Successful board fundraising in 5 steps

Tiara Stephan: Alrighty. Hello, hello. Welcome to today’s webinar. If you are in the webinar, go ahead and put in the chat where you’re joining in from. And also, if you can see our screen, that would be great.

I am in Denver, Colorado. We just got a bunch of snow yesterday, so it’s been quite chilly over here. It’s our first snow of the season, which is very exciting. I’m seeing some very cold Minnesota. I feel that. Fort Collins, Colorado. I always love seeing fellow Coloradans in the chat. We’ve got a good spread of people from all over the place. Canada. I love when we get international visitors for webinars too. That’s so fun. A lot of first snow in Columbus. Congratulations. I don’t know if you like snow, but if you like snow, congrats. I do love a good snow day.

Alright. Well, I’m loving seeing everybody in the chat. As you’re filtering in, just introduce yourself. I’m going to go ahead and get started so that we can get to some really, really exciting content here. So hello, everybody. Welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Tiara. I am a product marketing coordinator here on the Bloomerang team, and I’m so excited to be here today to talk about successful board fundraising with Brian.

Before we dive in, I just wanna go over some quick housekeeping information. First of all, yes, we will be emailing you the recording and also any resources from today’s speaker later on today so you can revisit the content at your own pace. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to drop them in the Zoom Q&A box any time, and we’ll answer as many as we can at the end of the session. If you’re having trouble with the Q&A box, no worries. Just drop those questions in the chat. I will be monitoring the chat throughout, and we’ll make sure to get to those questions at the end as well.

Now, if you are not familiar with Bloomerang, we are a giving platform that is built for purpose. We are created to help nonprofits build stronger relationships and also grow their impact. Our tools like donor and volunteer management, online fundraising, peer-to-peer campaigns, and custom donation forms are designed to help organizations of all sizes thrive. We believe that when fundraisers have the time and the insights that they need, they can focus on what truly matters, which is making a difference in their communities. So if this resonates with you, please reach out. Let’s connect. We would love to help you achieve your mission.

We would also love to see you at GiveCon in 2026 in Saint Louis, Missouri. I myself have been a couple times. It is so much fun, so much learning, so much networking, just a blast. Registration is currently open. Feel free to scan the QR code on your screen to register, or go to bloomerang.com/givecon for more information. These slides will also be sent out, so if you’re interested in registering later, you’ll have that QR code yourself.

With all that, I am super excited to introduce Brian Saber. He is the president of Asking Matters. Welcome, Brian. I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Brian Saber: Thank you, Tiara. If you could launch that poll while I’m introducing myself, we’d love to know what your position is here today. What hat are you wearing? Are you a board member, ED, director of development, development staff, other? If you could check off a box, we’d love to know. This is obviously a popular topic, because more than a thousand of you have registered for it. I’m not surprised. Boards are a fascinating and challenging part of the nonprofit world. I’ve been working with them forever. I’ve been in the nonprofit world forty years, and I just wanted to do good, like most of you and like all of our board members. We’ll share the results with you in a second as to who is what. If you don’t see the poll, of course, just type in the chat, but we’d love to see it on the poll.

I never thought I’d be a fundraiser or report to a board. I actually had no idea what I was gonna do. I just wanted to help. In my third job, I was the executive director of a teeny organization, which meant both fundraising and working with my board and trying to get my board to fundraise. So I’ve been doing it since then.

Some of you will know me from Bloomerang. I’ve done a bunch of webinars for them over the years, and I thought, okay, I’m gonna do a brand new one today. I’m gonna focus on five steps. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or that they’re quick steps, but I thought, what are the five most important steps? If I were gonna step back after all my work and put something together just for today, what would it be? That’s where we are today.

So, Tiara, can you close the poll? Let’s see who’s here with us. Okay. We’ve got a really broad range, very evenly divided, basically. Most are directors of development, and that means you’re working not only for the board but for your executive director. So you’ve gotta get your executive director fundraising and also send the right messages to your board. The rest, I’m sure, are other staff, maybe some consultants and such. So thank you. Tiara, I hope everyone can see that. Great. Thank you for closing that.

Here’s our agenda for today. Right away, I’ll tell you what our five steps are. Making a compelling case for this work. Creating what I would call strategic and agreed-to expectations. You’re gonna hear that word “strategic” a lot from me. Helping them tell their story. Giving them basic training they can’t do without. And supporting their work, with just some basics on that. Then questions, recap, and next steps.

I will take questions throughout. There are tons of you on. We already have 300 of you live. I will ask Tiara to watch the box, because it will go fast. Please put those questions in the chat box. Tiara, you can stop me anytime, and I will leave time at the end as well.

