Just don't ask me to fundraise: board edition

Ann Fellman: Hit start. Okay. We opened the doors. We’ve got people jumping in. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. You’re in the right place.

It’s Fundraiser Focus Week, my favorite week of the quarter.

I can see the numbers just skyrocketing here, so I know there are a lot of people jumping in. I’m so glad you’re here with us today. My name is Ann Fellman. I’m the chief marketing officer here at Bloomerang.

Hey, this is a fabulous community. Tell us where you’re at today in the world, and what’s your weather? I live in Minneapolis, and I’m in the basement, but it’s kinda gloomy and gross. It was summer on Saturday, and now it’s like 45 and rainy. So maybe you have some sun. Oh, Sun Valley’s got sun. How perfect.

Anyway, sunny fall day for a lot of you, so I’m really happy for most of you. We need the rain so bad. So, Julie, what’s your weather?

Julie Shannan: Oh, it’s kind of overcast, but it’s nice. I think it’s in the low eighties today, in Austin.

Ann Fellman: Yeah. I was like, and where?

Julie Shannan: Austin, Texas.

Ann Fellman: Low eighties in Austin. Oh, how nice. That sounds great.

Well, I’ve got my screen sharing, so hopefully you all can see this. But welcome. You’re in the right place. This is Fundraiser Focus Week.

We only have thirty minutes today, or I should say twenty-nine minutes now. You’re in the right place. Today’s topic, we are with Julie Shannan. We’re gonna talk about Just Don’t Ask Me to Fundraise: Board Edition.

So this is a perennial topic. Julie and I were chatting before we opened up. Boy, this is a hot topic.

Yes. So a few housekeeping items before we jump in. Yes, we’re recording, and yes, you’ll get a copy of the slides. So thank you, Julie, for that.

We’re not gonna directly answer your questions today. So you wanna make sure that you log them into the Q&A tab in your Zoom console here. I’ll keep reminding you of that because then on Thursday, we’re gonna come back with all of our speakers this week. We’ve got Lauren Tudor, Kent Stroman, and then Rachel Muir, our gracious host, will facilitate a roundtable discussion where we’re gonna answer all your questions and many more on Thursday.

So you gotta make sure to come back on Thursday as well when we get into the Q&A. So just a second about Bloomerang. We are all about helping you raise more. So we make software that handles donor management, fundraising, volunteer management, all the things. So one giving platform that helps you realize those results of raising more.

And I wanna do a shameless plug for GiveCon. It doesn’t matter if you’re a customer. This is an awesome fundraising conference. We call it where the best in giving gathering. We’ve got 70-plus sessions. It’s May third to the sixth in Atlanta. November 1 is a price increase on the ticket, so now is a great time to get in and get your ticket. But it is a phenomenal event. Super excited about GiveCon 2027.

So, Julie, Big Mission Consulting, thank you for being here today.

You can see Julie’s info. She’s gonna share some slides. Now I’m gonna stop sharing, and we’re gonna have some fun and learn a lot too.

Julie Shannan: Alright. I have 30 slides for less than thirty minutes. So let’s see if we can get through. Just a minute. I’m gonna share my screen. Let’s see if I can do this. We practiced it. There we go. Awesome.

Ann Fellman: Alright. Here we go.

Julie Shannan: If you need to have help getting your board members to say yes to fundraising, you are in the right place. I am Julie Shannan with Big Mission Consulting, and I help my clients increase their impact with their mission, messaging, marketing, measuring that impact, and hopefully getting more revenue, and just a little bit of magic that I put in there. I call myself the chief engagement officer. I am the founder, but I really feel like my sweet spot is engagement.

I also help with interim services. If you lose a director of development or communication, I can come keep the lights on. I help with strategic planning, executive and staff coaching, and one of my favorites, board and staff retreats.

If anyone says, “Will you come join our board, or will you be part of this organization, or come help us?” the number one thing I hear is, “I will do anything, but just don’t ask me to fundraise.” That is the number one thing I hear and my clients hear, and I wanna say that they’re not wrong. The way fundraising is framed a lot of times feels a little bit like we’re begging for money. In fact, I was searching for images on fundraising in Canva, and everything kind of had their hands out. Please help us. Please. We’re poor.

And I like to say this is really about a mindset shift. First of all, before we even talk about tips on how to help people with fundraising, I’d like to help you think about this as a mindset shift: instead of a lack mentality, it’s abundance. And instead of, you know, we’re in competition with other nonprofits, there’s more than enough. In fact, I have had to talk myself out of the lack mentality, and I have a little card deck that reminds me. One card says there’s more than enough. There’s another card that says the river flows, which really means there’s abundance all around us. And if you believe that, that comes forward first. So instead of begging for money, help us, we’re poor, we’re actually going to invite people around us to help us build and to help us expand this mission and the organization that you’re part of.

