How to Get Your Board Members to Embrace Fundraising

Full Transcript:

Steven Shattuck: Thanks for being here for today's webinar, "How to

Motivate Your Board Members to Help in Fundraising." My

name is Steven Shattuck. I'm the VP of Marketing here at

Bloomerang and I'll be moderating today's discussion. Today

our guest is Gail Perry. Very happy to have you here, Gail.

Thanks for being with us.

Gail Perry: Thank you. Thank you.

Steven Shattuck: And for those of you who don't know Gail-which I

doubt any of you don't know Gail-she is an international

fundraising consultant. She's a trend spotter, a speaker, a

trainer and a thought leader. She has worked with literally

thousands of board members, nonprofit leaders and

fundraising staff to boost them with the fundraising skills

and inspiration to change the world.

Gail is a past president of the Triangle Chapter of the Association

of Fundraising Professionals. They actually recently

awarded her Outstanding Fundraising Executive of the Year.

She launched her own fundraising career at Duke University

and she also directed the fundraising program at the Kenan-

Flagler School of Business at UNC-Chapel Hill. She holds an

MBA and BA with honors in English from UNC-Chapel Hill and

is also a CFRE.

So, Gail, this is really quite an honor to have you here. So, thanks

again for joining us.

Gail Perry: Oh, come on. I'm a fan of y'all. It's an honor to be here.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. This will be fun. So, what we're going to do

is for the next half hour or so, Gail is going to run

through her presentation. Afterwards, we're going to spend

some time in an interactive Q&A session. So, feel free to

send any questions through the chat box right there on your

webinar screen. I'll see those and Gail will see those and

we'll try to answer just as many as we can a little later

on this afternoon.

Just so everyone knows, we are recording this presentation. So, if

you have to leave early or maybe you want to review this

content with someone else in your office or just yourself

later on, look for an email from me later this afternoon.

I'll be sending you the recording and you'll also receive

the slides from Gail a little later on as well.

So, I'm not going to waste any more time. Gail, why don't you take it

away?

Gail Perry: Sure. Thanks so much. You can see a little bit about me on

the slide right here. Of all of my career feats, the most

important thing I want you to know is my Twitter handle

because I'm very active on Twitter. If you are, we can hang

out and play together, have some fun.

Also, I was wondering if everybody-we've got 66 people right now-how

about typing into the chat box your organization and where

you're located? I would love to know just who all is here.

It's so much fun to see who's here from around the country

and the world sometimes too because I know Bloomerang has

an international-oh, I love Big Brothers Big Sisters. Oh, I

love symphonies, theater and arts organizations. Oh, wow,

autism. Cool, YMCA.

Startup Westminster Graduate School, Hearts and Homes, literacy-of

course, there are not very many nonprofits-Girls on the

Run, hey, how are you all doing? Jewish Federation of

Delaware-I've done a bunch of training for the Jewish

organizations. Charlottesville Public Housing-I'm going to

be up there for a wedding this summer. Sustainable

nutrition, School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts-fun,

Jeff. You've got the fun so far. Healthcare foundation

WestCare in Las Vegas-Welcome, William. Catholic radio

station in Boston-fun.

Well, terrific. I really thank you for sharing this. I hope you can

probably see my pencil. I can create some real trouble here

with this pencil. I'm just learning how to use it. So, let

me tell you a little bit more about my story. I was a

fundraising consultant and I was so frustrated with these

boards I was working with. They'd say they would and then

they wouldn't. I'm sure you have run into that situation.

What I did was that I hired an organizational development shrink-he

was a bonafide shrink-to be my business coach to teach me a

different way to work with boards. He taught me the team

building leadership skills, a total psychological approach

based on motivational theory and group process. So, these

ideas I'm going to share with you are not traditional Board

Development 101. I think that's why I'm so popular, because

they're realistic, they're practical and they're kind to

both staff and board members.

Now, another question I want to ask you all-I hope there are some

board members joining me today. If you are a board member,

would you just type in the chat? I'd love to know how many

board members we have and I want to say thank you because I

think there's a special place in Heaven for nonprofit board

members.