But let’s jump into this. Step one, making a compelling case. Let me say that all of this comes out of all these years, not only the 25 years I worked in a nonprofit, but now the 15 years I’ve been running Asking Matters, training boards virtually and in person. Some of you may know I’ve written two books on boards. My latest book, behind me, is Fundraising for Introverts. That is me under the bag. If you’re an introvert, you might be interested in that. But I’ve written two books on this: one on boards and asking styles, and the other called Engaged Boards Will Fundraise.

There’s this tendency: board members, they’re good do-bees. The value proposition for being on a board is a real wonky one. Right? We say, okay, first of all, you’re gonna have fiduciary responsibility. If we really mess up, you could be responsible. And we’re gonna ask you to come to these board meetings, probably at night when you’d like to be home with your family. Oh, and we’re gonna ask you to sit on a committee and probably have those meetings during the day when you’re otherwise engaged. And for all that, we’re gonna ask you to give a gift, a personally significant gift. We’re gonna talk about that. And because that’s not enough, because this is so exciting, we’re gonna ask you to fundraise. And they’re willing to do that, which is amazing. Right?

And then somehow, we miss the strategic piece. We see them as willing, but we don’t always use them strategically. So I’m really going to push that today, because there’s this tendency to ask them to just ask anyone they know, and the fundraising can be very diffuse and very transactional.

So how do we make a compelling case? This is what I tell people when I fundraise. By the way, you will get a PDF of these slides, so some of this material you could repurpose, giving credit to me if you want. And there are some other pieces I’ll send you if I get your email, and I think Bloomerang will ask for that at the end. But this is how I present it if I were standing in front of a board and trying to get them to understand why we need their help.

The first is that I need to get at their money story. I’m gonna ask you this question, so type in: if I were gonna say “money is blank and blank,” what would you say? I would say money is complicated and helpful. What would you say? Type that in the chat box. I asked that question. Time and passion. Thank you. A tool. Two of you just said a tool. Freedom. Essential. Enabling. Complicated. Necessary.

Money is very complicated. It is not a straightforward thing for us. Right? It brings up all sorts of emotions and relationships. And we are asking for money. There are no euphemisms here. We are asking people to give us their money. So what we need to do is get past that initial awkwardness, that complication of money, to really understand philanthropy.

By the way, you’ll see some exercises here, and some of these are discussions to have with your board to help them see the beauty of philanthropy, to get away from the money issues and into what we know is so positive about philanthropy. This right here is a five- or ten-minute exercise you could have with your board. What are the meaningful gifts you’ve made? What’s the most meaningful one? What prompted it? How did you feel when you made it? How do you feel now? Right? So that they can see that the gifts they’re going to ask for should, if we’re asking in the right way and asking the right people, help those people feel as we do about our giving.

I’ve never twisted an arm to get anyone to give. That’s not good in philanthropy. I give people the opportunity. That is not a euphemism. I really open the door, but I want people to be excited about it, because when we give, we do feel better. There’s actually some fascinating proof about this. You may have heard of the book The Paradox of Generosity. It doesn’t talk just about philanthropy. It talks about being generous in any way: paying it forward, gratitude, and such. When we do things for others, when we’re generous, we have better life outcomes. We have better emotional states. We feel more positive. It has a great impact. So the work they’re doing is going to help donors feel more connected, more empowered, better about themselves.

The second is the impact of this. By the way, I’m talking about one-on-one work almost entirely here. I don’t wanna see board members sending a letter to everyone on their list. We’re gonna talk about swapping gifts and such. I want board members to be involved in strategic work, which is mostly building relationships. We’ll come back to that.

Research was done years ago that’s still valid today about the impact of different types of asking. No surprise, when we ask by mail, those direct mail letters that we all get, and we’re getting tons of them right now in December, only 2 percent of those result in a gift. When we call, not cold call, when we call our alma mater, or our place of worship calls, where we already have a relationship and might give, Kent Dove, who did this research at the Indiana University Foundation, found that 25 percent of those calls will result in a gift. But he found that 75 percent of in-person asks result in a gift. Seventy-five percent. These are incredible odds. Right? And there are many reasons for it. But the key is that when we’re in person with each other, a level of empathy develops that just doesn’t develop otherwise. When we’re with each other, we’re listening more closely. We want to come through. We want to be seen as good. We connect on a different level. So when our board members are involved in helping to build these relationships, this one-on-one time with donors results in more gifts and bigger gifts over time.

The third is where the money’s at, and a lot of board members actually don’t know this. I’m sure if you’re an ED or director of development, someone on your board has said, “We need to write more grants.” Well, of the almost $600 billion given out in 2024, two thirds of it was outright from individuals. Another almost 8 percent was wills, estates, bequests, all individuals. In fact, half of all foundation money is individual or small family foundation money, which is really an individual giving their money. They’ve just put it in some vehicle for posterity or tax reasons, whatever that is. When you put it together, for the last couple of decades, 84 to 87 percent of all charitable dollars have come from individuals.