So I like to think of it as going from fear based to less fear, which is really what fearless means. It just means less fear. And so that’s the goal today. In fact, if there’s anything that should make you feel really confident about giving, it’s that Americans gave over $6,000,000,000 last year. Over half are individuals just like us, and giving makes us happier. There’s a lot of joy in giving. And so we actually don’t have to trick people and, you know, kind of twist their arms into giving. We actually get to be a part of inviting them to have that joy.

So thank you for being here. I hope you feel fearless after this.

I’m gonna share five tips with you, and I’m gonna fly through these as quickly as possible. And we’ll have questions on Thursday. The number one tip I have is share the mission. I like to call that mission raising instead of fundraising. It’s mission raising. It’s helping people connect with your mission. So what is their why? Why are they connected to what you do? What is their why?

Simon Sinek is one of my favorite speakers about this. He wrote the Golden Circle, and he has one of the number one TED talks still. Golden Circle, if you haven’t watched that, I highly recommend it. He talks about how everyone knows what we do, how we do it. Very few people know why we do it. This truly can help your board. If they share their why, then lots of people say, “What does your organization do?” Right? Talking about the why is what’s going to connect them faster than the what you do. In fact, the word program is one of my least favorite words because it’s so generic.

So one of my favorite things is we used to do this exercise when I was at Girlstart. Shout out to Rachel Muir, who is gonna be taking questions on Thursday. She was my first boss and taught me everything I know in fundraising. One of the things that we would do at board meetings is go around and have our board members practice telling their why. And one of our board members, Debbie, stood up. She had had cancer, leukemia, and she was a huge supporter of leukemia. She was also really involved with Girlstart, which was STEM education for girls. And she stood up and she said, “You know what? I have cancer. I need a cure for cancer. We need more people that are going to be solving this. I think a girl’s gonna cure cancer.” And that immediately connects people to her why.

So helping your board members share their why, and you starting to share your why, will also help. That way, it’s something that you’re practicing all of the time.

I also want to encourage you to help them reframe the mission statement in their own words. And we’re gonna take one minute right now, and we are going to practice that ourselves. The mission statement can be intimidating, right, to remember what order the words go in and what those words mean. And a lot of times, mission statements don’t really mean anything, to be honest with you. So I would take a look at your mission statement too. Is it relevant for today? Does it feel like ChatGPT wrote it? Let’s rewrite it if that’s the case. So one thing to do, if you can do that right now, is rewrite your mission statement in your own words, and we’ll just take one minute to do that. And if you wanna share it in the chat, go for it. Or if you wanna keep it for your own personal benefit, that’s fine too.

I like to also practice this with our board members because if you ask anyone in the room to share the mission statement, it’s no one. I’ve never seen anyone raise their hand because no one wants to get it wrong, and a lot of times, they haven’t memorized your mission statement. So rewriting it in their own words will help them as well.

Great. Hopefully, this is helpful for you. If you’re going to ask board members to do anything, model it first is one thing that I like to say.

Number two, my tip number two is to give your board members the tools that they need to bring others to your organization and to share your mission. I can’t tell you enough how important this is. I saw Jamie Garcia, one of my current clients with the Andy Roddick Foundation, is on, and they do this so well. If they have an event coming up and they want to share it, Michael Kittner, their chief development officer, will share everything that needs to be shared: the images, the links, the message to post with it.

You can share one-page talking points with your board members, and this will help them to know what are we doing this year. What’s the latest stat? How many kids are we reaching? How many people are we serving? What’s the impact? Give them an impact story they can share, and ready-to-post social media content as well. This came in handy with a client of mine, No Girl Walks Alone, yesterday when they were invited to speak last minute at an F1 event, and she wasn’t able to make it right on time. And so she had two board members there. One had everything she needed to jump in and do a panel with one of the female drivers. So having something that is already ready before you know that something is coming up is going to help you share your mission and help them share your mission a lot better.

Also, what can you hand to people? What are the things that they’re going to remember you by, and what can they hand to people? What can your board members hand out? If you’ve worked with me, you know that I love a sticker set, and I made Keep Austin Beautiful a sticker set for their Love ATX campaign. If you have something that people can give out that feels helpful, I can’t tell you how many water bottles these go on. A T-shirt is great if it’s inspirational. At Girlstart, we would make sayings on our T-shirts like “brave is beautiful,” and everyone wanted it, and we gave them out. And guess what? People would wear them on planes, introducing people. It’s a great introduction, right, to the organization, especially when it doesn’t scream your name. I love a good mission moment.

