Let's go ahead and get started.
We're gonna talk today about what you can do to use some tech tools.
I did include some non tech tools,
and some strategies for you to get your,
to get your board involved in fundraising.
And this is a really important topic.
Before we dive into it,
I wanna share a little bit about myself and why I'm
talking to you today.
My name is Abby.
I've been in the nonprofit tech industry for a long time.
I have also served on boards before.
So this is a topic that is especially important to me.
I'm really passionate about understanding what nonprofits
and what people like you can do to engage their communities and
kind of build a resilient, stable community,
and that is why I'm talking to you today.
Quick note because this does come up.
I'm going to show you some things,
some screenshots from the. Neon CRM and Neon One system.
If you are a Neon CRM user,
you will see some familiar looking interfaces.
However, if you are not using Neon One,
everything we're gonna cover today is applicable to you too.
This is this is gonna be useful to you regardless of what
system you're using.
So don't worry.
If you see something,
a screenshot or something that you don't recognize,
this is these are our products.
If you don't have these products,
you will be able to to do all of these things.
Couple little last minute things.
I love that you're talking to me in the chat. Please do that.
I love talking with y'all.
It makes me feel like I'm not screaming into a void,
and you will always have the most fascinating insights and
conversations in the chat, so please do that.
However, the chat can sometimes move really fast,
and I wanna make sure I answer as many of your questions as possible.
So if you have a question that you would like me to answer,
please use the q and a box to ask that.
That that doesn't move quite as fast as the chat,
and I'm much more likely to see it there, if you drop it there.
Last thing, I always get this question. Yes.
We are recording the webinar, and, yes,
I will send you the slides.
So tomorrow morning, it usually goes out around ten AM eastern.
You're gonna get a follow-up email from me with a link to,
the recording, the slides,
the little checklist. I made for you today.
I'll show you that in a second, and some other resources.
So you're gonna get that from me tomorrow morning.
Okay.
Let me know in the chat.
How do you feel about getting your board fundraising?
How are they doing?
How how what does this what does this make you think about?
Do you feel like you're banging your head against the wall when
you're trying to get them, to participate in fundraising?
Do you just want to fight back tears of joy every time you
have a board meeting?
They're moving so slow.
They're banging banging ahead against the wall.
Some are getting hits, some most do not help. Okay.
They do not participate in fundraising.
Not great. They contribute, but they don't fundraise.
That's that's actually really common, I suspect.
Volunteer work you get to pay for.
Balance of motivation, some are not motivated at all.
That is, I think,
very common.
So okay.
Not supportive.
What what I would get for one referral or lead. Okay.
So it seems like this is something everyone wants to work on.
So my goal today is to give you some ideas, both,
tech oriented and and, like,
non tech oriented that you can use.
This is a checklist I put together the other day.
I'm gonna drop a link in the chat if you want to do that
instead of this, QR code.
This is just gonna kind of summarize what we talk about today,
and you can just print it out and kind of have it handy as a
reference as you are looking for, ways to get your,
to get your board involved.
That said, if you really wanna get some ideas,
chat Lucy Loveless who said that they have a very
substantive board,
but they don't have a lot of fundraising connections.
That's a I like that. They're a substantive board. I like that.
The not a lot of funding connections, I also understand.
That was me when I was really active on a board. Okay.
So before you can start solving a
lot of the problems that you all were talking about in the
chat, you I mean, let's get that out of the way.
This is a problem.
You do need your board to support your fundraising
efforts.
The first step in helping them address that and starting to
fix the issues that are holding them up is to understand why
getting them started is so difficult in the first place.
And it could be a lot of things. Right?
Your board members are really busy.
They probably have jobs.. They probably have families.
They have hobbies.
Even if they're excited about fundraising,
there's a lot that is keeping them distracted.
Another thing that could be a possibility is that they are
intimidated by fundraising.
This was certainly an issue for me when I was most recently on a board.
I talk about fundraising,
but the I was being asked to participate in things that I'm not good at.