So if we’re not building relationships with individuals, we can’t get at those gifts. And we also know that the biggest gifts come where there’s a relationship. If you look at the top of your donor roster, those gifts didn’t come from direct mail. Generally, they’re not from special events. The big gifts, the gifts that really move our organization, the strategic gifts, come from relationships and from people who have given over time. Those of you who are development staff, which is the majority of you today, know that people don’t give their biggest gift the first time out. They test the waters, and over time, that philanthropy grows. We know it from our own giving. If you’re a board member here today, by the way, a special thank you to the, I think it was about 20 percent of you who are board members and are on today, because we need you, and you’re volunteering in the middle of your day. So thank you for coming. But from your own philanthropy, over time, we tend to give more.

There’s one more compelling point, and that is that it’s actually cost efficient to build these relationships and ask for the larger gifts. Direct marketing costs a fortune. We lose money the first few years. Special events cost so much. As a matter of fact, I do a webinar called “Keep the Fundraising in Fundraising Events,” and I talk about how expensive they actually are, if you’re being honest with yourself. Annual giving. Right? As we move down here, you see where we’re talking about building relationships for sponsorships, grants, major gifts, planned giving. That’s all about individuals and building relationships. And it’s less expensive, because those gifts are larger, and those are the gifts that repeat over time, truly with less work.

So that’s pretty compelling to share with your board and say, that’s why we need you.

Oh, by the way, let’s type in, because most organizations have a budget under a million dollars and, at most, one development staff: how many full-time development staff are there at your organization? Can you type that in the chat box? How many full-time development staff? Oh, lots of zeros. Not surprising. Ten. Someone’s a winner so far. We have ten. Well, if you’ve got ten or eleven, you might have a major gift officer, maybe one. But unless you’re a university, a hospital, or the largest arts organizations, the opera companies and such, you’re not gonna have the staff to do this work.

At the end, I’m gonna talk a little bit about how much time this takes. I do a webinar called “Major Gifts in Two Hours a Week.” Right? How much of this work can you do? By the way, a major gift is any gift worth the time to solicit. So if we’re gonna get to those meaty gifts at the bottom of this chart, those gifts that keep on giving, we need board help, because the staff can’t get to all of it. Pretty compelling.

So why don’t they ask more often? What are those reasons? Why don’t you type those in the chat box? Why don’t board members cultivate and ask more one-on-one? Why don’t they do the work? What do you think? They don’t know how. Right? They’re not trained. They say they’re too busy. They’re not comfortable. Not my job. Fear. Fear.

If we’re being honest as fundraisers, look, I have been in thousands of meetings. I’ve raised a ton of money over the years, and I will share that if I were going on a fundraising call this afternoon, I’d still be a little anxious, and I’d be anxious in the meeting. I wish I never had to ask anyone ever again. I do it because I care. Whether we’re a professional or a volunteer, we do it, but we have to help people get over the fear. We’ve gotta train them. We’ve gotta give them the tools, and we’ve gotta change the mindset, because this is not easy work. I believe that fundraising is the hardest work for a nonprofit, and I think it’s the most challenging work we ask the board to do. But we need them.

A couple of you said “not my job.” Now, there’s a whole piece here on the evolution of boards that I’m not gonna go into in detail, but we evolved from hands-on to governing boards, and the role of a board member does change over time. So often, we have board members who were on the board when we didn’t need them to fundraise, or we simply didn’t have very strong job descriptions and such. So the first job often is setting expectations that everyone will agree to, and that can take time. I often say it’s three years to evolve to what I would call a fundraising board, meaning that’s not all they do, but that everyone understands.

I learned an awful lot over the years from Michael Davidson. Those of you in New York might have known him. He called himself the board coach. He and I ended up partnering. We wrote one of those books together, and I learned so much from him. This is one of the things he would say, right: a board member can’t do their job if they don’t know what it is, and they’re not gonna do it unless they know everyone else is doing theirs. Mike was a rower, so he used a lot of these rowing metaphors about a team. Teams need to work together. Everyone needs to know everyone else is doing their job if they’re going to do it.

So I believe the best practice for your board is for everyone to give and get to the best of their ability. I can’t go into too much detail on why I don’t like minimums, why I don’t like “give or get.” But truly, if you’re gonna get people to fundraise, everyone has to do it. No one likes it. It can’t be the job of just the fundraising committee. It needs to be everyone’s job. That’s what gives you balance on the board. If you have a minimum gift and everyone has to give at that level, for some people it’s a stretch, and for some people it’s very easy. If you say “give or get,” the truth of the matter is that for those who can give more, it’s usually easier to get more, because they’re in circles with other people who have more capacity. So the way to make things equal on your board is for everyone to do their best, where everyone’s giving a personally significant gift.