I want you to know that I am going to be poking fun at the

institution of nonprofit boards and I don't mean it

personally. I want you to have some fun with me because I

think that board members are having a tough time because of

the way their treated by the staff. So, this is going to be

a pro-board member point of view. So, thank you so much. I

see a few board members fessing up here that they're

joining us.

By the way, I do board retreats and workshops around the country

among other things. This is the Southern Appalachian

Highlands Trust in Flat Rock, North Carolina. They were

nervous to death about a board retreat about fundraising.

They didn't know what to think and now look at them at the

end. They're just fired up and ready to go. So, this is the

work of transformation that I want to teach you how you can

do for your board if you don't want to bring me in or bring

another facilitator in.

I want to start with a story. This is an amazing story that has many

teaching aspects about it. I have a friend in Raleigh named

CC. She was the chair of the board of the Raleigh Little

Theater. When I was writing my book, I interviewed her as

board chair, "How do you feel about fundraising? Are you

involved? What's working? What's not?" And she said, "Ugh,

Fundraising! I told them that I'd be board chair and I'd do

anything but fundraising."

And she's like hyperventilating and throwing up and I said, "Okay,

okay. Back up, back up." And I said, "Well, CC, let ask you

another question. What if you were the ambassador from the

Raleigh Little Theater over to Progress Energy?" our big

utility company here in town. I said, "You didn't have to

ask for money, but you were in charge of the relationship.

You were like the account manager."

She said, "Oh, I would have so much fun." She said, "I could give

them free tickets. I could bring them to cast parties. I

could take them backstage." And she was smiling and

laughing. And then she said, "I wouldn't mind going along

on the solicitation if I had done all that." And I thought,

"Lord have mercy, lady, you just told me you would never

touch fundraising with a ten-foot pole and here you are

volunteering and offering to go."

So, what are the learning from this? The learnings are that if we

don't make fundraising about money and instead we make

fundraising about developing the relationship and having

fun with the relationship, then board members will jump

right in and have a blast and help us in lots of ways. I'm

going to be bringing this theme up over and over and over

from different angles.

I call upon the great Albert Einstein to share with us that, "No

problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness

that created it." We can have a lot of fun with our

nonprofit boards in applying this thought to them. But I

want to say that our situation with nonprofit board members

and their reluctance and nervousness about fundraising was

created from a certain level of consciousness and if you

shift the way you're thinking, you can solve the problem.

So, let's have some fun. Is this your board? I think that board

meetings are sometimes like all these Egyptian statues,

frozen in time and calcified and everybody is so self-

conscious. By the way, I show these slides to all of my

board retreats and people love them. They laugh. One time I

was doing a presentation and some lady in the audience

raised her hand and she said, "I know the person second

from the left." So, she must have a real stone-faced board

member.

You know, is your board bored? Are you having boring meetings?

Because if you have boring meetings, you're going to have a

bored board. If you have a bored board, I don't think a

bored board is going to get excited about doing anything,

much less fundraising. So, it's important as staff and

nonprofit board leaders that we focus on giving our board

members a terrific experience. We can change our

consciousness, just like Einstein said, approach the whole

idea of the board members from a different angle and we'll

get amazingly different results.

So, listen, this is what happens when you raise the fundraising word

to board members, right? They think it's the "F" word and

it's like the deer in headlights, "Ahh! What are we going

to do?" Lots of times I show this and people really die

laughing because it's true. Board members don't understand

fundraising. So, they're making up all these whole myths

about fundraising and let's just talk about some of the

myths. Before I was in fundraising myself, I thought these

exact same things.

So, this is what somebody who's not familiar where most of us on the

call are professionals, we're well-trained, we do this all

the time, but we're dealing with volunteers who have a

completely different perspective when we mention the "F"

word. First of all, they think it's begging. They think

that this is the tin cup syndrome, "Please help me. I have

nothing." You know, the beggar on the street. And then they

envision themselves begging. Lots of people laugh when I

show them this slide. They envision themselves, "Oh, I have

to go raise sponsorships and this is what it's going to be

like for me."