And I was absolutely like Lucy's board.
I don't have a lot of funding connections,
so asking me to sell very expensive gala tickets was hard.
I don't have people who will buy those.
So,
that's a common thing.
They may be willing but don't know where to start.
That's very common.
And, honestly, they may not even have known that supporting your
development efforts was an expected part of being on your board.
So there are, of course,
countless reasons that you may be having problems getting your
board involved, but these are some really common ones.
Now whatever it is, there is some level of inertia,
right, that you need to help people overcome.
Getting somebody started is one of the hardest things.
Once they get rolling,
once you've a lot of you mentioned that your board
members aren't motivated.
Once they're motivated to get started,
it's easier to keep it going,
but you gotta get over that initial that initial slowness
at the beginning.
So here are some things you can try.
Now let me know in the chat how many of you
know that all of your board members from the moment you
even start talking about having them serve know that they are
expected to fundraise.
Do they know that that's a requirement for for being on your board?
Yes. Yes. Good.
Good. They have no idea. Okay.
So that one,
that one,
I I was kind of in this place.
If if someone doesn't know that fundraising is part of their
commitment to serving on your board,
getting them to start is really hard.
And, Andrea, I love what you said. Yes.
But it isn't enforced.
That's a big one,
and we're gonna talk about how we can do some enforcement
without it getting tricky.
Even I have served on boards where fundraising expectations
were literally never brought up during my conversations either
with staff or with other board members.
It was not made known to me that that was an expected part of fundraising.
Now I work in the fundraising industry,
so I know that that's part of what I'm supposed to do,
but that was never expressed to me or my other board members.
So they looked very much like. David over here when they were
asked to do things like make connections or, you know,
facilitate conversations or even get involved in in other
simpler activities.
So
if you are one of the folks in the chat that are like Jennifer,
they the board members hear about fundraising expectations
after they've joined the board.
Or, if they,
I love this, if they read anything we sent them or listened when we spoke
with them, then yes.
If that isn't the if that isn't it.
Do everything you can to make and to make your board
members understand and then reiterate to them that this is
something they are expected to do as members of your board.
This should happen lots of times because,
like Gabrielle said, people don't listen and they don't read.
Or if they do listen,
things are very quickly pushed out of our brains.
Repetition is key.
So talk to them about fundraising when you're gauging
their interest in serving on your board.
Include fundraising expectations in your board commitments.
I saw someone mentioned that they do that. That's fantastic.
Put it in your paperwork.
Talk about it in your onboarding materials.
Talk about it in board trainings.
Bring it up in meetings.
If you are not this is a cool way to do it.
If you are not familiar with Rachel Muir,
she is a consultant.
She's absolutely phenomenal.
One thing she suggests her clients do is build a menu of
different fundraising activities that board members
can participate in and then require that new members commit
to at least a couple.
So Rachel Muir is amazing.. Veronica, she truly is.
She is fantastic.. Go go look her up.
She's amazing.
So when Rachel she has an example menu.
Someone may be comfortable introducing you to a potential major donor.
They may be interested in talking to their,
company leadership about putting together a sponsorship.
Some people like me don't necessarily have friends who
could possibly make major donations,
but they can participate in peer to peer fundraising events.
They can help organize fundraising events or support them that way.
They can help you put together appeals or impact updates.
So put together try putting together a menu for people and
have them choose a few fundraising activities that
they will commit to and then hold them to that.
Someone called it out.. Reinforcement is important.
Hey, Abby.
You said that you would facilitate an introduction between,
our major gifts officer and this person who's interested in our work.
How can we how can we make that happen?
Also, the act of having someone make a conscious decision to commit
to something is gonna make that stick in their brain a little more.
So that's something that you can try.
Now some of you mentioned that a lot of the people on your
board didn't necessarily know or they didn't,
register that they are supposed to be involved in this.
If you have people on your board that were not aware of
the fact that they need to be participating in development,
you're going to have a harder time getting them involved.
The inertia is a little more settled.
