Improve Board Meeting Attendance and Fundraising: Two Changes

Improve Board Meeting Attendance and Fundraising with Two Key Changes

Board members, like all people, want to feel appreciated. They want to feel that their time is valued.

If any board member sits passively during a meeting and doesn’t contribute — for any reason — that meeting was a waste of their time. To put it another way, you know you’re wasting their time if your board meetings are jam-packed with one report after another.

The sad fact is, if you’re not tapping into your board members’ expertise at each meeting, you’re going to lose their attention and interest. If there’s no role for board members to play at a meeting, they’ll inevitably ask themselves:

Would I rather be at home having dinner with my family or attending this board meeting?

Which would you choose?

Two Keys to Improve Board Meeting Attendance and Fundraising

Instead of simply reporting out and providing updates at your next board meeting, center each meeting around a meaningful discussion. Since my focus is on empowering your organization to raise bigger gifts, the examples below will cover the fundraising portion of your board meetings.

1. Do Not Report Out

As stated above, it’s essential that you get out of the habit of reporting out during your board meetings. So how can you relay all that information to your board members?

Send the development report (as part of a larger board packet or separately) one week in advance of your next board meeting. Let board members know in advance that you will NOT be reviewing the report at the upcoming meeting. Instead, ask them to review it on their own and submit questions prior to the meeting.

2. Plan a Discussion or Activity

Ahead of your next meeting, choose a fundraising topic. Plan to have a participatory discussion where each board member is asked to contribute. Here are a couple examples to help guide your discussions and activities.

Example 1: Stewardship

Ask board members to think about the most memorable way they have been thanked or what a meaningful thank you would mean to them. Give them a minute or so to consider.

Then, have them get into small groups of two or three. Ask each group to brainstorm a list of ways that your organization might thank donors which would be meaningful and memorable. The goal here is for them to come up with creative ideas to thank donors and let them know the impact their gifts made.

Give your board members between 5 and 10 minutes to brainstorm (depending on how much time you have). Bring the group back together and ask each person to share one idea they discussed. If the ideas connect to the mission of the organization, award “bonus points.”

Related Fundraising Task: Ask board members to volunteer to help with thanking in the coming month. Follow up to continue the conversation about which new ideas the organization might adopt into their stewardship practices, with board member help.

Example 2: Cultivation

Ask board members to think about

How and why did you get involved with a new activity or organization?
What did the organization do to make you feel engaged and get you to participate?
How did you go about meeting a new friend? What did you do to get to know them?

Ask board members to stand up and get in small groups of two or three with at least one other person they don’t know well. Have them come up with a list of ways your organization could engage donors and prospective donors more effectively.

Leave time to come back together in the larger group and have everyone share at least one idea or concept from their discussion.

Related Fundraising Task: Ask each board member to write on a notecard one or two ways they would be willing to help cultivate donors. Encourage them to think in terms of how their own expertise or passion for your nonprofit’s mission could tie into those cultivation tasks. Have them turn in the notecards and follow up with them in the subsequent weeks.