I love this discussion, and the next discussion to have is: what makes a gift significant to you? This is a great discussion, because most board members have never really thought about it. They’re doing their job, but they haven’t really thought until they’re asked for something specific. “Gee, can I do that? What’s significant for me?” So we want board members to understand their philanthropy better. What makes a gift significant? Where do I make my significant gifts? What’s the type of relationship? How would I define it? Is it one of my top gifts? Is it a gift that I’ve gotta pay out over time? Is it a gift that causes me to forgo something else? It’s a wonderful short exercise that helps focus your board on fundraising and understanding it through their own philanthropy.

I do believe everyone must help cultivate relationships. Everyone is an ambassador, an advocate, a representative, and most people are willing to do that. I use this donor cycle. There are different versions of it, where we’re first identifying people. We’ll talk about that. Then we educate and involve them. We ask for something. It could be cash. We might be asking for in-kind, or to open a door. We thank and recognize them, and so forth. So I think everyone needs to be part of this circle. I actually think everyone needs to ask for something. There are so many things besides money that are much easier for board members to do. Most board members will ask someone else to volunteer or provide some in-kind services or products, or maybe, “Would you sit on this committee with me?” Those are also easier lifts.

This next slide will sound like an out for board members, and staff are gonna be frustrated with me, but let me explain. I actually don’t think every board member should be out there asking face to face, one on one, for gifts. Some people will never do a good job, and it is so out of their wheelhouse. But I believe that with training, and by asking the right people, and by having built relationships and so forth, most people would do it. Everyone has to be involved in the process, because the process throughout the year takes a ton of time. I actually think if board members could keep relationships going all year, staff could come in and ask for the gift. I would like the board member to be on that call, in that meeting, partnering, maybe being a second. But the work is throughout the year. That’s the work that’s so hard to do, to keep up those relationships so donors are engaged, so they know they’re important, we’re thinking of them, we’re getting to know them.

But we have to get past this, because it is such terrible fundraising. I see it all the time, where board members really press the people they know best to give. What happens? So I’m a board member, and I say, okay, I’ll go do this work. I ask three people. They each give me $500. And I, in return, give them each $500 for their organization. One scenario is that it’s a zero-sum game, but even worse, now my organization has the names of three donors who are only giving because of me and don’t care. And I’m probably gonna say, “Oh, by the way, they’re only giving because of me. Please don’t bother them during the year. I’ll go back next December and ask them again.” This goes year by year, and what happens? Eventually, I leave the board, and all those gifts leave with me, because I’m not gonna ask for those gifts when I’m not obligated, when I’m not trying to fulfill this arduous responsibility of being on the board.

In doing that, I’m not strategically building gifts for the future. I’m putting a Band-Aid on this year’s budget. I ran a small nonprofit of $200,000. I’ve been in your shoes where we need money. I get it. And these are horrific times. They’re much worse than 2008 for nonprofits. The whole social fabric is fraying. But even now, what we need to do is build for the future, or there won’t be a future, and that means building relationships. So we don’t have a turnover of gifts constantly, we build on it.

My goal when I work with boards is for everyone to have four people or institutions on their radar screen. Four. Four who they might meet with, engage, educate, and thank throughout the year. And here’s the kicker: not necessarily from their own list. I want them to be focused strategically. We’re going to get into that in a minute when we talk about some best practices. I’m gonna hold off on that, but only to say here, you’ve got a range of budgets. Let’s say you’ve got a million-dollar budget. If your board members are out raising $100 gifts, excuse me, hundred-dollar gifts, what is that really doing for you? You’re asking these valued volunteers to each raise a couple hundred dollars, and altogether, they’re raising five, ten thousand dollars on a million-dollar budget. Is that really strategic? Especially if I have people who are making thousand-dollar gifts, and I can’t spend the time with them each year. So I see this as a combination.

Now we’re gonna talk about networks, and I’m gonna give you a little exercise that’ll help board members better understand what their strong relationships are and where they are, so that they might find more prospects. But this isn’t all about them bringing new people to the table. It’s partnering with staff, because most organizations have donors whose relationships and gifts haven’t been maximized.

Most important is developing their story. It’s the number one challenge besides fear and such. Board members don’t actually know what to say. I used to be the person who gave them all this information, these board packets. In the early days, when everything was in a folder, two sides, little slots, we would put all this information about the organization in there.

Oh, actually, you know what? Before I do this, because we’re at the halfway point, Tiara, are there any questions I should take now? Were there any you saw in particular?

Tiara Stephan: We did have a couple of questions that I think had to do with where we were in the presentation. Kinsley did ask, does the cost-effectiveness analysis take time into account as a cost? Because relationship building can be slow.