But the increased focus on this topic,
especially if you start doing some of the things we're gonna
talk about in a few minutes, we'll register with them,
and that can help.
And if nothing else,
you can comfort yourself with the fact that they're going to
roll off your board in a year or two.
Actually, I'm curious.
Let me know in the chat how long are your board commitments?
The the board I served with, it was two years.
So if someone was just a real stinker,
we could tell ourselves, like, he's gonna roll off, one year.
That's a good one. I like that link. Three years, two years.
Oh, one, but some people have been
here for four plus.
I love that. Okay. So you're gonna take those steps.
Eventually,
depending on how long your your board limits are,
you're eventually going to end up with a board that is very
aware of how you expect them to support your development program.
The next step is to get them ready to actually participate.
So this is something that. I like to talk about a lot.
You know the stories and impact statements and talking points
that are effective with the people in your community.
You know what inspires people to donate.
You know how to connect with people and tug on their
heartstrings and get them really excited about supporting your cause.
Most of your board members probably don't.
So this is especially important for those fundraisers who are
intimidated by or fundraisers.
For your board members who are intimidated by fundraising.
If they're already intimidated and then they don't know what
to say or talk about,
it's gonna be even harder for them to get started.
And then I don't know about you.
An inspiring story makes me want to get involved so I can
make that story a reality for more people.
So even if you have those reluctant board members that
you're really trying to push, this can help inspire them too.
Okay.
Practically, what does this look like?
Give them things like impact statements.
So I raised money for an organization here in town that
could tell me, like, hey.
For every dollar someone donates,
we're able to return three dollars in services to the community.
That's amazing.
Give them success stories.
I was given a story in a board meeting about a little boy who
entered one of our programs.
He was not he did not speak.. He did not engage with people.
By the end of the program he was in,
he was talkative and made friends with other students.
Those are the kinds of stories that your board members will be
able to use when they're talking to their friends,
when they're talking to their family or their employers,
when they are trying to get someone interested in talking
to your development staff.
You may your your onboarding packet, I would imagine,
probably includes things like your mission and vision statements.
That's the perfect place to put this kind of material.
Now question for you.
When you have board materials, do you put them online,
or how do you do that?
In the past, when. I've served on boards,
I got paper documents at the beginning of every board
meeting, but I didn't have anything, online.
Online, Google Drive,. SharePoint, on great.
Because I can't tell you how many packets of, like, bored minutes,
I had knocking around in my car. Okay.
If you you a lot of you are already on this.
If you have your materials online, that's much,
much easier, than having them in a paper format,
especially if you were consistently
giving people new stories and talking points.
You can just go into a file on. Google Drive like some of you
are using our SharePoint and just update the file instead of
having to update the file, print it,
hand it out to everybody.
I've seen, like, board portals work very well.
This is an example of a board portal,
that that I set up.
External SharePoint is blocked by many companies.
That is definitely,
an issue.
So there there are a few different options that you may wanna pursue.
Putting just regardless of what system you're using,
putting everything in one place and then making sure your board
members can actually access it is gonna be key.
If it's scattered across multiple
drives or you have some some files in email and some in
a SharePoint and some somewhere else,
it's gonna be a little challenging for people to
remember where they are,
and you wanna make it as easy as possible.
You may also want to try using something like Slack or other
messaging programs.
That's really a better option if you have people on your
board who are kind of tech proficient.
That has the added benefit.
One, it's a single place where they can go to get all the
information they need, but, also,
it's a good communication tool for them,
especially if you've got multiple committees or,
people who need to work with each other between board meetings.
I think I actually touch on this later too.
Anyway, however you choose to make these assets available to your board,
I really do highly recommend intentionally sharing stories,
talking points and updates at board meetings in addition to online.
It, one, will help them kind of be inspired to raise more
money because you are constantly giving them updates and stories.
But, it's also honestly just kind of
a fun or heartwarming way to connect with people when you're
at something like a board meeting,
which if we're all being honest,
can sometimes get kind of boring.
Okay.
