 Okay, let's get started. So welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining me this afternoon for our webinar on getting your board on board with fundraising. I really hope that you find some useful information here. I hope that we're able to get a lot out of this today. My name is Lori Maxwell. I am a Community Development Manager here at Mighty Cause. I have worked with nonprofits throughout my career in fundraising and so you know I've worked with a number of boards and I hope that I have some insights to share with you today. A little bit about Mighty Cause, in case this is your first time with us today or you haven't heard of us before, we are a year-round platform that specifically is designed to help nonprofits with their fundraising efforts. You're welcome to follow us on all of our social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You'll get regular fundraising tips and strategy from us. Today what we're going to cover are some of the basic board functions, setting board fundraising expectations, communicating those expectations, agreements, and accountability for your board members, and then how to make it easy for your board members to fundraise. Now most of you are probably very familiar with what a board of directors is supposed to do. Here I've highlighted just you know broad strokes of what that looks like. The mission of course the board of directors is going to determine the nonprofit's mission. They're going to write and approve the statement and they're going to determine their primary constituencies. If and when an executive director is needed, the nonprofit board is going to recruit, evaluate, and hire that ED. They're going to provide financial oversight, governance, and planning. They're also going to be involved in board recruitment, which we're going to talk about a little bit more today. They're going to enhance the nonprofit's public standing, help with programs and services, and then finally on this list they're going to support the executive director. The board of directors of course is there to maintain the mission of the nonprofit, but ultimately they're there to collaborate with the staff. So there's often I feel this divide where the board of directors wants to go one way and they feel that they have the say to do that. It really needs to be a collaborative effort and again we're going to talk about those agreements today, which is part of that conversation. The number one challenge for boards that we see across the nonprofit sector is fundraising. Some of board members they just don't feel comfortable fundraising. Some simply just say you know what I don't like it. I don't like to do it. We also know that this is the area where nonprofits need the most improvement and in order to address this it's important to understand why board members feel uncomfortable with fundraising. More often than not it's that they feel overwhelmed or they just don't know how to fundraise and that's where you come in as well as your staff and any volunteers that you have. What you would like to start or what I would like you to start by doing is to ask yourself these three questions. The first step in getting your board excited about fundraising is defining the expectations so that you have a very clearly defined parameters. What are they being asked to do? How are you communicating that to them? Are you giving them enough time? Are you giving them enough resources to get that done? Let's take a look at setting some of those board fundraising expectations. First you want to focus on realistic and doable tasks. So it's really important that you focus on things that can be reasonably accomplished and aren't going to overwhelm the members of your board. You want to understand who sits on your board, where they come from and their place in the community. That's a really important step in being able to set reasonable expectations. Each individual board member is going to be able to bring something very specific to the table. So you should look for opportunities to tailor your expectations on an individual level. You may also remind your board members that they can give and get. Personal contributions, be that time or financial contributions are definitely part of the ask, but fundraising should absolutely be too. This is what I like to call the choose your own adventure approach. So you want to make sure that multiple fundraising opportunities are available for your board members to consider. This is not going to be a one size fits all kind of project. Each board member, like we said before, is an individual. They're going to have different strengths. So you want to make sure that you're not setting them up to fail. All of these options that you see on this slide here are perfect to give us an opportunity to your board members and then let them kind of create their own path. Some people are going to feel comfortable going to their friends and family asking for support. Others might feel comfortable going to their companies. Each of those is a great way to fundraise, and that should be something that's available to each board member. How are you communicating these fundraising expectations once you've set them out? Clearly set expectations are really important. Once you know what the expectations are going to be for your board members, you're going to want to clearly communicate those so that there is no confusion. You may want to consider a formal job description for open board seats that makes the fundraising responsibilities clear. Creating