Brian Saber: That’s a good question. Actually, I don’t know. I think it would take into account the cost of staff time, for sure. Would it value volunteer time? I’m not sure. Let me ask this, because I go back to special events, which are such a time suck. I’ve seen heads of development spending a third of a year on a special event and not including any of that time in the cost of the event. Right? Often, when I’m trying to get people to figure out where they’re gonna find time to do major gifts, the first thing I look at is events. Do you really need to do every event you’re doing? Because if you’re earning $75,000 a year and you’re spending a third of the year on your event, that’s $25,000, plus benefits and taxes and such. That’s a lot of time that isn’t spent developing relationships.

So it does take time, but I think this other fundraising takes more time than people think and leads to gifts that have very high turnover. But yes, there is certainly a time cost to the major gifts, for sure. Is there one more, Tiara, and then I’ll come back?

Tiara Stephan: Sure thing. Kim asked, where would requests on social media posts fall on the spectrum of mail, phone, and in-person donation requests?

Brian Saber: Well, social media is like direct mail. There’s a 1 to 2 percent return on social media as well. The good news is there’s less cost. You’re not putting mailings together and spending money on it. So the return is better because the cost is low. But very few large gifts or repeat gifts come through social media. It’s very much like direct mail, getting someone’s attention in the moment and getting them to make a short-term decision. The best fundraising program is a portfolio that has a little bit of everything. I’m just trying to get people to understand where they’re spending all their time versus return, short-term return and long-term return, to be able to build their organization and to reapportion what they’re doing. Thank you. Good questions.

Developing your story, very quickly on this. I believe there’s no such thing as an elevator pitch, and every board member needs to build their own story, because they are the most important piece in it. Everyone says, “What does the donor wanna hear?” The donor wants to hear that you, the teller, whether you’re a board member or staff member, are passionate and authentic, because that’s compelling to the listener. If you just recite an elevator pitch, they’re gonna think, “Oh boy, he mastered that one.” But when you’re talking from the heart about your own experience and your own perspective, it’s going to be compelling, and we’re building relationships. The donors have time to ask questions. We’ll talk about that.

I want my board members to understand why they’re talking one on one. We don’t have a lot of cartoons in the nonprofit world. Here’s my favorite. This is from The New Yorker, at least a decade ago. We’re not cold calling. We have the opportunity to build a relationship, which means we don’t have to know everything. We mostly have to speak articulately. We need two things.

We need to be able to talk about vision, not need. We all have a need. Our organizations have a need. We need money. Our clients, our participants, our beneficiaries all have needs, and people will give for that. But the biggest gifts come from vision, and that’s a more challenging thing to articulate, which is why we need to allow board members time to develop their vision. What would the world look like if we were successful?

The second is features and benefits and how they lead to impact. We can talk about a fork as having four tines to stab the food and a curve to scoop the food, but who cares unless you’re a structural engineer? We care about the benefit of eating with a fork and the impact it has on our lives. One of the great exercises I do is make a chart with the board. What are all the features of our organization? Type one in. We have three swimming pools. We have five mental health professionals. We have a 200-seat theater. What’s a feature of your organization? Then I say, okay, what’s the benefit of having five mental health professionals? Well, they each specialize in something else, and it allows us to see a broader range of people so that we can benefit more people. What impact does that have, et cetera. Okay, we have three wet labs. What can we do with three wet labs? No one cares that you’re 100 years old. No one cares that you serve 10,000 people. There’s nothing to grasp onto. But what are the benefits of these various features, and how do we make an impact?

Then we layer on asking styles. I don’t know how many of you know about Asking Matters and the asking styles. If you do, type that in the chat box. I’d be curious. This is the personality rubric we developed. I say “we,” Andrea Kihlstedt and I, almost 15 years ago. It’s like Myers-Briggs, but for us in the field. It’s based on how we interact, extroverted versus introverted, and how we think, analytic versus intuitive. It’s going to sound to you like DiSC and Enneagram and all of these personality things. But yes, we developed it for ourselves. We each see the world differently and act differently in the world. We each ask a different question. By the way, there is a free quiz you can take. Actually, Tiara, if you wanna put that in the chat box, go to quiz.askingmatters.com if you haven’t heard of it.

So we’re each gonna tell a different story, because we’re each going to use a different vocabulary in talking about the same organization. It is so important to give our board members time to develop their own story and to embrace their story. They don’t have to remember every fact and figure about the organization. They have to understand the core why we’re doing this work and what we’re trying to accomplish, and then tell their story.

This is another exercise when I’m in person with the board. I did this just a few weeks ago. I have everyone in groups of three tell their story, and then I say, okay, did you get to vision and impact? Can you see where asking style impacts it? Now do it again. Keep practicing it. I often say if we could give board members five minutes at the beginning of every board meeting to practice their story, that would be the best-spent five minutes in a board meeting. I’ve never been to a board meeting in 41 years that didn’t have at least five wasted minutes, or five minutes that could be reapportioned. It’s a great exercise. You’ll be getting these slides, and you can just take a screenshot of this. You don’t need any more information than this to tell the story.

