Development Director and Board Engagement

Originally posted on PEJE's Knowledge Center courtesy of Jan Jacobs, June 2013.

How a Development Director Can Engage Board Members in Fundraising

Top 10 Most Effective Methods of Engagement

Prerequisite: Acknowledge it is your responsibility more than theirs.

1. Meet individually with board/committee members to establish rapport, gain their perspectives about the program, and determine together where each can make a difference.
2. Follow-up. Get back to members with answers to questions from the one-on-one meetings, schedule events they wish to host and follow through with other agreed-to activities. Engage them and they will become engaged.
3. Express appreciation. These people are volunteering their time on top of all they have going on in their typically busy lives.
4. Keep members informed and motivated through strategic communications. Share good news regularly to build enthusiasm and support for your program. Short messages about new donors and significant gifts closed can be highly effective.
5. Meet their needs. Different people like to work in different ways. Cater especially to the board/committee chair on desired frequency of progress reports, meetings, meeting formats, communications, other expectations they may have of you and preferred operational styles.
6. Plan effective meetings. Lay out objectives. Meet strategically to engage and involve.
7. Seek advice. Draw on members’ individual strengths and areas of interest and expertise. Continue to work with them individually.
8. Educate. Most volunteers have misperceptions and fears about fundraising. Gently educate them and help them gain confidence by engaging them where and how they want to be engaged.
9. Lead, but know your place. Give volunteers roles to play and opportunities to present ideas, share expertise, champion initiatives.
10. Make it enjoyable, not overwhelming. Eliminate guilt. This is supposed to be fun and rewarding.

Top 10 Least Effective Methods of Engagement

1. Meeting for meeting’s sake. Nobody has time for that.
2. Never meeting. That doesn’t work either.
3. Laying responsibility for fundraising on the board, weighted with guilt, and leaving it at that.
4. Blaming the board/committee for a lack of progress.
5. Repeatedly pointing to organizational shortcomings as an excuse for not making progress.
6. Treating the board/committee as a group, not a collection of individuals.
7. Expecting members to take action based on group appeals.
8. Continuing to hammer on the unattainable.
9. Continuing to do things the way they have always been done, even when you know it isn’t working.
10. Having success, but not sharing the news.

Prizmah acknowledges Collins Group: a division of Campbell & Company in the development of the material above.