a formal job description for board members is a great way to have in writing what each person is expected to contribute. This job description can be tailored for each individual so that every description that is agreed upon by the board member is specific to them. Reviewing this during the interview process, during board meetings, even just quarterly, is going to be really important as well for accountability. Now let's take a look at some of the agreements and accountability when it comes to board fundraising. First of all, I would really encourage each of you to press your board for a board-giving policy. This is going to be drafted by the board of directors. The executive director of course can work with the board chair to advocate for writing one, but it should come from them. They should be a part of the creation of that so that there is a higher buy-in and that they're going to again really clearly understand what you're asking them to do. It's going to allow them to take ownership and have a deeper connection and understanding of what is being asked of them. Some considerations for your board-giving policy, and we hear this a lot, are fundraising and personal contributions interchangeable. Now as I mentioned before, I would really encourage you all to adopt the philosophy of give and get where you're actually combining personal contributions and fundraising into the giving policy, but that might not work for everyone. So that's a question to ask yourself. Do board members have to make a contribution at the beginning of the year or can they give throughout the year? Do you want it in one lump sum or can they give quarterly? Is it more approachable to specify a range of giving or a minimum of giving? And again, this is where you really need to understand your board demographics and who's sitting on your board, what they can reasonably contribute. Another really helpful resource to have is a fundraising committee. This will help take some of the heavy lifting off the shoulders of your staff. Time as we all know is one of a nonprofit's greatest resources and we also know that there are many balls in the air at any given time. I would encourage you all to let multiple people wear the fundraising hat and that way you're going to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks. Fundraising should be a priority and if you have multiple people focusing on it, it really takes the pressure off of just one person or your development team. Now, again, I mentioned earlier that a lot of board members simply don't want to fundraise because they just don't know how to do it. So how do we make it easy for them to fundraise? One of the most efficient ways to fundraise is through peer to peer fundraising. Peer to peer fundraising for those of you who aren't aware is basically a fundraising technique that's going to allow your supporters to fundraise on your behalf. This looks a lot like crowdfunding but with a very specific purpose behind it for your organization. It's really great for board members because it doesn't it doesn't create a big barrier to getting started. There is which we'll go into in just a minute, but there are a lot of really easy ways for you to set this up for them so that it's ready to go out the gate. It really only requires them to ask for donations within their own social network, be that family, friends, or work colleagues, and it can be a really great way to get board members started fundraising who haven't maybe fundraised before. How it works is that your board members are going to create their own fundraising page or even join a team, which we'll talk about again in just a moment in a little bit more detail. Once that page is created, they can share that link out. They can share that on social media. They can share it via email. They can even put it directly on a website if they have one. We would really encourage everyone to think about expanding that network. How do we reach the most people that we can in order to make these ask? The way that I would encourage people to do that is whenever you are sharing the link, to add the language at the end that says not only am I asking you to donate but also will you now share this link? The more people you can get sharing a link to a fundraising page, the more people are going to see it and the more likely you are to get donations. They really work well. We've seen a lot of success with these and there's a wide variety of peer-to-peer fundraising types that people are able to set up. Birthday fundraisers, as I'm sure a lot of you have probably seen on Facebook, are one of the more popular options. There are also fundraisers that can be connected to a larger campaign or event. If you have signature organizational events throughout the year, having a peer-to-peer component is a really great way to get your board involved. A lot of times, for example, now, at least last year or so, we're not able to do as much in person. Where we may have before asked board members to invite folks to an event and buy tickets, maybe they're not buying tickets right now because we're doing virtual and not live events. Instead of asking for folks to do that, perhaps they can ask them to just make a donation to their peer-to-peer fundraiser instead. Some ideas for board peer-to-peer. We just talked about a few, but year-end board fundraising challenges are really good. That is coming up very quickly, as is giving Tuesday. All of those, again, can be very easily set up. It's a specific timeline that allows people to