All Aboard: Engaging your board
January 23, 2020
Over the next few weeks, we’re offering you a series on best practices for board engagement.
Getting your board “on board” throughout the solicitation cycle is essential to closing gifts.
Why are so many non-profit staffs reluctant to engage their board? It can be a real challenge for some to ask their board for help. There’s an understandable dynamic at play that many nonprofit employees feel: “How can I get this board member to meet his or her responsibilities when, ultimately, I work for him/her?”
I recently spent time with Shark Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and asked for his help. He agreed because I asked. Remember: He who doesn’t ask, doesn’t get. Leaders put their shoes on one shoe at a time, just like the rest of us.
By partnering with CPR, some of our clients are doubling the size of their events in under four years, and others are closing campaigns at record speeds, exceeding goals and cutting costs.
Strategic prospect research transforms your organization’s fundraising. CPR refines and personalizes your cultivations and solicitations. But research is only as powerful as its implementation.
Very few nonprofits utilize their board to their full potential. Why is that? It’s tough enough to get busy people to show up for meetings, let alone convince them to provide lists of who they know. So why wait? From the public record, CPR can proactive identify contacts of your board. Then you’re freed up to get moving.
Here’s some friendly tips on how to personalize relationships with your board so that they want to help you:
- Touch some selectively, on their birthdays. Often, birthdays are public record and CPR can find them;
- Inspire your board: Remember the scene in the film Jerry Maguire, with the Rod Tidwell character? “Help me...help you!”
- Make your asks of your board members specific and not generalized.
Consider this: If you’re going to ask someone to help you, then which of the following approaches is more likely to work?
- Begging: “Do you know anyone who can help me?” OR
- Strategizing: “I notice you’re connected to so and so; you serve or served on such and such board with him/her. Would you be able to make an introduction for me please?”
The more specific the ask, the more likely it is to work. It’s all about relationships.
If we take good care of relationships with our stakeholders, then business takes care of itself. Do all that, and your board won’t get bored!
Contact CPR today for a free consultation.
Here is more in the series: