 Hi, everyone. I just want to give everybody another minute to get logged in. While we're waiting to get started, if you could just let me know if you can hear me and see my screen by typing yes into the questions box. That would really help me make sure that you can hear the presentation. So if you could just take a moment and let me know if you can see my screen and hear me. Okay, perfect. It looks like you can all see and hear me. So we'll just give everybody another few seconds to get logged in and then we will get started. All right. Well, welcome, everyone. It's just about three o'clock Eastern Time. So we'll go ahead and dive in. Welcome to our webinar on engaging your board of directors in fundraising. My name is Linda Gerhardt and I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. I've been with Mighty Cause since 2016. And before that, my background was in nonprofit marketing and communications. And I've actually actually worked at a lot of different levels at nonprofits from my first job cleaning kennels at an animal shelter to working in marketing and communications. So I have a lot of perspective from different roles at nonprofits. And I hope today I can help give you some tips for how to engage your board of directors better. Here is a quick look at today's agenda. First, we'll start off with the basics of nonprofit boards and the relationship they have with operational staff. And then we're going to dig into the issue of board members and fundraising. We'll round out the webinar with some actionable steps and suggestions and techniques and tips that you can take away from this webinar and start putting into motion immediately. Looking over the registration list for today's webinar, it looks like we've got a pretty even mix of people who are on nonprofit staffs and also people who are sitting on boards currently. So as much as possible, I've tried to gear the content to address both of these audiences. And I hope that nonprofit staff and board members will get a lot of information and tips from this webinar. So it's not geared toward any specific one audience and board members and staff members working in the operations at nonprofits can hopefully get something from this content. And just as a bit of housekeeping, we are going to make time for questions at the end of the webinar. So if you think of something you'd like to ask while I'm presenting, just type that into the questions box of your GoToWebinar panel. And I'll make sure that we make time to get to those questions at the end of the presentation. And just so you all know, we are recording right now. So all of you will be emailed a link to the recording just as soon as I'm able to get it uploaded to YouTube and put the email together. Like I said, we're going to start off by going through some of the basics of nonprofit boards and how they operate and what their responsibilities are. So the first thing we really need to talk about is what exactly a board of directors does. There are really 10 important factors in what a board of directors does for a nonprofit. And some of them may surprise you even if you sit on a nonprofit board. This may be review for some of you, especially if you're an executive director or you're active on your board, but it's important to get through these just to lay the groundwork for everything we're going to talk about in the rest of the presentation. First, the board determines the nonprofit's mission and approves and often writes the nonprofit's mission statement and determines what constituencies your nonprofit serves. This is really the primary function of the board. They are custodians of the high-level mission of a nonprofit. They also, as I'm sure many of you know, recruit the executive director and they're responsible for determining their compensation and evaluating their performance. But as we'll talk about a little bit later on, this is not really a boss-employee type of relationship. There's a little bit more nuance to it than that. So we are going to get into that. The board provides financial oversight. They approve the budget and they have a fiduciary responsibility to the organization, which means that they have a legal and ethical duty to act in the best financial interests of the organization and its mission. They provide governance and ensure that the organization is adhering to all legal and ethical requirements as well as best practices. And of course, they help and usually steer planning, goal-setting, and they check in on progress largely at a high level so they don't get into the weeds usually, but they're looking at the big picture and seeing how the nonprofit is progressing towards its high-level goals. And then they recruit and train new board members. These last three things that a board of directors does are sometimes ones that get glossed over when we talk about boards. So I really wanted to separate these out. Part of the board's duty is to enhance the nonprofit's public standing and act as community ambassadors for the organization, advancing both the nonprofit's reputation and promoting the growth of the organization. And as an offshoot of their role as custodians for the org's mission and planning responsibilities, they determine what programs and services are offered. So that's why nonprofits need board approval to start a new program or a new area of service in most cases. And finally, they support the executive director. They provide budgetary, logistical, and moral support to the executive director as the executive director works to implement the board's priorities and do the day-to-day operational work of advancing the mission and managing staff and programs. Now pretty much across the board, no pun intended, the number one challenge that board members and nonprofits staff report is fundraising. We've got a bunch of sources listed on this slide including board source, which was my primary source for this information. And when pretty much any group takes a look at nonprofit fundraising and boards or does a survey of board members, this is what they report as the biggest challenge. So let's take a look at some of the information that has been found about nonprofit boards and fundraising. Only 46 percent of nonprofit boards have 100 percent of their board participating in giving and only 60 percent of nonprofits actually outline fundraising as a requirement of serving on a nonprofit board. So getting to 100 percent participation is sort of the dream and we're maybe a little bit halfway there nationally, at least collectively, so there's still some work to be done. And just as a personal anecdote, I have often had this conversation with small nonprofits, especially people who are struggling to fundraise and figure out how to do it, and they just don't realize that executive directors are surprised to hear that fundraising is generally understood to be a responsibility of boards of directors. So if I had a dime for every time I heard an executive director tell me that they had no idea that their board was supposed to be helping them fundraise, I wouldn't exactly be a millionaire, but I probably would be able to buy myself lunch. Only 68 percent of nonprofits require annual personal contributions from board members, which to me is just a little bit wild because it means that the board is not making a personal investment and getting that buy-in from that board. So that's not even part of the conversation for them is they're not giving their own money, they're not buying in, they're not investing in the nonprofit where they serve on the board. And that to me is just a little bit incongruous with the responsibilities of the board of directors. Fundraising again and again is identified as the top area where boards need improvement nationally and across all kinds of nonprofit work. So this isn't specific to any area of nonprofit work, this is just kind of across the board for the entire sector, which is a little bit demoralizing, but we're hopefully going to get to a place where we can talk about changing that. So we're going to dig into this much more deeply in a bit, but why is this such a problem? Why is this a problem at all that boards are not fundraising or giving personally to nonprofits? Well first, as we just talked about, the expectation of fundraising has not been set and it's not going to be met if you don't set the expectation and a lot of it comes down to training. Newly recruited board members may get inadequate training on fundraising or none at all. And as with employees, if you don't give them the tools they need to succeed, all the information they need to succeed, you can't reasonably expect them to succeed. And just to be clear, since onboarding new board members is a board responsibility, that was a difficult sentence to say, this is a sign of board dysfunction. This is not something that the nonprofit staff or the executive director is necessarily doing wrong because the task of training new board members falls to the board itself. A lot of boards have no formal giving policy, which we're going to expand on a little bit later. And communication can really be an issue. Sometimes there's a communication breakdown between the executive director, staff and the board and the result is that this area is one where the board has just never brought on and they're never asked for assistance and they're never talked to about this issue. And finally, some board members are just flat out uncomfortable with fundraising and prefer to be the men or women behind the curtain instead of somebody who's out front talking about contributing to the organization. So we're going to go even further into the relationship between a nonprofit board, the executive director or ED, and staff so that we can understand why these breakdowns might happen. And if those relationships are healthy, what should be happening? I talked to a few moments ago about the unique relationship between the board and the ED, the executive director, and central to this relationship is a partnership between the board chair, that's the head of the board and the executive director. This relationship is really the primary relationship that needs to be strong and functional and healthy, because if it's dysfunctional or unhealthy, the rest of these relationships are almost certain to break down. Basically, like if mom and dad aren't getting along, the kids are probably not going to get along either. The board chair and the ED are really the pillars at the head of the org and they must work together to carry out the mission of the nonprofit. These roles need to be clearly defined. The executive director is responsible for managing staff and day-to-day operations and the board chair is responsible for managing the board, high-level strategic planning and overseeing the financial situation of the nonprofit and just to paraphrase ghostbusters, you should never cross the streams. These need to be separate roles. The key parts of a successful fruitful partnership between an ED and board chair is communication, fact sharing, that is letting each other know what's going on, sharing the facts, transparency, understanding and respect for the other person's role and clear processes outlined so it's clear when and how facts and information should be shared, who should be the lead on what types of decisions and so on. The executive director is the liaison and the staff representative to the board because they manage that staff, they manage the day-to-day operations of the organization and they're also the big boss at the operational level. Board members should not have an active role in day-to-day operations and so at many nonprofits rank and file staff members have limited or no personal contact with board members and that can really create a staff culture of fear around board members which I've personally seen and experienced myself at nonprofits where a board member comes through the facilities and everybody goes oh man look busy, the big cheese is here, the big boss is here and that kind of attitude can cause a breakdown with communication when staff members are afraid of board members or really intimidated by them because they don't really understand what they do and what their role is and that is a culture that needs to be addressed in an organizational level either through introductions, staff training so that they understand what the board does, bringing your board into your annual meetings so that they can get to know the faces that are doing the day-to-day work at your nonprofit and so on and the role of executive director really should be an advocate for the staff with the board making sure that the staff's needs are getting met, that they have the tools and equipment and budget that they need so they can do their job well because everyone at an org is a puzzle piece that's very much needed so if staff feels that their executive director is perhaps not advocating to them and is instead advocating for the board and their wants and needs that can be a cause of strife and dysfunction at a nonprofit as well. So finally I want to talk about what a healthy relationship between nonprofits and their boards looks like. First everybody has clearly defined roles and responsibilities and everybody understands those roles and why they are important for the mission of the organization. There should be a mutual commitment on all sides to the mission and the work and doing what's best to achieve the high level goals and really honest respectful communication as well as not bringing any surprises on anyone else because everyone has been communicating and sharing the necessary facts with each other are really important to cultivating a healthy relationship with your board. So next we're going to dig into the board of directors fundraising dilemma what is driving this issue what are the common issues that cause it so we can start to solve that and pick those apart. So what's the problem like why is this such an issue before we really get into outlining solutions we need to understand very clearly what the issues are. One as we discuss sometimes board members are not clear on their responsibility to fundraise for the nonprofit. There can also be issues with communication between fundraising staff and the board where the executive director works as the intermediary and staff members are intimidated by the board and never communicate directly with them. Many board members are just really busy people and struggle to find the time to fundraise or even think about fundraising or doing anything outside of the roles they already play at the nonprofit. Many board members just aren't sure how they can help or what's appropriate for them to do and the other side to that coin is that sometimes executive directors and staff members really aren't sure what's appropriate for them to ask of board members and everyone's just kind of uncomfortable with the whole situation. I wanted to talk through some of the most common roadblocks to get board members to fundraise. One thing an executive director or a board chair might hear is that they already give enough time but I'm already giving so much time to this nonprofit and board members are volunteers but it's a very different kind of relationship and responsibility to the nonprofit than regular volunteers who might come in and answer phones or wash dishes or sort through in-kind donations. So in this particular instance time is not enough and this reasoning really does not work especially when it comes to personal giving. You may also hear I'm not comfortable with asking other people to give to the nonprofit and again this is an argument or a roadblock that's not really in line with the responsibility that board members take on in relation to the nonprofit. They should be loud and enthusiastic in their support for an organization and able to make the argument for why supporting this kind of work and this nonprofit is so important to the community. So this may come down to training and in some cases if somebody's really against asking other people to make donations to the nonprofit it may come down to the fact that somebody's maybe not a great fit for sitting on your board. Something you might also hear is that it's embarrassing to talk about money or it's uncomfortable to talk about money and especially you'll hear this I think in response to talk of personal giving. The thing here is boards have a fiduciary responsibility to the nonprofit and they're in charge of the budget they're in charge of the financial well-being of the nonprofit. So if money is an uncomfortable topic that is a much bigger problem because boards need to be able to talk about the money in order to do their job and fulfill their responsibilities to the nonprofit. And board members also may say I just don't want to feel I don't want to feel like I have to pressure people to give which is honestly that's just how fundraising works and it's also how boards get to 100 percent participation in giving is by putting gentle pressure on their other board members to give. So again this reasoning doesn't really work in relation to nonprofits because the nonprofit world is asking for support and asking for money and being able to make a solid case for why giving that money is important. That's the water we swim in so if somebody's really uncomfortable with that kind of thing maybe the nonprofit board is not really the best place for them but it is something that can be overcome through some of the things we're going to talk about. So we've identified the problem I just wanted to talk through some of the consequences of this problem. First off you do not get the benefit of public support from your board which can lend weight and authority to your fundraising appeals. Why should somebody else give their hard-earned money if the board is not even giving their hard-earned money to the nonprofit? Board members also tend to have very important and deep ties to a community and sometimes local businesses and nonprofits lose much of the benefit of that when boards don't participate in fundraising. You're losing out on important connections to your community and your nonprofit literally loses donations that would come either personally from board members or people that they know and can solicit. This can also cause relationships within the nonprofit to break down and deteriorate especially if misunderstanding and resentment are allowed to fester around this issue and it's left unaddressed. And finally your board themselves they miss out on a meaningful and personal way to serve the nonprofit and ensure it's ongoing financial health. So the board members too suffer a little pit when they aren't participating in giving and they're not participating in fundraising. So we've spent a lot of time talking about the problem itself and now I want to move into some actionable steps that you can take to solve the problem and get your board more engaged in fundraising and in giving. First things first if you do not have one or it has not been reviewed and updated in a while you need a good board giving policy. Now just to be clear the executive director does not make this policy. The board chair needs to spearhead this effort and work with the board to draft and approve this policy. So if you're here as a board member or a board chair this is a suggestion for you and if you're an executive director or other leadership at your nonprofit having a discussion about this with someone above you either the board chair or the executive director and just understanding where the board giving policy is or whether it exists is a good place to start. You'll want to check state requirements when building a giving policy because some states do have from certain requirements of their board some more so than others so you just want to make sure that you're fulfilling the requirements of the state which again is why this is a board responsibility since governance is in their wheel house. The giving policy should be clear and include expectations regarding fundraising and personal giving and if you'd like to add additional clarity on these two topics you can split it into two separate policies one for fundraising and one for personal giving. So there are a lot of things to consider with this policy so here are some key things you'll want to make sure that you're giving policy outlines. First can fundraising and personal giving be interchangeable meaning that one board member can write a $5,000 check while another brings in $5,000 through peer to peer efforts and perhaps another one gives you $2,500 in cash and then also brings in $2,500 through fundraising efforts. For what it's worth a lot of nonprofit boards feel that being able to combine personal giving and fundraising allows for a more inclusive board where your ability to sit on that board is not solely contingent on your ability to write them a large check to write the nonprofit a large check I should say. So there's a lot to think about in terms of your giving policy and how it sets the tone for the future of your board of directors. Do board members have to make a contribution at the beginning of the year or at the end of the year or can they sign a letter of intent that allows them to give throughout the year and how is that going to be measured in terms of what is expected and how much is expected do you want to offer a minimum amount a range or a recommended amount or do you want to require something more specific in terms of how much they must personally give. Again in terms of best practices a range allows for some wiggle room for people to fit personal giving within their means so if your goal is to be more inclusive you may want to just give a range that allows for a little bit of wiggle room based on people's personal capacity to give. Something everyone executive directors board members and so on can start doing immediately is reframing the idea of dues that I'm making air quotes that you can't see. Do's are the minimum amount that's required to sit on a board and that's a really common thing in some states actually have requirements about dues. Instead of dues try framing it as a proud personal gift because dues imply a duty it's something that one may not want to do but must do which is a really bad vibe for charitable giving and fundraising that's not really a good vibe and on this note your board is responsible for the mission of the nonprofit and its financial health they are custodians of your mission and your financing so this is part of their responsibility to their organization the dues are not paying their way in it's part of their responsibility to the organization and board members should lead by example if they enthusiastically embrace giving to your nonprofit instead of making a donation out of obligation that attitude can trickle down and improve the fundraising culture at your nonprofit and overall improve the way your board looks at this issue. So onboarding like the giving policy this is something that falls into the board chairs purview but improving onboarding is a crucial step into getting more buy-in and enthusiasm for giving and fundraising from your board. A best practice here is to use job descriptions that's really so important so if your board does not currently have written job descriptions or they haven't been updated in a while that's a quick win that will help improve things just reviewing it and updating it. Board members should have a comprehensive in-depth understanding of the work you really can't think high level if you don't know the basics so training is really absolutely key in that so review what kinds of training is required when new board members are recruited and see where the board can improve the understanding of all of the aspects of the nonprofit including fundraising operations assigning new board members a mentor in the board can make for a better more cohesive experience and help get new board members oriented and going back to training while they shouldn't be spending a lot of time as board members in the day-to-day operations as part of training it can really be helpful for them to understand what your day-to-day operations are like so scheduling a day where they shadow somebody as part of their onboarding process getting their hands a little bit dirty or just helping out as a volunteer one day can really help board members cultivate that deep understanding of your nonprofits work and getting them introduced to fundraising staff especially like knowing some of the staff is important but getting them to especially be familiar with your fundraising staff can be huge since often they'll be ideally working with your fundraising and development staff and they'll be much better positioned to work with them if they all know each other they've all shook hands and they know each other's names and your fundraising staff is not intimidated by your board of directors and finally something that you can do pretty much immediately after this webinar is start a fundraising committee if you don't already have one this can help you nurture the interest of board members who may be more enthusiastic about fundraising or more comfortable with the idea and they can work to find ways to get the rest of the board involved or at least get them more involved you know in their particular projects the committee can work more closely with the day-to-day fundraising staff and collaborate on fundraising efforts so these people can sort of develop a closer relationship with your day-to-day fundraising staff and one cool thing a fundraising committee can do is act as a pipeline for volunteers who have an interest in fundraising lots of board members do actually just start out out as regular volunteers so the committee can help funnel people who already have an active interest in your nonprofit and are putting their money where their mouth is at least with their time and an active interest in fundraising into your board so that in the future you're going to have a board that's made up of people who are invested in fundraising for your organization all right so we are in the home stretch and as part of this presentation this part of the presentation is about the techniques that you can use to make fundraising easy for your board members because as we all know human beings in general are much more likely to do something when it's easy to do so the next few slides we're going to talk about a few easy ways that board members can get involved in fundraising which can be a really great start if this is kind of a new area for your board of directors so first of course is peer-to-peer fundraising what peer-to-peer fundraising is is a fundraising technique that empowers your biggest supporters to fundraise on your path and a lot of times at Mighty Cause when we talk about this we mean your biggest donors people who are really enthusiastic about your organization but really your board members should be your most enthusiastic and biggest supporters for your nonprofit they are custodians of your nonprofit so they should be your biggest supporters and peer-to-peer fundraising is totally appropriate for them to get involved with on Mighty Cause it can be several types of specific landing pages peer-to-peer is a really great place to start because it's a low bar for entry it's very easy to do and as we'll discuss there's ways you can help them with peer-to-peer fundraising and it's not really requiring them to ask any strangers to contribute they're not knocking on doors and asking people to give money they're just asking people they know and tapping into that network that your board has so this is a really excellent first step to get board members more active in fundraising how it works on Mighty Cause is that a board member or the board members collectively they create a page on Mighty Cause that is connected to your nonprofit's profile so the money just goes to your nonprofit like any other donation through the Mighty Cause platform would and they can also create a team or event which are different types of peer-to-peer pages that we'll talk a little bit more about in a minute then they just share the link to that page with their social network whether that's through social media personal emails linked in wherever they choose to fundraise and ask people to donate to your nonprofit and then they just raise money this is such a great way to get your board oriented to talking about your nonprofit to people they know and really publicly stomping for your cause make being an ambassador to other people about your nonprofit and there's a lot of ways they can make this happen the sky is the limit with peer-to-peer there's so many different types of fundraisers out there they can do birthday fundraisers where they ask for donations instead of birthday gifts they can be connected to a larger campaign they can be part of a team or event and then what we see a lot on Mighty Cause which is really cool is that the board kind of has their own peer-to-peer campaign that they run and execute that's kind of outside of the normal fundraising calendar that your nonprofit staff follows so just a few ideas for peer-to-peer fundraising to get your creative gears churning it's a little bit early for that or we just missed it but a lot of boards on Mighty Cause actually do a lot of end of year fundraising they'll put together an end of year fundraising challenge for the board and lots of boards will get involved in peer-to-peer around giving Tuesday which is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving every year so that's something that we see a lot on our own giving Tuesday event birthday fundraisers like I talked about are a super easy intro to the concept of peer-to-peer you just create a peer-to-peer page and say hey this year instead of birthday presents or taking me out to dinner I would really love it if you gave to this cause that's so important to me and then the other thing that they can get involved in and can be just sort of a concept for a peer-to-peer fundraiser on its own is offering to match donations board members can make their own contributions go further by offering to match donations to their own peer-to-peer fundraiser and on the screen you'll actually see a screenshot of a fundraiser for an animal shelter a cat rescue that was part of a larger event called the slumber potty and I'm saying that correctly it was slumber potty where the board participated and raised money for the event ended quite well one thing I do want to mention related to the product is that we have a new feature on mighty cause that makes this easier and that is fundraiser templates fundraiser templates allow you to pre-fill parts of your peer-to-peer page for other people so it's easier for those people to get published and start raising money now every nonprofit that is on our starter plan has access to one template that kind of acts as your overall fundraising template but if you have an advanced subscription you get unlimited templates and that's where this gets really cool because you can have a board fundraising template and easily invite them through the platform to use this template and start their own peer-to-peer fundraiser and magically you already have so many parts of their page filled out for them it makes it much much easier for them the pages can still be customized so it's not required that anybody use the template it's an option for them and if they do want to edit it and build it from scratch they can opt out of it or just make edits right on the page but knowing that some of this groundwork is already done for them that there's already stuff filled in there they don't have to start from scratch sometimes board members are not really that into writing it's not their their comfort zone so having some of those things filled out like a story that they can customize from a template that you've provided having an image already in there that can really help you know make the case that this is super easy for them and it's a great way for them to get their toes in the waters of fundraising and if you have an interest in advance in your on our starter plan you can actually get a free trial of advanced and that will help you take a look at what's available through our advanced subscriptions and see if that math makes sense for you and if you want to make take the plunge and pay for an advanced subscription and have access to unlimited templates that you can use for any purpose including board templates teams and events are kinds of peer-to-peer pages and they what they do is they add the element of friendly competition which can sometimes get board members really into it what I've seen is especially if there are a lot of lawyers and successful business types on your board this is the sort of thing where it just really sings for them they love this kind of competition because they like to be number one and it makes giving or it makes fundraising a group activity which can make it more approachable for some board members especially those that maybe aren't as comfortable for it they can sort of hide in the crowd but still get in there and do the work and it helps build some camaraderie everybody's going through it together so it really does help engage your whole board as part of a teamwork event teams an event on mighty cause raise about 30% more than standalone fundraisers so both of these products are really about collective impact they're often linked to an in-person event as well so for instance if you were to host a walkathon each year your board could be a team raising money for your walkathon and that's actually a perfect example of the difference between teams and events teams can exist within an event or on their own they're sort of smaller scale group fundraising pages and events allow fundraisers to either work alone or join as teams or join as part of a team so events have a little bit more complexity added in so your walkathon your big overall event where you're engaging all of your donors would probably be an event whereas your board raising money as part of that walkathon would most likely be a team so that's kind of the difference between teams and events and events also have an event bright integration so if you'd like to sell tickets for an event and manage registration you would want the events product to do that if you don't really need that kind of complexity you might want to take a look at teams they can exist on their own or as part of a larger event and just just to mention both of these products teams and events are free to everybody on the starter plan on mighty cause they're also free to individuals you can start a team or an event for a nonprofit even if you don't use mighty cause as a nonprofit so there's no additional cost to starting a team or an event some tips for board members that are fundraising is to make it personal really talk about why you choose to serve on this board why this is so important and really really harp on the fact that they contribute personally because that adds weight and integrity when you're asking other peoples to donate that's so important if your board is not giving and they're just asking others that can look a little bit icky but if your board is saying hey we all contribute to this organization we care so much about it we really really care about this cause and we want you to care and you to give as well that's a much more powerful fundraising message so that's another reason why personal contributions from your board can be really really important to fundraising or also thinking thinking about personal touches like pictures that can go a long way and making it personal these are public spokespeople for your nonprofit or at least in an ideal world they should be so having their face their name their their reasons for supporting this cause at the forefront is a really important thing for board members who are fundraising on behalf of the nonprofit they serve nonprofit staff can also help get set up on the mighty cause platform and we actually see that a lot either they provide some assistance in helping board members get set up or what a lot of fundraising staff will do is they'll actually go on the platform and since they're familiar with it they'll set up a page for the board member and then just kind of pass it off to them so they do most of the groundwork you don't have to do that it's certainly possible to ask your board members to do it for like do it on their own but sometimes that can be really helpful in getting them set up and making it a more attractive possibility for them and then one thing that you can consider is hosting a training session where they can learn the platform they can learn some basics about where to share the fundraiser what kinds of things to say and so on just so that they feel like they have adequate training and familiarity in order to fundraise and you can also appoint a staff liaison somebody who can answer questions and offer them help along the way just so that they know that there's somewhere they can turn if they have a question about running their fundraiser boards fundraising for nonprofits can be a really powerful thing as you can see in the screenshot on this slide a sanctuary called center for great apes had their board come together to help them raise money on a giving day which is like a 24-hour fundraising marathon that's usually organized by somebody else and they've raised 18 thousand dollars more than 18 thousand dollars over the course of a few weeks leading up to the event and on the day itself and you can also see that they made it personal they have a photo of the board there they're posing this is the board's personal fundraiser for the nonprofit so when boards work together they can really do amazing things to raise money and in this particular case with center for great apes the board actually helped the nonprofit win some prizes that were available for the giving event so it was really a meaningful and worthwhile thing that they did to help this particular center do well in the giving day that they were participating in all right so moving on from peer to peer I wanted to talk about matching grants we've probably if you've used mighty cause before or if you have attended one of our webinars I've heard about matching grants matching grants is basically when somebody matches a donation so you have a large donation maybe a pool of money that was put forth by your board and that allows you to say hey we're matching donations one to one if you donate twenty five dollars we're going to match it one to one and so that actually gets fifty dollars for our nonprofit and so matching grants allow donors to get more bang for their buck and the cool thing is that they also allow board members to use the money that they contribute to actually move the needle for your nonprofits finances and bring in more donors because matching grants get really get people really excited about giving to your nonprofit they're a creative and effective way to leverage board funding to create a larger impact so for instance your board could just write a check and pay dues or you could use that funding as a matching grant and use that to motivate your larger donor donor base and make them feel like they are able to give more than the dollars that they can give it also publicly demonstrates the board's financial investment and support of your mission and work and again these are really just great tools for building excitement a matching grant is ultimately a marketing tool so it can really bring people through the door and inspire them to actually go to your mighty cause page and make a donation whereas they might be able to kick the count can down the road and say at next paycheck I'll kick them some money this is actually great at getting them to stop what they're doing go to your page and make a donation now because it's kind of a bogo deal for them they buy one and they get another donation for for nothing else they it's just provided by the matching grant so it's a great deal for them and it's also a great way to to utilize funding that your board provides so getting into what a matching grant is that again as I mentioned it's a large donation that's secured by your organization to bring in additional donations as a match so I donate $25 while you have a match active and my match my $25 is matched and it's actually $50 because of that pool of funding we do have a specific tool on mighty cause to enter matching grants so you don't have to do any of this math on your own our tool does it for you just enter in the information how you want the match to function and we take care of the rest of it it's all in your donations report and there's a lot of different things that you can do with a match one to one matches are the most common that again it's $25 for $25 but you can do two to one you can start matching over a certain threshold so when you meet a certain goal all of your donations will be matched there's a lot of cool things you can do so if you've never taken a look at the matching grant tool I really recommend looking at it seeing what you can do with it because there's a lot of really interesting possibilities to get people excited about donating to your nonprofit and again these are tracked through your donations report it's free for all mighty cause nonprofits you don't have to have an advanced subscription or anything like that to utilize a matching grant so it's available to all nonprofits who use our platform and the cool thing about matching grants is that it's kind of just display money as far as we're concerned so if your board wants to have a check for you rather than make that donation online they can do that and you can still have a matching grant and leverage those funds online on the mighty cause platform so however you want to collect that match money is totally up to you but we do have a tool that you can use to display it and market it to your donors so in terms of how to use a matching grant the most common way that this is done is to bolster a campaign so a matching grant from your board like for instance if you had a giving Tuesday campaign you were running or if you have an annual campaign that you run every single year that match can really add some interest and some vigor to that campaign and get people to stop what they're doing stops rolling on their phones and go to your page and make a donation you can also utilize it for a board specific campaign as we talked about so the board match can be used to get people to their own own campaign that they've created which kind of increases overall giving to your nonprofit it puts you in a better position so that can be a really effective way to structure a board fundraising challenge and lastly giving events I mentioned giving Tuesday a lot of people on the mighty cause platform actually came to us through giving events but that's a really useful thing to do because giving events are usually very time sensitive you have either a day or a few weeks to raise the amount that you want to raise and a matching grant really generates buzz it inspires people to give and it can be a really powerful tool that helps you break out from the pack of all of the nonprofits that are participating in that giving day so those are just some common ways that you can utilize a matching grant on mighty cause to fund raise more and these all get your board involved these are really easy for your board to do there's not a whole lot that's involved for them so board members if you're a board member and you're attending this these are some easy ways that you can you can get involved and these are really low bar asks for nonprofits if you're an executive director and you're trying to think of how you can get your board involved these are easy ideas that you can take to your board chair and say hey can we talk about this at the next board meeting and get them more involved so that's pretty much before we go I just wanted to leave you with some additional resources for board and nonprofit management because this is an area where there is actually quite a bit of information so if you are interested in more information about best practices for boards if you would like some printouts and some resources a lot of these resources have those for you board source.org is a website where I got a lot of my information and statistics they are very active in providing printouts and templates and sample letters and sample giving policies so they're a great resource if this is kind of new to you and you want to dig more deeply into it the national council for council for nonprofits the website is it's linked here you guys will all have access to the slide but national council of nonprofits has a lot of great information as well and there's just some really great books that you can check out maybe have on hand in your facilities so that you can read through these if you're a board member these are really great ways that you can learn more about serving on a nonprofit board and how to make that board effective so this is a reading list here for you of books that I have personally read and I think are good and solid information so again this these slides will all be sent to you so if you'd like to explore these resources more they all kind of informed my presentation today and if this is a topic that you're really interested in and getting your board relations and board giving in a better place these books and these websites can really help you do that all right so now that's everything I have to present to you I did want to make some time for questions so I'll go and see if we have any that are already in the queue and if you have a question just type that into the question questions box of your go-to webinar panel it looks like we do have some so there's a question about a recording you're all going to get access to a recording probably tomorrow I just need time to upload it to YouTube and send out an email to everybody but you'll have access to the recording and you'll have access to the slides as well if you'd like to just share the slide deck with people at your nonprofit so this is a good question should each board member have their own fundraiser page or one fundraiser page as a board that really depends so board members can do these kinds of initiatives on their own what I have seen be more effective is sort of a team approach on a team on Mighty Cause basically the team is a collective page for the whole board there's a leader board there and they can talk a little bit about what the board is doing collectively but then they all have their own page and the cool thing is that through the team's tool and this is also available through events you can create templates so that they can easily set up their page and they can customize them but each person who's on the team has their own link so you can sort of see who is bringing in what donations but you can also just have one fundraising page for the whole board for simplicity's sake sometimes especially with giving events or things like giving Tuesday pardon me having just that one central link that everybody is sharing is really helpful in making it simple and easy to understand for your board of directors so the answer is you can do either I would probably recommend you know the board getting involved collectively whether that means as a team or just having one peer-to-peer fundraising page where they're all sharing the same link and it really also comes down to whether it matters that you want to track where each donation came from so if you are tracking contributions and where they came from you definitely want to do something more like a team where you can see okay John Smith brought in $500 and Sally brought in a thousand and you can keep track of what contributions are coming in see oh we've got quite a bit question can you write a check from the nonprofit to match funds yeah so yeah a match can come from anywhere so as I mentioned before a match is really just a marketing tool it's just kind of display money that gets people excited so that match can come from anywhere I've seen matches from board of directors boards of directors that's very common sometimes non-profit staff will put in a little bit of money and have a pool of money that they provide as a match I've seen volunteers do it so sometimes the volunteers put their heads together and they take up a collection and they provide a matching grant I've seen it come from major gift donors I've seen it come from businesses so really anyone can provide a matching grant and if the nonprofit if you have the the budget to provide a matching grant where you're saying oh well all of the donations during this hour are matched by the nonprofit you can do that I just want to you know make it clear that that money should actually be there so even though it's kind of just display money mighty cause is not in the middle of that transaction unless you choose for us to be just make sure that it is a true match and that if a donor gives $25 that $25 is coming from somewhere so just be truthful and honest and transparent about it and you can really do anything with a matching grant so I hope that makes sense if you need further clarification you can always email me my address is linda at mightycause.com so that is you can always contact me if you have a specific idea that you want to bounce off me I'm always happy to talk through those kinds of ideas all right so um some techniques for a board chair to follow up with a board member who is not fulfilling the gift policy by the end of the year yeah that's a tough conversation you definitely want to sit down one to one with them and just see what's happening let them know that you've noticed that you know they haven't quite matched up they haven't ponied up the money that they said that they were going to when they signed the giving giving policy that's definitely not an easy conversation to have and that may be if they have some sort of financial situation that's sensitive you may want to include for that in your giving policy that may be a sign that you know you need some sort of forgiveness in there if if something were to happen and a board member can't fulfill their obligations or some way to make up for it but yeah it's just something you have to sit down and kind of talk to them about and see what's going on maybe they forgot people get really busy I know that a lot of board members on nonprofits where I've worked as a as an employee are super busy people they have like executive level jobs and they're doing so much and they have families on top of that so sometimes people just forget so maybe they just need a reminder maybe there's a situation that you don't quite know about but you know it's just the same thing as with an employee who's having a performance issue you just want to sit down and have that tough conversation with them be compassionate be understanding and it may be time to think through some contingency plans in case someone says I can't really fulfill that obligation this year is there something else that they can do to fulfill that obligation like fundraising that might be a good alternative if somebody doesn't have the cash flow to fulfill that obligation but maybe they can start a fundraiser and they can bring in some money that way and that you they've put forth a good faith effort to fulfill their obligations but definitely take it on a person-to-person basis and it's just the tough conversation but just like an employee who's not fulfilling their the expectations that were set for them you just have to sit them down and see see what's going on let's see so the recommendation is to have the board of have a board of directors contract for giving so basically that's it yeah you want to have sort of a contract it's an agreement with the person who's agreeing to sit on your board that based on whatever stipulations your board chair and your board have decided is appropriate whether that's you know bringing in x number of dollars through personal contributions and fundraising or you know they need to give x in cash and then raise x amount of dollars through fundraising efforts or participation in fundraising efforts that's another thing that can be included on a giving policy like requirements that fundraising events are attended by board members or a board member needs to attend one fundraising event per year those are the kinds of things you want to include and the reason it's important to go through that as a contract and have them sign it is that you're setting the expectations with them so if you're the board chair you want to make sure that everybody that you're recruiting to join this nonprofit board understands what they're signing up for that understands that they understand what is expected of them because if they don't then they're just going to be confused and they're probably going to disappoint you because they don't know what's expected so it is kind of a signed contract you're not going to take them to to court if they don't fulfill the contract it's more of just a letter of intent I agree to these things so that you know if a board member is not really fulfilling their obligations when board elections come around you guys can have that discussion with them and say you know we set forth these expectations and you didn't fulfill x y and z so we'd like to bring somebody else on board to serve on this board for our nonprofit so that's the reason for that again it's a it's a contract that's more of you know like when your employee signs the employee handbook it's agreeing to certain terms and conditions so that they understand the expectations upon them so definitely having something that's printed out and signed by the person who is joining your board is really important and board source I believe has some sample policies that you can download and sort of personalize if you google you can find a lot of samples of what these kinds of policies look like and come to something that that feels right for your particular nonprofit but yeah it is kind of it's a signed contract you want them to sign it just like you would you know have an employee sign the employee handbook you're setting the expectations for them and the signature is the way that you're verifying that they understand what is expected um what is a good way to engage professional fundraisers in an advisory status that's a really great question I think it would kind of depend um on the specific situation so if you want to email me I am happy to talk through that that you know maybe something I need a few more details on so again you can just shoot me an email at linda at mightycause.com I mean we can talk through what you're what you're thinking and what kind of capacity you're thinking about bringing in professional fundraisers it may depend on the type of work that you do but yeah it's there's a lot of variables there so just email me linda at mightycause.com and we can talk through professional fundraisers um okay I'm just going to read this question out are board values input from students so we have two student board members on our board how do you handle board members who are students would they also be involved in the personal giving that's a really awesome question um so if you have student board members um I might recommend having a separate policy for giving for them where you you come up with a policy that seems reasonable based on what you know about your student board members it's obviously a valuable experience for them but if somebody is a student it's not likely that they have five thousand dollars to give you or even you know the ability to participate in fundraising efforts that somebody who's not a student would be able to so that might be a really great use case for a separate policy um just so that you can come up with what feels appropriate for them I would say for students especially if they are um they're kind of as a learning experience and for their input then they have a slightly different role than the rest of the board so it may be a good opportunity to have them learn about fundraising assist with events and participate in giving through that particular way as opposed to writing a big check which they may not have the capacity to do so I think that probably the solution there is just a separate policy for student board members um all right I think that's it and just to reiterate my email address is linda l-i-n-d-a at mightycause.com m-i-g-h-t-y cause.com so if you have any of these sort of in the weeds questions about boards and fundraising feel free to shoot me an email I'm always happy to talk through some of this stuff um and if you have a an issue that you would like to um you know talk about regarding mighty cause we can certainly set up a call and talk about it um but thank you guys so much for all of the amazing questions for sitting through this this presentation I really hope you got something of value about out of it that you can take back to your board or you can take back to your executive director or if you are the board chair or executive director you can just start putting into place thank you guys so so much for attending um have a great day and happy fundraising