They think fundraising is making cold calls. They think fundraising

is asking strangers for money. We know in fundraising, well-

trained professionals, it's not about the ask because it's

about the relationship. It's not about strangers. I never

believe in making cold calls, right? And I would certainly

never send my volunteers out to make cold calls. And it's

never about money, right? I'll talk about that in just a

second, too. Board members are thinking that fundraising

is rejection. Again, I've got these wonderful, good-hearted

people who want to help my cause. Why would I send them out

to have such a difficult and sad experience? Not good.

And as I thought about what board members are really thinking when we

approach them with the "F" word or with fundraising, I did

come to realize that there is a dark side to fundraising

and people don't talk about this a lot either. But the dark

side is when it's all about money, when it's not about the

kids or the project or the wonderful thing we're doing in

the world. I love this picture because I don't know which

face is worse. You mention fundraising and you get these

looks on people's faces. It doesn't have to be that way. I

think it's our job. I'm going to show you some ways to make

it not about money. This is going to bring a relief to a

lot of people.

Also, board members are not well-educated about fundraising. All of

these things that I'm bringing to you are training

opportunities. Board members are smart people. They like

learning new stuff. So, I would suggest staff members, you

come up there and you trot in front of your board meeting

and you show this PowerPoint and you do, "Blah, blah,

blah," and there are few questions and the board members

are thinking, "Oh, well that's interesting. I'm glad she's

doing such a great job."

But board members would actually love to know more about how

fundraising works. And this is a great place to start, the

cost per dollar raised of various fundraising strategies. I

would suggest to you that if your board members understand

your fundraising program and the strategies you employ,

they're going to be more helpful and they're not going to

bother you with questions that are off-topic. We can spend

a lot of time just talking about this slide, but I wanted

to be sure to include it in here so that you can have it

and you can use this as a basis of discussion for your own

board.

And here are a couple of other slides that are very useful. I use

them all the time when I'm training boards or working with

boards. Board members don't understand the whole

fundraising adventure. But I would warrant that many board

members do have some sales background and if they look at

this fundraising cycle I'm showing on the screen, they

recognize that this is the classic sales cycle. Yes, I was

trained by Xerox in the '90s in professional selling skills

and I use it every day in my fundraising.

So, the takeaway from this particular slide that lays the fundraising

cycle out in terms of sales cycle is that you're beginning

to show board members that fundraising is not all about the

ask. You see? You're beginning to show them that there are

other activities-this is really key-there are other

activities they can do that can be very supportive in

fundraising and will directly impact the bottom line so

that when you ask, your prospect is ready to be asked and

your prospect loves you.

So, when I'm working with board members, I take solicitation-take a

deep breath and listen to this-I take solicitation off the

plate and I say, "You do not have to ask for money if you

do not want to." But every board member does have a job to

help. You can make "thank you" phone calls, you can host

tours, you can welcome guests at an event-every board

member has a job and let's all pitch in. When you approach

board members like that, they're gung ho.

Then like my friend CC at the beginning, if they're involved in the

relationship development, then it is not awkward to go

along on the solicitation. But I would say it is awkward-

you're involved in cultivating this major donor but you

want to bring a board member in at the last minute to help

with the ask. Well, the board member doesn't know this

person. It's awkward. So, again, use a different

consciousness. Approach this from a different mindset. Make

it fun for your board members and lighten up and give them

other jobs that don't involve soliciting and then they will

warm up.

Oh gosh, there's something wrong with this slide. Goodness. What has

happened to this? I use this slide all the time. Ooh . . .

I'm having fun with the-this area. This is not supposed to

be in here, this black quarter here. But this pie chart,

even though it's a little bit messed up here-I'm going to

get the list of participants and I'm going to email you my

original PowerPoint and I'll fix this slide-but this slide

represents one of my great "aha's" when I wrote my book.

What I did was that I took the fundraising cycle here and I broke it

into a pie chart that showed how much time and energy we

spend in each part of the fundraising cycle. I would

suggest that the ask right here is one little tiny part.

Let's see if I can draw this pie chart. How's that? Here's

the pie chart. The ask is one little tiny moment and we

spend a lot of time cultivating. We spend a bit of time

identifying and we do a lot of thanking.

Of course, you know the definition of sustainable fundraising.