say, you know what, for the next two to three months, I am doing this fundraising challenge. I would like to raise X amount of dollars before the end of the year. Every dollar helps. Can you help me out? I think it's important to have a timeline or a deadline for the fundraising. It creates a little bit of a sense of urgency so that people don't delay making their donation. Again, the birthday fundraiser is a really good option. In lieu of gifts, the board member would ask for donations to your nonprofit. This one obviously is time sensitive to the month of their birthday or for the weeks surrounding their birthday, but that way you're looking at multiple opportunities of revenue throughout the year, depending on when your board has their birthdays. Another option that is interesting and something to consider is to offer to match donations. If you are participating in any kind of fundraising campaign that has a peer-to-peer component, if you have a board member willing to make a large contribution to the campaign, using that donation as a match for the rest of your donors can really motivate them to give more and give more often so that you're really maximizing the impact of that donation. We just spoke a little bit about Giving Tuesday, so I do want to make sure you are all aware. Giving Tuesday does happen on Mighty Cause. We host our own Giving Tuesday event. It's coming up fast on November 30th this year. It would be a really great opportunity to encourage your board members to give peer-to-peer fundraising a try. We have several events happening on Giving Tuesday, including Georgia Gives, Richling Gives, and others, but Mighty Cause does have our own event for nonprofits that would like to participate. Again, it's a great way to get your board involved, so if you haven't had the opportunity to try this yet, it might be a really good time to give it a shot. One feature of Mighty Cause that can make this experience a lot easier for your board members are the use of our fundraiser templates. All nonprofits that are registered on Mighty Cause have one free fundraiser template. Advanced subscribers have unlimited, but what this does is it allows your nonprofits, whoever is the administrator for your account on Mighty Cause, to pre-fill parts of the peer-to-peer individual pages so that that helps get the pages up and running faster and more easily. It's not putting the pressure on your board members to create the pages from scratch to come up with all of the messaging and language on their own, and it helps you to control that message a little bit as well. I would encourage all of you, if you have 10, 15 minutes, take a look at that fundraiser template on your Mighty Cause account, and I would really encourage you to set one up. Again, it's a great way for you to control the message, and it just saves your people time when they want to come and they want to sign up for a page and really support you. They're able to get up and running in about five minutes, and it doesn't create that extra kind of stress of having to come up with all of the content on their own. Now, the fundraisers who sign up are still able to customize and personalize the pages once you have the template. They can opt out of the template, but again, it just gives the option for them to have a pre-filled page so that they're not having to start from scratch. Now, another component of peer-to-peer are our teams and events. The teams are really interesting, especially for a board, because it adds the element of a friendly competition. It introduces that competitive spirit, and it can really help each board member feel like they're more invested. How this works is that when the board has a team, they're going to also have a collective goal. They're going to all be trying to raise money to hit a certain milestone. They're working together, they're holding each other accountable. They can see what the other board members are doing, so they're more likely to stay motivated and really keep pumping out those emails and social media posts to get donors to come to the page. Now, some tips for your board fundraisers. As I mentioned before, even with the template, they do have the opportunity to make it personal, and we would highly encourage people to do that. One of the things that we hear most often is that board members just don't have the time. They don't have the time to really sit down and invest and build out these pages and make it really look good and meaningful. One of the things that I like to do, or in my past life as a fundraiser, what I like to do is make it simple for them. During a board meeting, I should say, have your board members sit down, take five minutes, and write about their connection to your mission. What is their why? Why are they here today? Your staff is then able to keep that on file for each board member and use it when these pages need to be built. The staff members can then go in. They can actually help them start up the page, create the page for them, and they can put that personal information in there and really tell the story of that person's connection with your mission. It's a really great opportunity again to just personalize that message and make it really meaningful. I've also seen staff members at nonprofits host a training for their board members where they just have them come in and open up the website and walk them through the process of setting up a page. If you have board members who are willing to put in the time, that's a wonderful way to get them excited because they'll be able to see in real time how the website works and how easy it is for them to get up and running. Finally, I think it's important to have at least one dedicated staff liaison specifically for board fundraisers and building out these pages. It's important that your board knows exactly who they're able to go to if they have questions or concerns, or even if they just want to talk through what they're doing and how it's going and their strategy. I would really encourage you to identify at least one dedicated staff member or high level volunteer, I think, to manage that. Another really important component to having a successful peer-to-peer campaign with your board members is motivation. If this is something that is a year-round platform and something that you're doing time and time again, you're really going to have to work hard to keep people up and running, keep them motivated, and keep them going. One way to do this is to offer incentives for fundraising. Again, event tickets may not be super relevant at the moment, but fingers crossed it will be very soon. Offering folks a free event ticket or VIP access if they hit a certain milestone with their fundraising is a really great incentive. Social media shoutouts, providing impact statements or case studies to show them exactly what the money is doing to impact your mission. You can also feature successful fundraising efforts in your newsletter and your report. I apologize, social media shoutouts is there twice. Finally, unique mission-related experiences or volunteer opportunities. Really finding a way to show your board members, hey, we appreciate what you're doing. You've done a really great job. It keeps them motivated. Next time you ask them to do it, they're going to be more likely to say yes and do it again. Of course, it's also important for those cases where someone just can't meet the minimum requirements of the fundraising that you're asking for. It's important to offer additional opportunities. Some of those opportunities might include being an event or committee chair, the fundraising committee that I talked about earlier. Maybe somebody is really good at strategy, but they don't have a very robust social network. Being the committee chair for the fundraising committee would be a wonderful opportunity for them to still be involved in the fundraising efforts. Thank yous, as we all know, are incredibly important for donors. Having your board members have the opportunity to make those thank you calls and those thank you emails, stewarding potential major donors. We all know, of course, that after any big fundraising push, analyzing that donor data and identifying potential major donors is really important in the process. Having your board be involved in that and help with the stewarding can go a long way to creating more opportunities for potentially more peer-to-peer donor, more peer-to-peer fundraisers. Finally, consider asking them to host fundraising as the events themselves. This could be at their business, at their home, anywhere in the community, really, and there are ways to get the peer-to-peer component into that as well. Again, so many opportunities. I think it's important to offer all of them and it's very important to have everything written down and have people go ahead and tell you at the beginning of the year that this is what I'm going to do this year. You're able to then look back on that agreement, hold them accountable, have conversations about how it's going throughout the year, and at the end of the year, you're able to kind of look at that and say, okay, how can we make this better for next year? What worked? What didn't work? What can we refine to make this work sustainably and so that we're not always going back to the same donor base? We're expanding that donor base all the time and we're just extending our outreach even further. I'm going to open it up for questions. I do see that there are some in the chat already, so if you would give me just a moment to kind of just scroll through here, I will absolutely answer these for you. Please feel free to pop any new questions into the chat or Q&A, or if you'd like to just, you know, talk, you can raise your hand either way is fine. So yes, you will all be receiving this slide deck. It will come in the email post after the webinar. You'll receive this. The recording will also be available in the post webinar email as well as on our website and our YouTube channel. So those are the questions so far. All right. Well, it doesn't look like there are any questions coming in, so I won't make you all stay on longer than we have to. Jay, I see your question. I would love to have a conversation with you offline or off the webinar, so I'm going to get your contact information. I'll send you an email directly. Same with you, Craig. I will send you that information and let you know. Let's see. How often should you go after the same donor or sponsor? Great question. So I don't know that there is one right answer to that. I think it really depends on what the ask is. I have seen, I've worked with nonprofits who will approach the same donors for five different signature events throughout the year or perhaps just present one package at the beginning of the year to say you can sponsor us all year for X amount. I think you definitely want to look out for donor fatigue, but really I think the question you need to ask yourself is, what are we asking for? And how often is it appropriate to ask for it? If you're just asking for a blanket X amount, any