Okay. I know I’m saying five steps, but there is a lot in each step, and there is a lot to do.

Basic training. What do they need training on? Most board members don’t know how to fundraise. Yes, they’re successful in their fields. They might be successful sales-related people. Yes, they’re well-known members of the community who seem to have such polish and such experience. But it doesn’t mean they know how to fundraise.

First, they need to help pick the right prospects, if they’re gonna be picking them. Kim Klein of Grassroots Fundraising would say ability, belief, and contact. They have to have the ability to give at what you’d consider a major gift level. What’s the smallest gift you want your board member to be cultivating? What’s the smallest gift you and your staff would cultivate? Type that in the chat box. What’s the smallest annual fund gift your staff would spend one-on-one time to cultivate and solicit? $500, $1,000, $2,500? Amelia says $1,000. I see $5,000, $1,000. If you would only spend time on a $1,000 gift, why would you have your board members spend time on a $100 gift? Why should they do less strategic work than you’re doing? So that’s ability.

Belief. Not everyone we know believes in the type of work we’re doing. The wealthiest philanthropists focus their philanthropy. So we want to help them find people who believe in whatever it is you’re doing.

And then contact. That’s where we need help, because in my 20-some-odd years in New York, how many people told me to solicit Mike Bloomberg? Of course, I know Mike Bloomberg has a lot of money. But do you know Mike Bloomberg? I don’t know Mike Bloomberg. If neither of us knows Mike Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg is not a prospect. He’s a suspect, and I don’t go after suspects much.

So here’s another exercise. I’m giving you all these exercises, and you can spool them out one by one, by board meeting or committee meeting or however. This one is: think of all the relationships there are. What are your three strongest relationships? For me, one of them is my alma mater. I am a proud alum of Brandeis University. I’m now on my national alumni board and back fundraising for them as a volunteer. So I would look to Brandeis. I might not know the one person who’s the greatest match, but because that network is so strong for me, and many of my classmates would know me, if it were a classmate, I could reach out to that classmate sooner than my best friend. I want board members to understand that. It’s not just about your best friends and your sister. It’s about your strongest networks.

I want board members to understand this donor cycle. My goal is always six one-on-one, personalized interactions with a donor a year, minimum. What might those be? I want them to understand that this isn’t just asking for a gift and thanking them. This is educating them, inviting them personally to feel-good events during the year, sending them cool information when it happens.

Terry says, what happens when a board member says they don’t know anybody? Well, no, it’s not necessarily time to leave the board if they’re willing to be ambassadors and help with the current donors of the organization. I’m making an assumption here, because I’ve seen it in every organization, that there are donors of yours who could use more personalized attention. If they’re willing to do that, I think they’re fine. They don’t have to bring their own major gift prospects. So one of these exercises is, as a group, let’s come up with all the different ways we can educate and involve people at our organization.

Then they have to learn how to open the doors. What to say? That’s actually the hardest thing in many ways, getting the meeting. What do I say that’s gonna get me a meeting? I always say be blunt. If it’s about a gift, you ask for a gift. But if they’re really exploring and building relationships, “I’d like to know if we fit in your philanthropic interest. This is just a meeting. I’m not asking you for a gift. You can still walk away.” Or “I wanna update you on the work we’re doing that your gift has supported.” We have to help them understand what to say and how to say it.

By the way, here’s another thing. For years, people told me I had to call everyone. I hate the phone. I’m an introvert. I love writing. Board members, in particular, let your board members contact donors however they want. Because if they do it in the way that’s most comfortable for them, they will do it, and they’ll be more effective. Once they know someone well, if I know someone well and they really want me to call them to set up a meeting, and we’re talking about just setting up a meeting, then I’ll call them. But in this day and age, do people even answer their phone?

The last piece here is that we have to help them understand how to have intentional conversations. This is another framework we developed at Asking Matters, in addition to the asking styles. I can’t go into detail here, but we want to help them understand how to lead a meeting. Because they’re asking someone to come to the table, or they’re coming with you, and we’ll talk about that in a minute under the support that staff need to give. Donors have an agenda. There are things they’d like to get out of a meeting, and we need to learn from them. What do you wanna know? But they’re there to hear from us and to learn from us, and we have to learn how to go through the meeting, explore, and ask questions.

At the end, I’m gonna show you a QR code very shortly, and Bloomerang’s gonna ask for your email. This is a bonus. I am hoping to get your emails. I’m gonna talk about something in a minute. Bloomerang did say I could talk about a product for a second. Usually, I don’t. But I have this two-page cheat sheet, which is wonderful, called the Arc of the Ask, or an intentional outline. If we get your email, we’ll send that out to you tomorrow, or by Monday at the latest.