Sustainable fundraising is when you do such a great job

thanking here that the thanking prepares the donor for the

next ask. You can short circuit the fundraising cycle with

your donors. So, your core group of supporters that you

really want to stick your board members on to love a lot is

nothing but thanking and acknowledging and stewarding. We

can talk some more about that as we go forward.

So, I apologize for this slide. You can see that I made the attempt

to do, "We identify, we involve, we ask and we think." But

this mysterious black quarter has crept into my chart. But

now board members-I'm making a list of all of the things

that board members do not understand about fundraising.

My point is that they will help you more in fundraising if they

understand more about how it works. I would suggest to you-

oh, good, Richard says-oh, hey, Richard, how are you doing?

He and I are Twitter buddies. "You can ask too much but you

can never thank enough." Yes, yes, yes. Again, I'm from the

South. I've raised millions of dollars. But I'm from the

soft sell school of fundraising where we have low pressure

but we have very high intention-very high intention, right?

But along the list of things board members don't understand about

fundraising, they don't understand whether they're losing

or gaining donors. They don't understand this whole issue

of retention, which, of course, Bloomerang is all about and

I'm so excited that Bloomerang is beating the drum of

retention. This is one of my favorite slides from their

series of infographics that you need to really grab. I

would take their infographics about retention and I would

show them to your board and I would have a discussion.

Now, this is important for me to share. If you want to do some

fundraising training with your board, do not make a

presentation. You put this up there on the PowerPoint or

put this as a handout and you say, "What are your

impressions of this slide? What does this mean to us?" And

you force them to talk about it.

I think one of our huge challenges is-and I do an enormous amount of

training and I study adult learning like crazy-studies show

that adults can only handle a maximum of ten minutes being

talked to before they lose interest. So, if you want your

board members to really understand fundraising, you've got

to get them to talk about it, which is fun. It's fun for

them and it's easier on you. I could spend a lot of time

talking about how to do these presentations, but I want to

go on.

Board members also don't understand who's doing what in the

fundraising office and they don't know what their role is

in fundraising. So, this is a long list of things that you

can begin to stage educational conversations with your

board about. I'm willing to be they would really enjoy it.

They want to know this stuff. They want to feel educated

about it.

Lastly, they don't know what their real job is as board members. I'll

tell you, everybody I know-well, not everybody-but I've

worked with a lot of organization, "Oh, we have these

expectations and everybody signs them but then nobody does

them." And I go on a board, give me these expectations and

I go, "These expectations are weird. Sure I support the

mission. Sure I can come to meetings. But what else do you

want me to do?"

So, one of the things I love to do when I'm working on a board

retreat is that I like to have the board members talk about

what their job needs to be. What is their job? And then I

ask them, "What are the top three issues this board needs

to deal with in the coming year?" And they're all over

that. They're all over that and they're ready to dive in.

Now, moving on, I've just finished this long, long list of things

that board members would love to know more about in

fundraising. I've poked some holes in the myths that

they're making up about fundraising and these, again, are

educational opportunities. But here-I've said it before,

I'm going to say it again-you want different results,

change yourself. Change yourself. Make it fun and lighten

up.

So, here are my strategies for opening up your board members and

motivating them. The first thing I like to do is that I

like to ask board members why they care. This, again, is a

lovely picture. This is that Appalachian Highlands Land

Trust that I showed you the picture at the beginning. The

lady on the left is a very formidable and famous

environmentalist, well-connected city leader. She's chair

of the board and the young man is an heir to a very

prominent family in North Carolina who has a foundation.

Yay. We love all of them. But when I stage board members in

a mingle exercise, going around and telling each other why

they care, it is a very, very powerful conversation.

When I send you my follow-up email because I've got everybody's list,

I'm going to send you a couple of articles on my blog about

how to setup this mingle exercise. It's easy, low-pressure

practice talking about why they care. The board members

love this. What it really is is that it dips them in their

passion for the cause. I never talk about fundraising ever,

ever without doing this particular exercise. It only takes

ten minutes. You get them out of their seats. They're

talking to each other about why they care. It's a team

building exercise. It's fun for the board members. It

builds energy in the room.