dollar will help kind of thing. I think you can ask as many times as you want because people have the opportunity to say yes or no and also give five dollars up to a thousand dollars. It's really up to them, but I think if you're going after specific asks, if you have let's say a donor giving tiered system within your organization and you're asking for a thousand dollars, maybe don't go after the same people more than a couple of times a year. Donor fatigue is a real thing, so you want to make sure that you are respecting kind of the boundaries of your donors and what they're able to do. Knowing your donor base is a really important thing when answering this question as well. So again, there's not really a blanket answer there unfortunately, but I think if you know your donor base well and you do the analysis on it, you're going to I think pretty quickly be able to see how often people are giving and what amounts so that you'll know kind of better how to tailor that. Any tips on figuring out how to read board members for their ideal tasks? I don't know that you have to read them. I think it's reasonable to just have a very open conversation and say we need you to commit to doing one or two of these four or five things depending on what you want to present to them as opportunities. What on here seems like you can manage it? I think, you know, let them know that the expectation is that you're going to do something. You get to decide what that something is out of this list of options. That way you're not, I don't think it should be your responsibility to read them in that way. I think, you know, ideally you would want to just be able to have that open conversation and set the expectations that way. Okay, let's see here. The email, the link, yes, again the link to this recording will be available in the post webinar email and also on our website and our YouTube channel. Giving Tuesday is so close to the end of the year giving time when we get a large amount of donors. Can you give advice on this? So I've seen a lot of people and I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your question, but I think if I'm understanding correctly, you're asking, you know, if we do Giving Tuesday and then we do end of year, how do we, how do we do Giving Tuesday without it impacting our end of year giving? So to answer that, I think, you know, I've seen a lot of people just roll them into one, make Giving Tuesday a part of your year and giving campaign. It's a really great way to kick it off since it's on November 30th. If you take, you know, the last month of the year as your end of year giving, this is a really great kind of kickoff to that. There are definitely ways in your marketing and in your approach that you can roll them into one. Otherwise I would say for Giving Tuesday, if you don't want to make it a part of your end of year, then maybe if the asks are coming from your fundraisers, your board members, your high level volunteers and your supporters who want to set up peer to peer fundraising pages, then the ask isn't coming from the organization and I don't think there's any worry in you doing both. So there are a couple of different strategies I think to that. Let's see here. What categories do most nonprofits utilize their funds? I'm not really sure what you mean by that, Jerry. I apologize. But generally speaking, all the funds that are raised on Mighty Cods are non-restricted. So, you know, you can run a campaign on a peer to peer or just a campaign platform that are project specific, but otherwise the funds that are raised on Mighty Cods are unrestricted funds. So they can be used for, you know, programming or administrative or whatever that needs to be. Great questions. I love these. Thank you so much for asking. Let me see here. How can folks not on social media not feel left out of all the fundraising? Great question. So social media is a, you know, really, I think useful tool in peer to peer fundraising, but that's not the only way to do it. I have seen email campaigns and honestly even printed mail campaigns work incredibly well for these kinds of efforts. You know, I think, again, like this is really where that conversation with the person who's doing the fundraising is going to become important and asking them who are the people you're going to be reaching out to and how are they going to best respond? How are we going to reach the most people? And if they say, oh, my friends, don't use social media, then I think creating a really robust email campaign as well as potentially putting it on a website or somewhere where the campaign is just visible at all times. Also adding a donate button or a donate hyperlink to an email signature for professionals. I've seen that work incredibly well also. Wonderful. Well, I think I don't see a ton of other questions coming in. I will give it just one more minute. And if I didn't see your question somehow, I apologize, but I do have the transcript of this that I'm going to be reviewing. So I will absolutely get back if I have somehow overlooked a question. All right. Thank you all so much for joining me today. I really hope that you found this useful. If you need anything, you have any other questions. Mindy cost support is always here to help. So feel free and feel welcome to reach out. As I mentioned before, you will all receive the post webinar email that will include the slide deck and the link to this recording. I hope that you all have a wonderful afternoon and thank you again so much for joining. Have a great day.