Notecards. I love notecards because everyone needs a thank-you card or a generic card of some sort to use for a birthday or just a note that they can give to someone. I love giving people notecards that they can hand out that don’t scream your mission but are inspirational, and then maybe they have your mission on the back. So think about how to get sticky, basically, how to get your mission in their room, in their office, on their desk, and help them share it. Awards are great too, by the way. We used to give out awards to all of our corporate funders. And so when we’d walk into Intel’s office, there would be a Girlstart plaque: thank you for supporting Girlstart. And people can ask questions. Who’s Girlstart? What’s that about? So get to the place where you can help people share who you are in their environment.

And then give them tools that they can invite people to you with, like seats to your gala, guest passes to backstage events, a monthly open house or tour that is always on the calendar, whether one person shows up or 10 people show up. This helps your board members know that every first Tuesday at 10:00, we’re gonna have coffee, and we’re gonna chitchat about this organization, or we’re going to give a tour behind the scenes, and people can plan. I don’t know about you, but the back and forth of scheduling a tour can be overwhelming, not just for the development team and staff, but for programs and also for your guests. So make it easy for your board members.

Create meaningful opportunities for them to come and get engaged and invite others to get engaged. These can be really fun opportunities as well. I kind of think of it as voluntainment in some ways. I think people are looking to be kind of entertained, and they want to connect with each other and not just your mission. So providing opportunities for them to do that is great.

No ask introductions are great tools that your board members can have. Like I said, hosting those quarterly coffees or having a meet-your-organization happy hour. That’s one of my favorites. Put a few thousand dollars in the budget, or ask a board member to host it at their house, have a brunch, or have something before an event. If you’re a lot of F1 fans, maybe they have an F1 party, and they can talk about the charity that they’re involved with. And like I said, creating opportunities for people to have fun and connect with each other.

And if they can’t come to you, bring the mission to them. One of my favorite things that I love doing as a chief engagement officer is finding unique ways to have virtual or in-person volunteer opportunities that connect people to your mission. One of my clients, Patriots Hall, is a veteran-serving organization in the area, and we created these monthly on-site activations for corporations to write veterans thank-you notes. It’s called Honoring a Hero is what that campaign is called. And who doesn’t want to thank a veteran for serving, especially during Veterans Month? So we have created a come-and-go opportunity for them to learn about the mission, and then a board member can go out and host that and make it really easy. There’s no asking for money in this situation. We are just educating people about the mission.

And then I really believe in board meetings, there needs to be some accountability for sharing out all of this information, all of these tools we’re coming up with to help them. Let’s hear how they’re using them. Right? So maybe the next time, they will remember, oh, they were gonna be asked, how did we use that? How did we share the mission? Who did we share it with? So I really believe in creating some time during board meetings to be accountable to each other. Another good thing you could do is write thank-you notes together.

You could also brainstorm at your board meeting. I recently led a board retreat where we took the top seven needs that they had, and they each had Post-it notes. And they wrote down people’s names that they thought could help them with that area. This is part of my nonprofit needs assessment worksheet that I’ve created, and you can download it for free, and I’ll include the link on Thursday. These are, I think, 60 or so ways that volunteers may help you. Having your board members brainstorm who they know can be a huge help, and it can really bring people around your mission.

When I first started off, one of our consultants told us, “Ask people for money, and we’ll give you advice. Ask people for advice, and we’ll most likely give you money in the end.” And so I think people wanna help you build. They wanna help you create. And oftentimes, we do all the fun stuff. We do all the building, and we really should let more people in. It does also mean letting go of control, which can be tricky.

Tip number three is map your connections together. I always feel like every nonprofit should have a target list of corporations or individuals that they are trying to connect with. If you asked some of my Mission 500 clients, like, this is my small coaching cohort, who they’re looking to help fund them, a lot of times they’re like, “Anyone with money. We just need anyone with money.” But that is not gonna help your board members really remember, I need to connect to someone at this company, or I need to find someone who does this. So I created a worksheet just for you today. That’s the connections and networks worksheet. I will also include this in my next newsletter if you wanna sign up for my newsletter on my website, mybigmission.com.

Really finding ways for people to think about who’s in our circles. Who do we know? These are for your board members to really think, who are my neighbors? Who are my past or current employers? Who do I know in these circles? That is something that can help you. On my blog, I also have how to download your LinkedIn network. A lot of times when I’m helping boards, they will just send me their LinkedIn, and we’ll go through and search for who the people are that we know that they know. Sometimes they don’t know they know them until they’re like, “Oh, yeah. I met them at a conference, and they’re wonderful. Yes. I’m happy to reconnect.” So really making that an activity that you do together can be really wonderful. And something I would just remind you is, of course, these are their contacts, and keep them in the loop on this as well.

Alright. I’m trying to rush through this.