Guess what else they're doing? They're practicing their first

elevator speech. Yay! The number one thing we need to train

board members on is how to talk about us, you know, how to

talk about our organization. I had a board member come to

me once and she said, "Gail, when I have a chance to talk

about our organization, what do I say?" And I said, "Talk

about why you think it's important. Tell your own personal

story." She said, "Oh, okay, I can do that."

So, studies show that board members want fundraising training that is

practical and that is hands on. They do not want to be

presented to. They do not want to sit passively while you

present the PowerPoint. So, when I do a board retreat, it

is hands on, practicing, engaging, working with them

because that's the only way you're going to get adult

learners and adult decision makers to embrace these

powerful concepts. This is the only way you can get them to

get over their myths. But I can't overemphasize to you how

powerful this conversation is to ask people why they care

and to ask them to share with your board members over and

over and over.

I want to show you. I don't know if Laurie Taylor is joining us

today. She's a brilliant fundraiser in North Carolina. But

she tried-I sent her and email and I said, "Laurie," we did

this board retreat, "Did it land? Did anything work?" And

she said, "Oh, I'm putting some of your ideas into action."

No, I know. She had read my book and I asked her what she

pulled out of my book that was useful. So, she was all over

this concept about asking them to talk about why they care.

I'm not going to read this whole thing, but she said she asked her

trustees, "What legacy do you want to leave from serving on

this board?" And she said, "You would have thought I opened

the floodgates and the board members poured out their

hearts. One man cried." She said it was the best meeting

that she'd had in three years because she had started in

this way.

So, I'll tell you, it's very powerful stuff. I want you pay attention

to the last lines of this email. I'm quoting directly. She

said, "Gail, I can't change them, but I can change me." So,

what is our learning from that? It's like Einstein, shift

your consciousness or shift your direction. It's just like

your children or your spouse or your work people,

colleagues-if you shift the way you are approaching them,

you get different results.

So, I would say to you, my friends and colleagues listening, that you

have more power than you think over your ability to

motivate and lead this wonderful group of people called

board members. They are very willing to respond to new

energy and new ideas if you approach it right.

Whenever I do this exercise with these board members and the elevator

speech and when I'm doing a lot of training, there are four

parts to the elevator speech and we go through those. Board

members love, love, love it because what I'm doing is I'm

showing them how to open the door without being pushy.

Of course, anybody would want to know, "How do I open the door

without being pushy?" I tell them that they get to sneeze

on everybody that they know. The sneezing is a concept from

Seth Godin called "Unleashing the Ideavirus," that ideas

are like viruses and they're contagious. So, board members

become sneezers, right? Yay! They laugh.

Most medical foundations don't like it when I use this metaphor. But

it's very powerful because I'm saying to board members that

you sneeze on everybody and the ones that are interested

are going to let you know they're interested. That's an

easy way to deal with my role as a board member being an

advocate in the community for my organization.

You know, good old Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great was every

achieved without enthusiasm." So, part of this whole

elevator speech training is this model for them of the kind

of energy they need to have. You know, once they start

talking about the cause, they need to know how to engage

somebody in a conversation and they need to know when to

shut up. So, part of my training is to show them that they

can take the elevator speech and they can turn it into a

conversation by saying, "What are your impressions?"

They love this stuff. They eat it up. They get a kick out of this

knowing that they're not supposed to talk a lot about their

organization. They're supposed to stop talking and let the

other person talk. That's a kinder, gentler approach.

I have a blog post called "The Fundraiser's Kiss of Death," that you

could get a big kick out of. By the way, my website is

GailPerry.com and its' also FiredUpFundraising.com. Both of

them go to the same place. There's a little search bar at

the top and at the bottom and you can type in some of these

key phrases I'm sharing with you and you can pull up an

article that's really easy to read. A lot of people send my

articles to their board members saying, "What do you think

about this idea? What are your impressions of this idea?"

It's a great way to start a conversation.

All right. I've spend a lot of time talking about this elevator

speech and teaching your board members how to talk about

your organization. That is a fundamental part of training

them and motivating them because when they start talking

about why they care, they are talking themselves into being

motivated.