So talking points and stories and high level knowledge are fantastic.
But if you really wanna make your board effective,
you're gonna need to give them access to some fundraising tools,
and you're gonna need to give them the training they need to be effective.
So there's a lot of room to get really elaborate here,
but I only have you for the next few minutes,
so I'm gonna keep it simple.
Really, some simple assets can can make a difference.
One really helpful tool that you can GiveButter board is
templates that they can use to raise money for you.
If you are asking a board member to introduce you to
someone at their company because you want them to give
you a sponsorship, great.
Send them, an an email template that they can use as the basis for the
email to reach out to their leadership.
Or if you want your board member to introduce you to
someone particular,
give them an a template that they can use for outreach.
It doesn't need to be elaborate.
This can be very basic, but you all know, as well as I do,
how hard it is to sit down and write an email from scratch.
This can help.
If you are asking your board to support you by advocating for
you or talking about you in addition to doing things kind
of behind the scenes,
give them some some maybe some Facebook tools or,
give them talking points at least that they can use.
Just also, while you're giving them the talking point,
this is really important,
make sure you're giving them the links you want them to share.
Example,
in the the last board I was on,
I I helped run a Giving Tuesday campaign and realized that I
didn't actually include a link to the Giving Tuesday donation
form in my communications with the rest of the board about
when and how to talk about that campaign.
So give them links.
Here is a tip.
A lot of you said that,
you communicate your fundraising expectations,
but it's hard to enforce it.
Give people in a calendar that has
deadlines for what you're expecting them to do.
So if you are asking your board to sell tables at your
upcoming gala, like, on the calendar, of course,
you're gonna wanna have the date for the gala,
but you also may wanna say, like, hey.
Your tickets need to be sold and accounted for on this date.
That kind of practical tool is can actually be really helpful
in overcoming a lot of that inertia,
not only because board members know what's expected of them,
but they know how you expect them to deliver it and when.
So include those.
Now these are all tools that. I have used myself as a board
member and that I've seen others use successfully,
but they are all very simple.
You can get more elaborate if you want to.
If you have a board member who really loves hosting their own
events for you, share some event planning tips.
There is a guy in my neighborhood that has a big
dinner party every year where he asks his friends over.
He throws this big party,
and then he asks them to donate to the organization he serves for.
Now that's a great way to raise money,
but if you have someone that's had that idea and they don't
know what to do about it,
planning that kind of event can be a little overwhelming.
So give them some ways to get started.
If you have board members who, again,
could potentially introduce you to major donors,
give them pointers not only on, okay, you should do this,
but tell them, like, here's how to choose a good time.
Here's how you can see our staff's calendars.
Here's some guidelines around the best kind of venue to have
those conversations.
The big thing to focus on when we're talking about this,
because these are just a handful of possible examples,
anticipate what your board members will need as they
support you, and then give them what they need so they
can act on that impulse to get involved.
This is just as a side note,
this is another thing that I think. I actually took off this slide.
This is an example of a campaign page that board
members put together.
I'll talk about this in a little bit in a minute.
But the board set a fundraising goal for themselves,
and they built a campaign for the board.
And the board members had access to this link at all
times so they could check the their progress toward that
fundraising goal, and they could also,
share it with people and invite them to donate.
Okay.
Here's another important thing.
Giving people tools is great,
but it's kind of useless if they don't actually know what
to do with them.
So teach teach your board how to raise money.
Now how you do this is probably gonna depend on your schedule.
No people have I mean,
look at the the board terms you all have.
Everybody has a different setup.
Dedicating a meeting to fundraising is an option.
You may even want to build time into that meeting or maybe
even appending some time at the end of every meeting,
to help your board members put together their own talking
points or tell stories.
You could take this to a whole another level and have a
board retreat or a summit centered on fundraising.
Now how this okay.. I've been on a board.
I know this can be tricky.
If it's reasonable, let your board members get creative.
Now I've been in those board meetings,
and sometimes the ideas that come up are just entirely off the wall.
But you may be surprised at what some people come up with.
