Board Members Must Be
Fully Equipped With Plans And Tools

Board-Meeting-Feature

As a board member you need to rely on your organization’s development staff to provide you with the tools and support to effectively solicit potential donors. If you feel you need more background, training, materials, etc., ask for them. Don’t wait until after your solicitation effort has failed and then say, “If you had only given me “X” we could have nailed that gift.” It is the development staff’s responsibility to supply you with what you need, but it is your obligation to ask for anything you feel is missing.

If you are a board member who understands the importance of board fund-raising efforts and who is committed to helping lead those efforts, I suggest that you sit down with the board chair, the executive director, the development director, and the development committee chair and assess the fund-raising quality of your board.

If it comes up short, determine why.

If you need to provide your board members with some of the training and information discussed in this article, do it.

If you need to add board members better suited to carrying out the organization’s fund-raising needs, find a way to add them.

If the organization needs more fund-raising know-how and expertise, find a way to provide it.

Fund-raising is too important to the continuance of an organization for board members not to personally commit to both doing it and providing the resources to create a successful fund-raising environment.

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A Board Member’s Commitment
In The Truest Sense Of The Word

Finally, I suggest that every board member sign a fund-raising pledge that would read something like this:

As a board member of ______________________, I pledge to support and take part in all of the organization’s fund-raising efforts.

  • I will actively solicit gifts for every fund-raising campaign we undertake.
  • I will carry the message of the organization’s value and importance to those with whom I work and socialize.
  • Recognizing that leaders must lead by example, I will make a gift to every fund-raising campaign the organization undertakes consistent with my ability to give and reflective of my commitment to the organization.

Signed: ________________________, Trustee

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In my opinion, any board member should be willing to stand by those words, and any organization needs board members who will.

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QUESTIONS:

1. Should Board members sign such a document?

2. If the Non-Profit Development department is not providing the tools, should Board members be required to solicit?

Please contribute your insight or the answers to the questions in the Comment section below.  Thank you!

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Written by Tony Poderis, tony@raise-funds.com. Excerpted with permission from Raise-Funds