So we need to train our board. If you don’t have the time or money or whatever, you need to do it. You need to do it for yourself, and we need to do it, honestly, for our nonprofit world, because yes, our board members won’t be with us forever, but we have to strengthen our field so that board members really have the capacity. I see you putting your emails in the chat. I think Tiara can give me the chat, but I think there’s also a more formal way for those to be collected, and Tiara will talk about that as we’re ending.

So last is supporting their work. Here’s another one of these concepts from Michael Davidson. The board is not going to do much of this work on their own. They’re just not going to do it. It’s too much to ask them. A few board members who are incredible self-starters will do it, but they need some staff support. We need to provide the material. Of course, the material that helps them know the organization and talk about it, but also material about their prospects. What do they need to know? What are questions they should ask? We need to strategize with them if they’re gonna go out and try to open a door. It’s not just “Can you go open this door?” but “What do you think they’d like to hear? What’s the best way for you to do it?”

Tag team. I’m a big believer in fewer relationships, but having at least two people building each relationship with the donor. I want the strongest relationships possible, because that leads to gifts over the long run.

And reporting. How are we doing? How is the board doing collectively? How are board members doing individually? We need to help them report to each other and to us, and so forth, so that there’s a sense that everyone is in this together, building toward this future, toward this vision.

Here’s the number I wanna give you from before, when you asked about time. I’ve done a lot of work on figuring out how much time it takes. How much time did it take me over the years? This varies, but here’s a great starting point. Assume each donor is gonna take you 12 hours a year in one-on-one time. That assumption includes two face-to-face meetings. I would have said in-person meetings, now face-to-face, which can be more effective. Right? Less time, you’re not traveling. And then a bunch of correspondence, email correspondence, personalized thank-you notes, things like that.

I mentioned I do this webinar called “Major Gifts in Two Hours a Week.” Well, if you have two hours a week, and I’m gonna say four weeks of vacation, we don’t know, you’ve got 48 weeks. That’s 96 hours. You’re gonna spend a little time on the program overall. How much time do you have for the donors themselves? Maybe you have 80-something hours. Then you can only actively cultivate and solicit seven donors a year. If you’re an executive director and you’ve only got two hours a week, that’s all that can be on your plate. So directors of development, you’re listening to me, you can only push so many of these donors toward your executive directors. If you’re splitting it, and you’re having one meeting and your executive director is coming in for the second and not doing anything else, maybe they can have twice as many people on their list.

This is why board members are so important. If you have 15 board members, that’s an average-sized board, and each board member will give you a few hours a month, you can double or triple the number of donors you’re treating this way. So it does take some time, but it can be very effective and strategic if we look at it from this angle.

So that’s a lot of information in just shy of 50 minutes. You will get the slides so you can go back and absorb it. I do wanna ask if there are questions, and then we’ll do a quick recap and talk about some next steps. I saw some of that coming through. Tiara, two or three questions to take in the time we have remaining.

Tiara Stephan: Yes. Really quickly, I am going to launch a poll here. If you are interested in receiving that resource that Brian was talking about, please fill out this poll, click the “Connect with Brian for more resources” option, and we will get all those emails over to Brian. We do have your emails in the chat, which is great. But if you do want that resource, make sure to click that option in the poll, and we will send out that resource.

Brian Saber: I wasn’t clear about that, and everyone started popping in their emails here. But yeah.

Tiara Stephan: No worries. Alright. We do have some good questions here. First off, I will say that Monica did ask if you could reshow the asking styles. If you do happen to have that slide on hand, we can just put it up while we do the rest of our questions. Or if not, you will be receiving a copy of these slides in our post-webinar email.

Brian Saber: I’d have to go back slide by slide. Let’s—

Tiara Stephan: No worries. We’ll get you those slides by tomorrow.

Brian Saber: I will get you the PDF today, Tiara.

Tiara Stephan: Awesome. Alright. We have a question from Jennifer. We are transitioning to a fundraising board two years in, and we have some members who don’t think board members should be required to give. Another board member suggested we require it of incoming board members and grandfather in the current members. What is your opinion?

Brian Saber: Okay. I think every board member should give. We’re charitable. Most people make a charitable gift. Why would you have all this fiduciary responsibility, join this board because you care so passionately about it, and not give to it? If you don’t give to it, you can’t fundraise, and it also sets a bad tone. We all know as staff that all the government and many private grantors are going to ask what percentage of your board makes a personal gift of their own. It is a big ding if everyone doesn’t do it.