And let your board members support one another too,
especially if you have people on your board that do have
fundraising experience or either formally or they maybe
they've just done a really good job doing that for you in the past.
Having that peer support can be really reassuring.
However, I would encourage you to be ready to,
be protective of your time by,
gently leading people through the thought process
of some of the ideas they have.
For example, if someone proposes running a whole new
event, it could be a cool creative idea,
but it might not be practical.
Okay.
Even the most active fundraising boards are gonna
want updates about your progress.
And if we're being honest,
sharing your fundraising progress can be motivating for
those people on your board who are reluctant to get involved.
It's constructive shaming, frankly.
So be clear with your board about what your fundraising goals are.
Focus on your organization's overall progress, of course,
but also focus on things like specific campaigns you're running.
And then if you've got them, which I hope you do,
focus on board specific fundraising goals.
The reason I emphasize goals
is because human beings are hardwired to meet goals.
If you have ever experienced a rush of elation after you
finish a big task or even if you just, like,
love the feeling of crossing something off a to do list,
you know how much this is a motivating thing for a lot of people.
So remember, remind your board over and over again.
Repetition is key about your goals and how they can be
helping you meet them.
That will be motivating to them.
And, honestly, if you open a board meeting and you say, okay.
We're halfway through the year,
and you are less than a third of the way to meeting this
fundraising goal or other goals.
We've only set two donor meetings with you.
It can be it can be motivational,
constructive shaming.
Now again and I have this.. This can be a bit fraught.
I feel like I should have highlighted, bolded,
and underlined that statement because it can.
So you may need to tread carefully here.
We all know the phrase too many cooks in the kitchen.
What I am about to tell you can easily lapse into that
territory, so keep that in mind.
Use your best judgment here.
You may want to consider giving your board members or some of
your board members limited access to your CRM or
fundraising platform.
Limited is the keyword there.
We all can anticipate probably the havoc that someone could
wreak if they just had unfettered access to your CRM.
So in this example here with a bouncing orange arrow,
I've set up a user group for board members specifically,
and anyone who is assigned to that user group may only access reports.
They cannot edit them. They cannot go into donor records.
They cannot make changes.
They can only access the information that I want them to access.
That is so important.
So consider doing this.
You may not want to do this for your entire board.
This may be more appropriate for your fundraising committee
or your finance committee or maybe even only the chairs of
people on those committees.
Be be judicious.
If you want to keep your board in the loop,
but you hate running you don't wanna give them all this user
access and you hate running around last minute,
putting together meeting packets or files in your
SharePoint or whatever you use,
try building a report and then sending it to your
board a day or two before the meeting.
Now we know, it's been joked about in the chat,
people don't read,
but we're gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.
When you send those reports ahead of time instead of giving
those reports or giving even those updates that at the time
of the board meeting,
you give people more of an opportunity to go through it and absorb it,
and that means you're gonna be able to spend more time at your
meeting, general or committee,
actually talking about your progress and what you need to
do to to see some progress.
If you tend to have your fundraising or finance committees
meet outside your standard board committees,
that was the case, in some organizations I've worked with.
Please do talk periodically at your primary board meetings
about what's going on in those those smaller committee meetings.
Maybe you don't you don't need to go into all the detail that
you do in those committee meetings,
but your board at large should still be very aware of what's
going on, both in terms of your finances.
Obviously, I'm sure you already do that,
but they also need to know what's going on,
in in the fundraising side of things.
When you've laid a solid foundation and have gotten your
board a little more comfortable with supporting your
development efforts,
you're gonna have some more opportunities to get creative with them.
And this is another one where you know the people on your board best.
You know how to facilitate these conversations.
You do have, I am sure, quite a mix of personalities, on your board.
People have different strengths and weaknesses.
So once they're comfortable with the basics,
you can work with them to have a little bit more fun.
And you can look for opportunities to make it very
easy and to find creative ways to let those board
members kind of lean on what they're really good at,
like that that guy that loves throwing dinner parties.
