Episode 137: How to Get Your Board to Fundraise: lead By Learning
As the Founder, your board is supporting your vision. But do you know what they are supposed to be doing, and how they are supposed to do it? If you're just telling your board they need to fundraise, you're not setting them up for success. Learn how the way you show up impacts the outcomes you get (or don't get) from your board.
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Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you doing everything in your organization, including fundraising, which your board is supposed to be doing? Are you begging them to fundraise month after month? If you can't figure out how to get your board to fundraise, which is what they're supposed to do, come check out this episode when I share how to get your board to fundraise.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn, where nonprofit leaders learn to fuse passion and commitment with proven business strategies to create long-term funding, impact and sustainability. And now here's your host and resident, Philanthrepreneur Amber Wynn.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Hey fam, it's your girl, Amber Wynn, and today we're talking about how to get your board to fundraise. I get this question all the time, or should I say the statement, my board is lazy. I think begging them Amber, they just won't fundraise. Let me start by saying that it starts with you. That's right. If you have started a nonprofit and you don't even know what a board's supposed to be doing, it is going to be challenging to get your board to do it. People say, oh, well, I recruited them because they had experience and they said they sat on boards before. Listen, it's just like going into a new job. Yes, you've got the skills, but what is the culture of the company? You've got to learn what it is that the company expects you to do. It's the same thing for a board, and if you are a brand new leader or if you are not as seasoned in terms of what it is a board is supposed to do, they're going to flounder.
(01:42):
They're going to flounder because they're looking for direction from the founder. Right Now, if you are a new executive director and you are not quite sure about what it is your board's supposed to do, here's what the first thing you need to do. You need to understand what the IRS has said a board's supposed to do. I'll just tell you, they're supposed to set the vision for the organization. They're supposed to guide the organization, make sure that it's being ran ethically and they're supposed to fundraise. It's not enough for you just to stand up in front of your board and say, I need you guys to fundraise. Right? There is a specific structure that needs to be followed. First thing you need to do is to get an outside person to come in and do board training. It's to set the tone right. Here's what the IRS says the board's supposed to do.
(02:34):
Here's what you guys are supposed to be doing. Set the tone and the structure so that everyone's on the same page. It's just like being in the family. Your cousins are raised one way, your uncles are raised another way, but y'all still family. It's still a board, but they have different experiences. When you sit on different boards, you have different experiences. So what you want to do is get everybody leveled up on the same page and then have them jump into fundraising based off of a specific structure. I'm going to pause for a minute, but when we come back from this commercial, I'm going to explain to you how to get your board on the same page for fundraising. If you're thinking about hosting a golf tournament or any other kind of event, make sure at the end of the event you generate a profit and not come out with a loss.
(03:30):
There's a formula for guaranteeing that your event will generate a profit. You'll find it in my Hotter price event. Tickets for Profit toolkit. Learn the insider secrets for how to ensure your event will always make a profit every time. Order your copy today. Hey, we're back. You're on air with Amber Wynn, and we're talking about how to get your board to fundraise. If at every board meeting you're standing in front of your board member saying, okay, you guys, you haven't fundraised, and if you're saying, okay, you guys, you haven't paid your board dues, it's because you don't have the structure in place. What I want you to understand is that a board is like a child. They need some structure, they need some direction. So the very first thing you want to do is to create a very accurate budget because if your board isn't clear as to what it is they're fundraising to, then they aren't clear.
(04:24):
If you say our budget is $350,000, then that is what their fundraising to. If you come in and you're like, well, I think we can do $50,000, then that's what they're going to fund raise too. In my program, the Nonprofit Mastery Academy, I help you establish what's called a funder ready budget, and in that budget it speaks to all of the things that you need in order to run a successful nonprofit. $50,000 is what a program budget is. You need to have your board fundraising to cover all of the expenses of your organization. So you start off with an accurate budget. How much does it cost to run your organization? Once you have that, those are your funding goals. Each one of those budget line items is what you're going to fundraise to. So now you know what you're fundraising to your budget line items.
(05:13):
Now your board needs to identify at least 10 streams of revenue. So these 10 streams of revenue is going to help them cover all of the costs that are associated with running this nonprofit business. What you want them to do is to volunteer. So you would hire a consultant. They would come in, they would do this training, and the board would say, oh, Amber Wynn, I'm interested in writing grants. I don't like galas. You want your board to volunteer to do whatever the fundraisers are. So Amber Wynn volunteers to write grants. That's going to cover a portion of the executive director's salary. Amber Wynn is also going to volunteer to do employee, so I'm going to sign the organization up for six employee giving programs. Why? Because Amber don't want to do a gala, but there may be another person who wants to do the gala, so that's what they're going to sign up for.
(06:08):
So what happens is now you've got your accurate budget. Now you've got your board who's fundraising to cover the accurate budget. You've got 10 streams of revenue. Now you've got a way for them to cover the budget. The last thing is that they're going to volunteer for each one of those fundraising activities. So what happens is during the monthly meetings, that's what they're going to talk about most times for those individuals who are chasing down their board members, trying to get them to come to the meeting, and when they come to the meeting, you begging them to fundraise and to pay their dues, there's no structure. Now you have a structure, right? So now you're saying to your president, run this meeting. The president should be running this meeting saying, okay, Amber, you volunteered to sign the organization up for employee giving report out. You volunteer to write the grants report out.
(06:58):
So now every month you as the founder, you aren't running that meeting. The president's having everybody to report out on those fundraisers that they committed to. That's how you get your board to fundraise. You create structure. Here's the other thing. When you recruit new board members, they come in, they undergo what's called a board orientation. So when they come in, they know the expectation. You say to them, here's the budget. You give them the budget. We have these fundraising committees. You can sit on one of those committees or you can create your own. Now you're starting to create a culture. If you just let people come onto your board, there's no structure. They're going to do what everybody else is doing, which is nothing. So it's important that you create a culture of fundraising, that there's a structure that your president is the one that's having them to report out every meeting.
