is totally reasonable. Social capital matters, reputation matters, your relationships. But here's what your board members don't know and what you need to help them understand Fundraising doesn't have to look like that. Fundraising can be about making introductions. It can be helping to qualify, whether someone might actually be interested. It can be cultivation, the dating phase, just getting to know people. It can be involved in the actual ask. Yes. But it can also be just stewardship, helping donors feel celebrated and seen after they give. What I want people to realize is that their board members are actually amplifiers, but that they need a solid strategy and clear lanes to plug into. And when you make clear all of the different paths that board members can plug into that have nothing to do with asking for money, all of a sudden you lower the temperature on participation. Lots of different ways to be engaged in fundraising that has nothing to do with solicitation. It opens up the possibility. But your board members don't know that and frankly, why would they? They're not fundraisers, that's your job. And so part of helping them to help is educating them on exactly what fundraising means. One of the things that I'm going to point to is I think our model of fundraising is very outdated. It was designed for a era and so without a clear upgrade and strategy to create consent based trusting relationships, of course we're going to be asking board members to risk their own social capital. There's a model that I teach called Engagement Fundraising operating system and it's built on consent and at its heart it's a five stage process. Engagement. We look first at who's actually engaged, who's actually showing up, who's actually reading our emails, not just a name attached to a well screen. Then we have a two step process, a pre qualification and a qualification process designed so that you're actually talking to people who want to talk to you. Not just do they have a lot of money, but rather is their alignment, interest, engagement, any signs of life and do I have permission to reach out to them? I'm not going to go into it too deeply here, but it is a whole strategy that really is about preserving the relationship and trust with a donor. Then we have a co created cultivation process and a co created proposal and stewardship sequence. What I love about this model is that it's completely consent based. You're not strong arming anyone, you're not pressuring anyone, and at any stage, the donor can opt out. You're simply inviting people into a conversation. So when I explain this model to board members, something shifts. The temperature in the room drops, you see, the shoulders drop. Because suddenly fundraising isn't this high pressure, transactional thing. It is genuinely about building relationships. It's about authentic connections. And most board members are honestly pretty good at that. The place where most board members can be most helpful is the very top of the funnel at the first engagement step. Opening the relationship, making the introduction. That's it. Then you take it from there. I want to take this opportunity, though, to go a little bit deeper. So here's part two. The real reason that your board isn't engaged in fundraising is that they have money stuff that nobody talks about. So this is part two, the money stuff nobody talks about. Okay. I want to get into something that might feel a little personal, so stay with me. Even your most high capacity board members, the ones who are genuinely wealthy, who write big checks for other things, can have really complicated feelings about money. Almost all of us do. A lot of us were taught that polite people don't talk about money, or that money is somehow dirty or icky, or that asking for it makes you pushy or crass. And most of us absorb these messages from our parents who absorb them from their parents. And these are people who maybe live through the Depression, who had a very specific and sometimes a very anxious relationship with money. And we carry all of that into adulthood without ever really examining it. So when you ask a board member to start having money conversations with their friends, you're not just asking them to make a phone call, you're asking them to override decades of conditioning. So that's why at your next board meeting, slash, board retreat, it's worth spending time unpacking the stuff about money. What do we make money mean? What do we think it says about someone? To ask for it or to give it or what? What role did money play in my family life? What significance do I give money? So when you can have that conversation openly, with some humor, with some grace, it does something. It normalizes the whole topic. It makes people less scared. And here's the reframe that I think is the most powerful of all. When we are fundraising at our best, we are not extracting something from someone. We are in service to them. We are helping them to tell the story they want to tell. Themselves about who they are in the world. Like, I'm the kind of person who saves whales, or I'm the kind of person who invests in young people, or I'm the kind of people who fights for the environment. The more that we as fundraisers can be the guide to the story that our donors seek to tell about themselves, the more we can help them live into that identity to experience it, the more loyalty they have to you. Not because you're asking them to give something up. In fact, quite the opposite. You're giving them. You're helping them become who they want to be. And that's a completely different thing. And when your board members understand that fundraising stops feeling like begging and starts feeling like service. Okay, let's talk about part three. Everyone gives. Yes, everyone. Let me address something I get asked a lot, which is, what do you do when your board has people who are at very different financial levels? Maybe you have some major donors on your board. Maybe you have some teachers and community organizers. Maybe you have some people who are on public assistance. How do you talk about giving? Here's my honest answer. Everybody gives. The amounts obviously will be different based on different people's capacity. But everyone on that board makes a personally significant gift, even if that's $20. I know that might feel uncomfortable to say, but here's why it matters. Money is energy. If you as a board member haven't personally given to this organization, you cannot authentically say to someone else, join me, and join me is the most powerful thing you can say in fundraising, not, will you give to my organization. Secondly, there's another practical reason for this. Many foundations require 100% board giving as a prereq for even being considered for a grant. So it's not just about optics. It can literally unlock funding. Now, beyond the gift, I absolutely believe that people can contribute in time as well as treasure and talent. For example, can someone host a site visit or make thank you calls or help in an event? Frankly, there's so many ways for everyone to help row the boat. But the gift, even a small one, needs to be there. It creates skin in the game and it creates belonging. Let me segue into another topic that is often a spicy one, which is the question of give gets. Now, a lot of organizations use what is called a give get, which is a fundraising commitment that each board member makes for the year. Give get refers to, here's the amount that you're going to give. Here's the amount that you're going to get. This is a give and get Not a give or get. So, in general, I am a fan of give gets. But I want to say there's an important caveat, and you're going to hear a lot of people with different schools of thought on this. This happens to be my school of thought on this. But I am a fan with a caveat. They should be a floor, not a ceiling, and they should be arrived at through conversation, not just handed down. So let me give you an example. When I had a board, our give get was $35,000. Obviously, some people were not going to be able to get there because they were teachers. They were just not in a financial position. So we had the meeting. Before the meeting, I'd sit down with each person individually, explain the intention behind it, and we figured out what made sense for them. Some people gave more, some people gave less. One woman told me that she would rather stick hot needles in her eye than fundraise. And so she just wrote a bigger personal check. By the way, she also hosted dinners at her beautiful townhouse. So it wasn't an either or. It was a best aunt. That worked. The point is, you have to write it down, you have to make it explicit, and you have to tie it to something real. Not just a number that you pulled out of thin air, but generally a number that's connected to what you actually need. So I like to think about a good rule of thumb is that board giving should represent somewhere between 10% and 30% of your operating budget, because that is the amount that you know you can count on every year. So that's the range I would aim for. Let's talk about part four, making the work visible. I'm going to guess that you have a board full of very high achievers. And over my 20 years in the nonprofit field, I've learned a little something about overachievers, which is that your board members are almost certainly high achievers in some domain of their lives. They're either superstar entrepreneurs or employees or leaders of companies. They want to know what winning looks like, and they really, really want their gold star. If fundraising work is invisible, it doesn't get done. Not because people are intentionally slacking, but because out of sight genuinely is out of mind. So part of your job as a leader is to make the work visible. So one thing I used to do at every board meeting was to put up a list of our top prospects and go through it together, line by line, and ask, who's taking responsibility for this one? What's the next step? When is it happening? I'd Celebrate it. By the way, so and so made a call last week, and it led to a meeting. Let's give them a round of applause. Public celebration of positive behavior is incredibly powerful. I always think about my days being in a middle school classroom. You don't call out the behavior that you don't want. You call out the behavior you do want. Oh, look, little Sally has put her pencil on her desk. Little Brian is open. His book is ready to go. So the distinction here is there's a difference between celebrating positive actions, like someone made an introduction or someone hosted a dinner and making individual giving amounts public. I'd keep the amounts private, but absolutely make the activity visible. You can share collective board giving as a group without a goal. You can share collective board giving as a group toward a goal without singling anyone out. The classroom analogy I always use, you're not pointing out who isn't performing. You're celebrating who is. For example, Jim introduced us to three new people this week. Lucy hosted her first dinner, water the flower, not the weeds. I want to give you one specific tool that might feel small, but is genuinely transformative. Delete the word help from your vocabulary when you're working with board members. Instead of, can you help us with this? Try and say, will you take responsibility for this by X date? So those are very different asks. Help is vague and optional. Take responsibility for is specific and accountable, and it treats the board members like the capable adults that they are. They respond to it. Try it and see. Part five. The Jeffersonian dinner. Your secret weapon. Okay, I want to spend some time on something I'm genuinely excited about because I've seen it work in ways that still surprise me. One of the underrated problems with boards is that the members don't actually know each other. That way, they see each other four times a year at board meetings. They might exchange a few emails, but do they know each