There are literally endless possibilities here.
I've seen some of these work really well in the past,
and I'm actually curious to see what you have done.
So if you have really creative board engagement ideas,
I'd love to see it in the chat.
The a couple that leap immediately to mind.
One I really love is setting up a peer to peer fundraising
campaign for board members.
With most platforms, you don't really have to have an end date.
So, like, some of you have a lot of board members who just are on your
board with no real limits.
They can just keep that page forever.
The reason I love this tactic is because, one,
a lot like someone mentioned,
a lot of folks don't necessarily have people in
their network that would be good potential donors,
but a lot of your board members do have people in their
networks that would be willing to donate to you.
And,
people have gotten really accustomed to sharing, like,
birthday fundraisers or GoFundMe pages on their social media channels.
So if you have a board member who is interested in supporting
you and interested in helping you raise money,
but they are intimidated by facilitating major donor
conversations or don't have people in their network that
would be good major donors.
This could be a way to kind of get them started.
You're helping them you're giving them a way to raise
money in a way that is familiar to them.
Similarly, if you don't wanna get into the peer to peer fundraising world,
you can do kind of what I showed you on that other page.
Build a campaign for your board,
set a goal for that campaign,
help them figure out how they can raise money,
and then make sure they have access to that campaign page.
It shows their progress toward their goal,
and that's an easy asset that they can share with their
friends and family to get them to donate to facilitate the
donation process.
If you
for both of these things, do you
how comfortable are you with the concept of facilitating,
like, friendly competition on your board?
Frankly, the concept of doing friendly competition on a board worked
really well with one board I was on.
It would have been a disaster on another one.
So this is kind of an example where you may wanna tread carefully.
It's been working for Marion.
It it it wouldn't have worked for one of mine.
So it you can kind of choose your own adventure here.
You can give people many options,
but make sure those options are
tailored to the people on your board.
But there are so many things that they could do.
Board members can host their own events like the guy I
mentioned earlier.
Individual people can set up. DIY fundraising pages if you
don't wanna get your whole board involved in a peer to peer campaign.
They can work with local businesses to coordinate a
fundraising night.
That was something that I could do.
I worked with a local restaurant here in town,
and the the organization helped me facilitate that.
They can,
I don't know, introduce you to to their friends?
They can help you secure sponsorships.
There are lots of different things they can do.
If people have ideas and if those ideas are realistic
for you and your staff, do encourage them.
That said, please remember that being realistic is important.
I absolutely saw on the last board,
one of the board members suggested that an event,
it was a ton of work.
We knew it was gonna be a ton of work.
It did not have a great return on investment,
and and we decided not to do that event the next year.
So be gentle and and
encouraging with your board,
but not to the extent that you are stressing out yourself and your staff.
So this is that is a lot of information, a lot of ideas.
I'm at time, but I wanted to end this session by giving you an
important reminder.
Your board members care about your work.
They wouldn't be on your board if they didn't.
Now I've been a board member remember,
and I know that sometimes it's really,
really hard to remember that the people on your board are
actually passionate about what you're doing,
but I do promise it's true.
They care, but they might not know how to help,
especially if you are asking them to fundraise.
Luckily, they know a fundraising expert,
and that is you.
So from day one, tell your board members this is a
fundraising board.
Tell them they need to be involved and reiterate that
over and over and over again.
But also tell them how you are going to support them as they
do something that's new and possibly kind of scary for them.
And then just be patient with themselves with them.
They're not fundraising experts.
They're busy.. They're intimidated.
They it may take a little time to get them started.
Stay consistent. Give them tools and training.
Work with them to help them set and reach goals,
and then be gentle with yourself too,
because I do know that this can be challenging,
and those challenges can get frustrating.
Okay.
I'm gonna that was that was a lot.
I'm gonna give you, this link again,
and we're gonna drop this in the chat.
This this checklist includes a lot of the the tactics that I
just talked about.
Do you guys have time for me to to answer a couple questions?
