MY BOARD WON’T GIVE ME NAMES…and other tales of woe

While much of fundraising is fixated on making the ask, I would argue that the absolute hardest—and most important--part of this work is finding donors.  After all, you can’t ask if you don’t have someone to ask. 

“Where can I find donors?” is the second most asked question I get from clients, students, those taking my public workshops.  The first is “how can I get my board to fundraise?”

These are real, and very serious, questions.  Let’s look at equally real and equally serious answers.  And start with the first most asked question.

How can I get my board to fundraise?

If you think you can simply wave your hands at your board members and tell them to “go forth and raise money” and get a good result, you, my friend, are dreaming.  Despite all the advice out there to “put together a fundraising board,” in my experience (35 years and counting!), boards do not fundraise.

What?  I just let them off the hook?

No, of course not. 

What boards will do, if adequately training and supported, is to participate in the fundraising process.  That is, they can help you prospect (that second most asked question), cultivate, solicit, and—best of all—steward your donors.  They can be ambassadors and advocates.  But again, it won’t just happen.  You must train them.  (Consider downloading my free ebook, How to Engage Nonprofit Board Members in Fundraising) More importantly, you must help them to find the one or more parts of the process where they feel they will be successful. 

Success is an amazing thing.  It breeds more success.  While I truly believe that we learn the most from failure, success is a high that once experienced becomes a craving.  For years, both as a salesperson and, later, as a fundraiser, I was able to learn from my failures and push past rejections because of the high I would experience when a prospect said YES! 

Ensuring that your board members are participating where they will experience positive reinforcement is critical.

Personally, I like to start all my board members on stewardship.  Few feel threatened by saying thank you—you really made a difference to our organization.  And, as I am fond of saying, I truly believe that successful fundraising begins (and ends) with gratitude.

Success from stewardship will not just be the good vibes your board members will get from donors, but the fact that—guaranteed—your donor retention rates will improve.  And  by increasing the number of donors who make follow on gifts, you will be responding in large part to that second of most asked questions:

Where can I find donors?

This, to me, is the most difficult part of fundraising.  After all, the best, most compelling ask in the world is pretty useless if you don’t have the right prospective donor.  On the plus side, unless you are an absolute start up, you already have some prospects—individuals (or organizations) you have reason to believe care about what you are doing, are connected in some way to your organization, and have the capacity to make a gift at the level you are at which you will be asking.

The very best prospect is always an existing donor.  The second best is someone who hasn’t yet given but is connected somehow to your organization.  Third are those who used to give but haven’t given for a while. All—with the right outreach—are primed to make a first, second, or 30th gift! 

This is why your database (if you have one—or your list of donors if that is all you have) is your very best friend.  

Even as you are thinking how to reach out and ask these prospects to become donors, consider how you can also reach out and ask them who else do you know who might be interested in learning more about us?

And suddenly, you have a few more donor prospects.

Getting new donors, of course, means finding new prospects and they, too, are all around you. While it is lovely to imagine that new prospects will always come from your Board as they identify 5 new prospects every year, it has probably already become apparent that generally this does not happen.  So—for the moment—let’s put this to the side.

You can, however, ask your board to invite you to their professional organization meetings or bring you as a guest to their service club where you can mix, mingle, and find people you can reach out to in a few days to see if they might have an interest in learning more about your organization.  You can find other places where you can network and do the same thing.

One way I used to meet a lot of potential donors was to wear swag—a hat, a tee or sweatshirt, a jacket with my organization’s name and logo prominently displayed.  My team used to joke that I did more fundraising at the supermarket.  And they were right.  

People would come over and either ask me what the organization did or come over to tell me that they had heard really good things about us.  And yes, occasionally they would say the opposite, which I took as a wonderful opportunity to change their mind!

As I met new people and started moving them from suspect to prospect to donor, I would always ask a board member to make that journey with us.  For those who I thought might become more major donors, I would also make connections with others on our staff.  And always I would see if they would introduce me to their friends and colleagues.

Slowly, we would identify new donors.  And always always always, we would focus our efforts on keeping these donors, all of our donors, close.

As Board members started to see how well we treated our donors, how connected they all were, a minor miracle would happen.  YES!  They would start—with hesitation at first—to introduce their friends, colleagues, family members to our organization.

Not all, of course, become donors.  But many did.  And over time, with patience and a big vision, the tales of woe I had inherited along with my board turned into wonder at the terrific job my board members would do in joining me in our fundraising efforts.