Does Your Board Need To Fundraise?

I’ve been working on creating a fund development series of workshops with ESC, where we say at the start that fund development is about building relationship (which I 100% believe), is a team sport (which, coming from a higher ed background I sometimes question) and that the board must be part of your fundraising team (which I find myself wondering about since so many boards are definitively not fundraising boards).

Should boards fundraise? If yes, how do you move to a more inclusive board that reflects the community your organization serves?  If they DON’T reflect the organization’s community, how can they possibly know what is needed?  But if they do, for many nonprofits this truly puts paid to the idea that the board can raise the funds necessary for sustainability.

What if we separated governance—which worries about ensuring the organization’s resources are being used well—from fundraising, which ensure that the organization has resources.  What would that look like and, importantly, how would you make that happen?

Vu Le, in his book Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy says: “The expectation that most boards fundraise has negatively affected their ability to do their main function well, which is to govern, and it may e time to separate these two roles by removing fundraising from most boards’ roster of duties entirely.”

He goes on to say that the ED and staff would then be responsible for fundraising.  And surprise!  This is actually how it always has been.

It sounds good;  indeed, many ED’s will think it sounds excellent—no more expectation that the board will fundraise and no more disillusions because they won’t.  And perhaps best of all, no more complaining about boards who don’t fundraise.

But fundraising is about so much more than simply asking for—and getting—money.  It is all about building relationships, bringing awareness to the awesome work you do, finding supporters who often become your best ambassadors and advocates.

And then my big question:  How can you truly govern if you are not part of the solution to the problem of resources.  And all small nonprofits (which, by the way, is over 90 percent of all nonprofits) have a problem with resources.

Rather than excusing the board from fundraising, I think it is more critical that there is a commitment to making the board (and staff) understand the many ways they can participate in this important activity.  And that every single person at the organization—staff, board, volunteers, clients, their families and friends—understand that without adequate funding, the organization cannot be as successful as they could be. That means that instead of simply making mouth music about a culture of philanthropy, organizations commit to creating that culture, nurturing it, and ensuring it is a key component of everything the nonprofit does.

In my 40-some years in the nonprofit sector—I’ve seem clearly that organizations that actually have a culture of philanthropy have a thriving fund development program.  And those that don’t, don’t.

Start with something easy:  Ensuring that everyone knows your mission (not necessarily your mission statement) and understands what it means.

Stop talking about “hitting on” donors (or having a “hit list”) and never, ever fall into that trap of thinking that the only important outcome of fund development is money.  It’s not.  It’s a terrific by product, but the most important outcome is that individuals and funders see you as adding value to your community—a value they can support.

And once you have a culture of philanthropy, your board—along with staff, clients, and more—will be pushing their way onto the bus as it travels to places they passionately want to go.