If you don't,
you can leave, and I will make sure that I send you the thing tomorrow,
the recording tomorrow.
What do you do if they prefer not to use the Internet?
I have a board of older gentlemen who can use email.
Some are on social media.
We've given them tools and training,
and they simply prefer not to use the Internet.
They want to do newspaper and radio ads,
which my org has said no to.
They do not think those options are effective.
Okay. So, one, I love the enthusiasm.
That is something that you can work with. Bless their hearts.
Newsletter and radio.
Maybe not maybe not,
realistic.
Again, there's that word. Okay.
So what I would do is I would kinda pull back, say, like, okay.
They don't wanna use the Internet.
How comfortable are they with helping you do things that
happen on the Internet, but they're not on the Internet?
For example,
people don't really I mean,
I say people don't really read a physical newspaper anymore.
I'll say I don't know a lot of people who read a physical
newspaper anymore.
However, there is there are a couple of local news organizations in my area.
You probably have some,
that people read online.
Would they be open to working with a newspaper,
but it's it's it is on the Internet,
and and kind of doing things that way?
Could they help you,
write an ad the way they would for a newspaper and you place
it on on those channels?
If they wanna do radio ads,
radio doesn't get a ton of I I was gonna say a ton of airtime,
but it literally only gets airtime because it's the radio.
What it sounds like they're looking to reach a lot of
people through audio.
Would they be willing to record a short video for you
like they would record a radio spot, but you could use it,
on social media even if they are not on social media,
or use it on your on your website or do something else with it?
You're still you're still helping them
create fundraising ideas or
fundraising content or helping you do that in a in a format
that is familiar to them.
It just looks a little different. Oh, I love this.
Nicholas, you could use a radio ad as a Spotify ad.
That's a really cool idea.
But, I mean, really, what it said, they want to help you.
They are familiar with old forms of media.
You may be able to help them give you content,
whatever, and just share it in the digital versions of those media.
And especially if you're not asking them to, like,
run an ad on. Facebook or whatever,
they're getting what they are familiar with.
You are just helping them do so in a way that will reach more people.
And then the last question,
where do others find board members who are connected to
the town or community?
I would actually think that that would be interesting.
Oh, love this.
They can help write press releases as well,
and that is beneficial.
That's very helpful.
I really like that idea.. Thank you, Nicholas.
I let us know in the chat how where do you reach,
reach your board members?
I didn't participate in a lot of board recruitment with the
organizations I worked with.
One thing I can tell you so in my hometown and I know in several others,
the Chamber of Commerce has a program for people who are
interested in serving on boards.
So I actually was able to, through the chamber,
attend this class on how to be an effective board member,
which is why I was a little more comfortable with the
concept of of fundraising.
Try talking to your try talking to your board.
Talking to your board. Oh my gosh.
Try talking to your chamber,
and seeing if there are people that you can meet that way.
You may also if there are business affinity groups that
you are interested in meeting up with, for example,
there's a local business incubator here in town.
That can be a really cool way to meet people.
If there are professionals groups, we have, for example,
where I live in Lakeland,
we do have a a affinity group called Emerge,
which is for people who are entrepreneurs or looking to
network with other businesses in the area.
That can be a good way to meet people too.
And I love what Heather put in the chat.
Word-of-mouth and mentioning it over and over to everyone I know.
Help help current board of director members help with
ongoing recruitment.
That's fantastic in insight.
Your board members can not only help you raise money,
but they can also help you attract people for your board.
And then, Wayne, love this.
I had surprisingly good luck by posting a job opportunity on
LinkedIn for board members,
and there are also national and local volunteer opportunity boards.
Amazing.
Okay. I have kept you long past when I intended to let you go.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you for talking with me,
and thank you for the the questions you asked and for the
insights you shared in the chat.
I love talking with you all every month,
and I am thankful every time I do that you're here.
I know you're busy. I hope you have a good Wednesday.
Look for an email from me tomorrow.
I will send you the recording and the slides and this
handout, and some other things.
So have a great day. I will talk to you all, very soon.