Thoughts on Nonprofit Leadership
This article is about understanding and dealing with people’s reactions to change. People react to change in predictable ways, as do organizations, and they generally don’t like it, even if the change is for the better. Be ready for change. Change will happen if...
How engaged are your board members? According to a Boardable survey, 50 percent of respondents said that they felt more passionate and engaged about the importance of their work on a board or for a nonprofit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While 24 percent of respondents...
According to BoardSource, fundraising tops the list of board challenges, as it has since they first started collecting these data in 1994. In multiple studies, fundraising ranks first among board areas needing improvement.
According to data from an Evelyn...
You may look forward to board meetings as much as a visit to the dentist. In my experience, most board members are good people who know next to nothing about nonprofit governance. Yet, your board is the most valuable leadership asset your nonprofit has. Board members teach the...
As I state in The Sustainable High ROI Fundraising System, “Fundraising is a charged word, and there are different perceptions of what it means. Many of them are negative and tinged with the fear of asking for money. Board members are no different. In my experience, most board members...
As I muse in my latest book The Sustainable High ROI Fundraising System:
Ever heard anything like the following from your board members? I have.
- “If we could only get more grants.”
- “Agency X raised $100,000 through its event. Why can’t we do the same thing?”
- ...
Actions speak louder than words. As we pointed out in Overcoming Why Board Members Don’t Fundraise, one of the reasons why board members don’t engage in raising funds is they don’t have a good role model to learn from. And people need role models. If you expect your board to...
We all want to be acknowledged and appreciated. It is a human need to be recognized and validated. You can meet that need by incorporating opportunities for board members to be thanked for their efforts when you design your fundraising program.
Your Personal Efforts
You, as an executive director,...
To really excite your board about fundraising, focus on a transformational fundraising strategy rather than a transactional one. If your board is reluctant to fundraise, you may be giving board members transactional fundraising tasks to oversee, like asking for money and monitoring revenues....