other? Do they trust each other? Usually not really. And here's why that matters. For fundraising, it's hard to work alongside people you don't know. It's hard to feel like you're part of a team when you're essentially strangers who share a conference room a few times a year. So one of the most high leverage things you can do is intentionally create opportunities for your board members to actually connect with each other. One of the best formats I found for doing this is what I call a Jeffersonian dinner. Or honestly, let's just call it a salon dinner, because we can do better. So the format is simple. You bring people together, board Members, maybe some close allies. Around a table, you pick one deeply personal question, everyone answers it. That's it. But the question matters enormously. It should be personal, and it should connect to your mission. So as an example for a youth serving organization, we asked who or what helped you believe in yourself as a kid. And I have to tell you, people got emotional. A real estate exec talked about his high school swim coach and said, I haven't thought about him in 30 years. I'm going to call him. That's the kind of moment that changes the room, it changes the relationship. After something like that, people don't just feel connected to your cause, they feel connected to each other. And now you have a team. And when you do this Jeffersonian dinner, here's my second tip. Use it as a training ground, the second layer of why this works so well. You can use the dinner itself as a teaching moment. You're showing your board members exactly what an opening event looks like. The kind of intimate, meaningful experience that turns a stranger into a friend and a friend into a potential donor. After the dinner, you can say, that experience you just had. We want your closest contacts to have that same experience. We're not asking you to fundraise, we're asking you to host a dinner like this for your network. And the ask lands completely differently because they have lived it. They know it wasn't a pitch. They know it was genuine. Post dinner, you, as the fundraiser, take over the cultivation. All they had to do was open the door and finally, part six. Let's talk about changing the culture and being honest about how hard it is actually going to be. So I'm going to be really straight with you. Changing board culture is slow, it is hard, and some people are going to leave over it. That's just the truth. If you know me at all, you know I am not about sugarcoating it. In my experience, when you start shifting expectations, being much more clear about accountability and introducing new practices, you tend to get three types of people. Some people get on board immediately. Your early adopters, your new blood, the people who've been waiting exactly for this kind of clarity. Hold on to those people. Invest in them. Then there are some people who go quiet. They're hoping if they stay low profile, the change will pass them by. This is where individual annual conversations become essential. Sit down with each board member once a year, not just you, but your board chair, and talk about their contribution, what's gone well, what they found meaningful, whether this is still the right fit for them. Right now, it's not punitive, it's just honest. And then the third group is. Some people will leave mad. They'll say, this isn't the board I joined. And they'll be right. It isn't. That's okay. You can love some out. You can love someone out the door with grace and gratitude and still hold firm to where you're going. Now, I know some of you have been thinking about how you recruit new board members to bring in the shift. If you're bringing in a new board member during a culture shift, I'd strongly recommend recruiting in twos or threes. Why? Culture has a gravitational pull towards the meet. One new person will get absorbed. Two or three can start to shift the center. And it's important to be explicit with new recruits about what you're building. We are say something like we are intentionally changing the culture of the board. You are part of the new chapter. There are some old habits we're moving away from and we need people who are energized by that, not threatened. So have the conversation up front. You'll save yourself and them a lot of heartache down the line. One more structural piece I want to leave you with. Have some kind of annual evaluation process for your board members. A simple scorecard. What did we commit to this year? What did we actually do? Where do we want to go next year? This doesn't have to be formal or scary. It's a conversation. But without it, you have no baseline. And without a baseline, you'll keep getting the same results you've always. Alright, let's bring it back home. If your board isn't fundraising, it's not because they're bad people or the wrong people. It's because nobody ever gave them a clear picture of what fundraising actually is, what their role in it could be, or what kind of experience it could create for them or for your donors. Your job is to paint that picture, to lower the temperature, to make the work visible and expectations clear, to celebrate the wins loudly and to handle the misses quietly. And to build a team of people who actually know and trust each other enough to row in the same direction. None of this is magic, but it works. And once you get there, once you have a board that's genuinely excited to bring their people in, there's nothing more powerful in all of fundraising. If this is resonating for you, I am hosting a free webinar on Tuesday, April 28 at 12pm Eastern. Come bring your board members. It is a free webinar focused on boards and fundraising. I'll make sure to put the information in the show notes. But come bring your board members. We're going to talk about board fundraising until next week. Have a good week. Hey fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my Big Ask gift program@riawong.com gift 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.