(07:53):
Okay? So that is how you get your board to fundraise. If you're not sure about it, then it's important for you to learn yourself because you can't lead your organization if you don't even know when we come back from the next break, it is your turn to ask Amber. So we're going to ask Amber when we come back, are you looking to leverage your 501(c)(3) tax exempt status to get products and services donated for an event silent auction or to support your program but aren't quite sure what to say? Get the donation request letters toolkit. It provides you with the templates you can customize to fit any request, eliminate the guesswork of what to say, how to say it, and what to offer potential donors as benefits for their donation. You had no idea you should offer donors something in exchange for their donation.
(08:43):
Did you offering benefits triples your response rate? Plus the toolkit comes with the donor acknowledgement form template. It's the form you give them after they donate. This toolkit has everything you need for a successful donation request. Order your copy today. Welcome back. You're on air with Amber Wynn, and now it's time for you to ask me your pressing questions with Ask Amber. Today's question comes from Billy. Billy is writing me from Lancaster, California, and Billy's question is this, I don't know anything about starting a nonprofit. Where should I go to get clear, easy to understand information? Well, Billy, I'm going to go ahead and do a shameless plug right now and tell you that you should enroll in my nonprofit Mastery Academy program. In this program, I take you from beginning to the end, from just the concept to actually building out your board, which is what we're talking about today, to building out your accurate budget, which is what you need in order to get your board to fundraise and how to build out your programs, how to powerfully position yourself for grants and other funding.
(09:52):
Remember, a nonprofit is a business and it cannot survive solely off of grants. So you want to learn more than just how to write a grant. You want to learn how to create a sustainable nonprofit, and you get that in the Nonprofit Mastery Academy. So I'm going to post in the notes the link for the Nonprofit Mastery Academy so that you can get all of the information you need in just the way you want it, which is a clear, easy to understand delivery, and it's going to be laid out all for you by yours, truly, Amber Wynn. So thank you for that question. If you have any questions for me, feel free to check me out on any of my socials and post your question, and you never know, I might actually read it on air. So now we're going to transition into my favorite time of the episode.
(10:42):
It's when I get to shine the light on the most amazing people in the universe, you my nonprofit leaders. I've also expanded this section to include my nonprofit consultants because we support you, we help you to scale, and I wanted to shine the light on the people who are doing the work to support the most amazing people on the planet. Today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Tavia Woolley. Tavia Woolley is the executive director and founder of Empower Them. I'm excited about this episode because usually we talk about organizations that are doing direct services. Tavia has created an organization that empowers nonprofit leaders to address systemic issues, right in government, in organizations that allows them to be the voice for their community, right? She's going to talk a little bit about this in her interview, but we have a tendency to look to people to say, oh, we need a leader to step up and Tavia wants all of us to be leaders. So what she does is she leverages her experience to teach people how to actually engage with government agencies, how to engage with funders so that they can expand what it is that they do. And as always, we're going to break this interview down into four parts. So let's take a look at Tavia from Empower Them on part one of Nonprofit Spotlight.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
So the first program we started off with was the Leadership and Policy Academy, teaching people how to be community leaders. When we think of leadership, of course, we're thinking of the Malcolm X, the Martin Luther King, the Barack Obama, all the big names, the Oprahs, the everybody, and there's a whole lot of in between. And whenever we have a national crisis or a tragedy, I would always hear people say things like, well, we need specifically in the black community, we need a black leader. And my response would always be, but everyone has the ability to be a leader. We need more leaders instead of the one leader. And so then that's when the Leadership and Policy Academy was founded in the programming. That's what we started with, is teaching people how to be community leaders, how to take their natural skills and strengths and use them as a leader in their respective field.
(13:09):
And then the policy part, we teach the institutional level policy working with hospital schools all the way up to the legislative policy. How do we influence laws and how do we educate people so that they can talk to their everyday political leaders and their communities about their concerns? So that was our cornerstone program, and that is one of the programs that goes strong. We still train people every quarter on leadership and policy advocacy and how to get involved from a practical standpoint. So over here at the Empower Collective, we're not going to sell you a hoop drink. We're not going to tell you, you about to go to the MBA as soon as you get started. Well, we are going to say is this is how today you can influence something today in your life, and then hopefully they build up the courage and the momentum to keep going, and we provide additional support such as case management services, because oftentimes in our communities, people are teetering on instability. And so we know that people would engage in the work if they knew that they had additional support for housing and security, food, things of that nature. So we provide advocacy support services. We link them to resources in the community so their immediate needs are getting met so that they can operate and engage at a higher level.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Well, welcome back. If you want to see the full episode of this conversation with Tavia of Empower Them, be sure to go check out the full interview on my channel. Otherwise, keep coming back week after week because we've got the other three parts that we're going to share today. We've talked about how to get your board to fundraise. It requires work, y'all. A nonprofit is a business, and you've got to create a structure. It's just as simple as that. If you are not certain, I've got all type of resources for you. Go check out previous episodes. I talk about board development. You can also go to my website, www.amberwynn.net. I've got plenty of resources for you there. The goal is to give you as much information as you can, and I am here for you. So if you enjoy this week's topic, be sure to subscribe. Be sure to share this episode with someone who you think could get value from it, and be sure to take care of yourself, like you take care of your community. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Head over to www.amberwynn.net/podcast for the links and resources mentioned in today's podcast. See you next time.