The key here is setting expectations from the beginning. When you transition, you do need a new job description that very clearly says, if you come on the board, we’re gonna ask you to make a personally significant gift. That could be $50 for you. It could be $50,000. But it needs to be significant for you, because we need money. This is the way I love it. One of the stars of America is our nonprofit world. Another is, I think, our educational university system, actually. But I think this idea of the nonprofit world is so extraordinary in America, that we willingly give our money. We do need to do that to support all this. Our government does not pay for all the things that we want people to have, for all the research we want to do, for all the access we want to provide. We, as private citizens, contribute willingly to do that, which is fabulous. We have to do that as a nonprofit. Even if we get a lot of money from the government for certain programs, those programs still require fundraising. So sitting on the board requires this. It’s part of being on our board, the honor of it, but also the responsibility. So it has to be in the job description, very clearly stated, and it needs to be reinforced during interviews and during onboarding.

I always say it takes three years to evolve, because you say, okay, we’ve got these new standards. Everyone needs to give to the best of their ability and help fundraise. Some people get it. You’re right. We’re moving on. This is what we need. A few people will leave and say, “Not for me.” Fine. A few people will stay because they love the organization so much, or that connection is so important. But over the next three years, let’s say each year you bring on two new board members. That’s reasonable. All of those board members come on with the right expectation. They won’t come on if they don’t agree to those expectations, as long as we don’t negotiate down. That’s the worst thing, saying, “Oh, don’t worry. You don’t have to do that.” But if we stick to our guns, we’ve got six new board members who believe in what we’re doing.

So let’s say we had 15, and eight of them agreed from the beginning. Two or three left. Three stayed. Now we have six more. So now we’ve got 14 or 15 who believe and three who don’t. They’re marginalized. We’re moving on. And if we have terms, not term limits, but terms, we can say at the end of the term, we’re not gonna renominate you. We have to grow up. We have to act like adults on these boards, and our board members have to understand this isn’t a coffee klatch. This is important, and we all have to meet these standards. I have counseled board presidents not to renew the terms of board members. That’s okay.

I wish we had two hours, truly, because there is so much to share. The states’ attorneys general, I think that’s how we pluralize it, require three board members to have a nonprofit. They say you have to have three board members in order to do your due diligence. If you have three board members, we trust that there are people overseeing the organization who are gonna do the right thing. Why would you have 15 unless they’re gonna fundraise? We don’t need 15 different opinions on the board. “Oh, well, we need expertise in this.” You don’t need someone on the board to get their expertise. Put them on a committee. I believe the only reason to have a larger board is fundraising, because we’re professionals. Unless you’re completely volunteer-run on $100,000 a year or something, we are professionals. We know what we’re doing day to day. We don’t need to be told what to do. We know how to run the organization. We need help getting the funds to do this great work that we’re professionals at doing.

So I know we have to stop there. I’d love you to type in: what’s your number one takeaway from today? Type in your number one takeaway from today. And while you’re doing that, I am throwing up this slide, “Here are the five steps.” These are the five things we shared today. It’s a big topic. Not easy, but these are the five.

And here’s this thing to scan. If you scan this, it’ll take you to a page. I have this great product I’m relaunching. I’ve been awful about doing this, which is why Tiara and the team are letting us do this. I have this web-based program that’s unbelievably inexpensive and effective, that I’m really trying to build in 2026, so that I can continue the dialogue, basically, with your board members. Take a look. You might find it’s for you. We’re gonna be announcing it shortly and opening registration in January. The timing of this turned out to be perfect, because we picked this date like six months ago. I am passionate about this. I think I can speak in a way to board members that helps them understand this, distills it down, and I’d love to be able to help you further.

I appreciate all the things you’re typing in. Tiara, can I get a copy of the chat? By the way, I’d love to see the things you said, because there are so many of you, and I can’t read them all, but I appreciate you sharing them with all your fellow staff and volunteers. I wanna thank you and send it back to Tiara. I know we’re late by a minute, but I wanna thank you for being in the nonprofit world. Amazing board members, thank you. And to staff, we do amazing work. We are really great people. I get emotional about this, but I am so lucky to have spent my life in the nonprofit world. It’s such an amazing group of people. So thank you for being part of that, and thank you for doing the hard work. I don’t work in an organization anymore, and it’s a lot easier to tell you what to do than to do the work. I’m aware of that every time I open my mouth. Thank you all. Have a great rest of the day. Thanks for all your input. Tiara, anything as we close?

Tiara Stephan: Yeah. Absolutely. I just wanna say thank you to everybody for coming. We just got so much great feedback about your presentation. We’ll probably have to have you back for part two. We had a lot of really, really great questions. So I just wanna make sure that everybody knows we will pass those questions on to Brian, as well as all the questions that we had in the chat. So Brian will be getting all that information. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. You will be getting an email in our post-webinar email with a copy of the slides and the recording of the presentation, so you guys can look back at all of this really, really amazing information that he shared. We just wanna thank you for being here. Thank you, Brian, for being here, and we hope you guys have a great rest of your day. Alright. We’ll see you guys in the next one. Bye-bye.