Make the ask for them. This is probably the most important one, to be honest with you, because let’s be frank. They don’t wanna ask for money. In fact, I was trying to think how many board members have I known that have been really excited about asking for money? I could really only think of two in thirty years of helping nonprofits and working for them myself. That’s just a rare breed. And so I think being willing to make the ask for them is one of the best gifts you can give them. It is something that they want.

So ask them for an introduction. Invite them to come with you. Of course, that’s wonderful. Right? If they could be there, talk about their why, that would be amazing. But if they can’t, update them on the progress. Hey, Alicia really was interested. She’d like to get more involved. This is their contact, and we need to be really careful that we understand that it’s a gift that they’re letting us contact them, and let’s do that in the right way. And don’t add them to a newsletter yet. We are really working with them as, this is your friend. And when we treat their friends with the respect that they want, then they will trust us more. So we’re increasing trust as well.

Make the ask. If you’re not comfortable with fundraising, I highly recommend getting in touch with Rachel Muir. She’s the one that taught me how to be comfortable fundraising. I was a program person, and I really basically did not wanna fundraise, and I’m pretty sure I said that a hundred times, if not more. No. No. No. I don’t wanna be a part of the fundraising team. And yet I was really close to the impact. I heard the stories and saw the impact that the girls were making, or that the program people were doing, frontline help, changing lives. And I can’t say enough about the opportunity to be included as a program person in the donor conversation. Some of these were million dollar asks, and being able to be included in those not only increased my confidence in fundraising, but really brought the donor closer to the passion. Our program staff can be very passionate about what we are doing. So if you aren’t comfortable with making the ask, find someone that is and let them coach you.

Alright. We have made it to number five. Invite them to join a committee.

Now this is probably my most successful tip here for you: let them build with you. Let them be part of a gala committee. Invite their friends to join the committee with them. Have a lot of fun. They will, a lot of times, open the door to sponsorships and in-kind donors. They’ll share their mission, especially if they are feeling a lot of ownership around that event.

I used to get really frustrated with conversations around centerpieces. My committee members only wanted to sit around and talk about centerpieces and centerpieces, and I really just wanted to raise money and raise table sales. And one of the things that finally clicked with me, I was like, you know what? Who cares if they wanna sit around and talk about centerpieces? They’re gonna bring people to see their centerpieces if they love it and if you let them. And so I really shifted my mindset around being able to support the organization was bigger than that.

Oh my gosh. I hope I don’t lose my voice before I’m done. So galas, host committees, marketing and communications is a great committee to have. Advisory councils, boards, building facility committees. DPR came in and took a look at our building at Girlstart, and they’re like, this is a hot mess. In two months, they renovated the whole thing. It was a $300,000 renovation, all in kind. They brought all of their vendors over. They’re like, oh, we can pay them to paint. We’ve got the wood. We’ve got these fixtures sitting around in warehouses. That is something that is really, really easy. I’m wrapping it up.

Earned revenue, by the way, is one of my favorite committees. I will tell you more about that on Thursday, maybe. But let’s have more fun. Let’s put the fun back in fundraising because it’s a lot of fun. And when we’re not begging, but we’re inviting people to join us, it can be awesome.

Ann Fellman: Oh my gosh, Julie. How perfect. We were just chatting before we started. I was like, you know, life’s too short. We gotta have fun.

Awesome. If you would like to learn more from Julie, you can raise your hand here. If you’re curious about Bloomerang and you’re not familiar, you wanna take a tour or meet with somebody, just talk about how you can raise more, please raise your hand for that. Remember, we recorded. You will get a copy of Julie’s awesome slides. And the last thing is we have an Uber Eats gift card to raffle off. So we’re doing $50 every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Thursday, it’s $250. So today’s winner is Maxine Dalton. We will email you separately, Maxine, with the details to redeem your $50 Uber Eats gift card.

So I hope that you all learned something. There were some fabulous insights, and I love this quote to kinda wrap it up, but there is a lot of joy in giving. And your why and your story is such a beautiful way to bring all of that together, the joy of giving and everyone’s why behind it, especially your board. So what a fabulous way to kick off this week for Fundraiser Focus Week. Don’t miss tomorrow. Lauren Tudor is gonna be on. And again, if you’ve got a question while we’re up here, Q&A tab for Lauren. I see that there’s a number of questions that have been filed, so that is great. We’re gonna cover those on Thursday when Rachel Muir will graciously host us all for a, I’m sure, very engaging roundtable discussion on boards so much. So with that, if there isn’t anything else, everybody, I hope that you have a fabulous start to your week, and we will see you back tomorrow, same time and place.

Julie Shannan: Have a great day, everybody.

Ann Fellman: Thanks, Julie. Bye.