Welcome to MatchTips!

MatchTips, a quarterly newsletter from MatchMaker FundRaising Software, will provide fundraising tips and technology information to nonprofit organizations. Volume 3 discusses boards involvement in fundraising. Below are helpful tips that will guide the enhancement of your organizations board fundraising.

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The Board Should Raise Money: True or False?

by Jan Masaoka, Former Executive Director
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services www.compasspoint.org

The all-too-common scenario: the executive director is frustrated because she thinks it's the duty of the board to raise money-but they aren't. A few board members agree and they say (or bring in a consultant to say) something like: "Every member must give, get, or get out." As board members we typically have three reactions simultaneously. First, we resent being required to do something when we were not told of this requirement when we were invited to join the board. Second, we feel guilty anyway. Third, we doubt we could succeed at raising money, even if we were to try. It's as if we were invited to a potluck,arrived with a dish, and then scolded for not having brought the right dish.

To untangle this knot, it's helpful to think of the board as having two roles: a Governance role where the board acts as a body to ensure accountability, and a support role where board members support the organization, acting as individuals, through volunteering and donating. Ensuring that the organization has a realistic strategy for raising funds is a critical governance responsibility of the board of directors. But that strategy may or may not include individual fundraising by board members. The strategy for raising funds will probably include a combination of efforts: fees-for-service (such as tuitions, service fees, registration fees, tickets), special events, mail fundraising campaigns, government contracts, and individual major donor gifts.

There are four crucial rules to fundraising on the board:

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What Nonprofit Boards Can Learn from Penelope Burk

By Nathan Garber
Nathan Garber & Associates Garber Consulting

Not being a fundraiser, I didn't know who Penelope Burk was when I arrived at the November breakfast meeting of the London Regional Fundraising Executives, but her 60 minute talk was well worth my annual membership fee. Penelope Burk is the author of "Donor-Centered Fundraising" and President of Cygnus Applied Research, Inc., a research-based fundraising consulting firm. http://www.donorcentred.ca/

Burk’s research was both innovative and compelling in that it went to directly to donors to find out what would keep them involved and enhance their commitment to their organizations.

Through many interviews with donors, she learned that only 20% want public recognition. 80% do not. What most donors want are three things:

1. To be thanked promptly with some form of meaningful acknowledgement;
2. To be reassured that their donation would be used for the purpose they intended; and
3. To receive a report on the results of their last gift before they are asked for the next one.

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Involving Your Board in Fund Raising

By Susan Kauffman, CFRE, President
Susan Kauffman Associates, Inc

The role of the Board of Trustees in a nonprofit organization has a number of components. Some of them include:

• Determining the organization’s mission
• Selecting the Chief Executive and assessing the performance of the Executive
• Ensuring that strategic planning and organizational planning are completed and implemented
• Recruiting fellow board members
• Enhancing the organization’s image and being a good ambassador for it
• Monitoring and strengthening the organization’s resources
• Developing and supporting the budget of the organization

The organization’s budget has a number of revenue line items in it. And more than ever before donations/fund raising line item numbers are growing. This is in response to the ever increasing need for services, as will as cuts in funding by the government and foundations.

Donations for the organization are not up to staff alone to procure. The board needs to partner with the staff in order to attain the dollar figure that was approved in the budget process. It is up to the board, since they have voted to support the budget that they do their part to ensure the donation income is realized.

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