So, part two of this deep, motivational training-part one is letting

them get in touch with their passion and teaching them how

to spread their passion-part two is related to data. Part

one is emotion. Part two is data. So, my question is, "What

are we really raising money for and where does the money

go?"

My slides-I think when we uploaded them, the headlines are a little

bit off but I hope you can read my slides okay. So, what I

do is that I bring the executive director and the

development director up in front of the room. I sort of

play Oprah. We sit down. We relax. I say, "All right, let's

talk about where all this money goes. What is our

organization's budget?" And the board members are sitting

there thinking, "What is our organizational budget? Do I

know?" And one person will say, "Oh, it's like $1.2

million." And the board member will say, "Oh, yeah." And

the board members start taking notes.

And then I'll say, "Well, how much do we have to raise every year out

of this $1.2 million?" "Oh, we have to raise $600,000."

You've presented them this data before, but they didn't get

it before because you had them in overload with too many

numbers at once. So, this is a really, really, really

powerful tool for spoon-feeding any group of adult learners

key data in a way that will land with them and that they

will embrace and not forget.

So, I'm asking very simplistic questions one-by-one and the responses

dribble out and board members are sitting on the edge of

their seats. And then I say to the development director,

"Of the $600,000 you need to raise every year, how much do

you have to bust your butt to raise?" And the development

director will say, "Oh, we have to bust our butt to raise

about $400,000." And board members really want to know how

much you have to bust your butt to raise.

And so then we talk about where does it go? I'll say, "Why do you

need so much staff?" Say you're a Big Brothers Big Sisters

organization. "Why do you need staff? You're running

volunteer mentors for the kids who need mentors." Because

it turns out that the staff has to manage all of these

volunteers. You've got to recruit the volunteers. "Oh, why

do we have to pay them? Oh, we need insurance. Oh, okay."

So, we're breaking the budget down into, "Why do we need to

make all these expenditures." And the board members

suddenly get it that it's where the money is going.

So, these are some great questions you can ask your board members. I

think I've got another one right here, "Why does it cost so

much program-by-program?" This is my favorite slide here of

all of these slides. For example, I was working with the

Big Brothers Big Sisters. And it turns out that it costs

$1,000 per kid to be mentored a year, to be managed and

mentored. They were turning away 100 families a year who

were begging for mentors for their kids and the

organization couldn't help them. So, the families were

leaving in tears because they were so worried about these

kids of theirs and there was no help.

So, the Big Brothers Big Sisters board was afraid about having to

tackle $100,000 more for these 100 kids. But you know

something? They could tackle five kids at a time. They

decided to go to the Rotary Club and say, "Rotary, do you

all want to tackle five kids?" and to the local churches

and synagogues, "Do y'all want to tackle five kids?" their

community tennis club, "Do you want to underwrite a kid

this year?"

Remember way back when I talked about not making it about money and

making it about the project. This kind of discussion can

help you figure out how to make it into a project and not

about the money itself. I'd like to spend a little bit more

time explaining it.

But I think you sort of get the gist. Use the panel discussion format

and ask questions one-by-one and then your goal, of course,

is to get your board members to ask questions too and get

them really engaged in the discussion about, "How much does

it really cost? Why do we need to spend the money? If we

had another $500,000, what would we do with it?" That's a

very important question for everybody to know. It keeps the

staff from feeling like they're whining. It puts it in a

more business-like standpoint.

Now, I want to go back to an earlier theme about giving your board

members a terrific experience. It is up to us to make sure

that they enjoy their experience on the board and they get

personally a lot out of it. That means that it's not

business as usual. I think you need to liven up your board

meetings. I'm not going to talk about these points, but

I'll just share them with you. I have a blog post called

"Twelve Ways to Liven Up Your Board Meetings."

Look at ways to change it around to make it as interesting as

possible. Give them social time. Studies show that board

members want to meet the other board members, right? They

want to meet them. Give them something specific to do.

When I'm on a board, I don't want this blah expectations stuff. I

want to know, "What do I need to do to be a good board

member? Tell me what you need me to do this month between

now and the next board meeting. Give me one thing and I

will do it. But don't give me 15 and don't be vague. I need

to be managed and I need to be well-staffed. I'm really

busy. If you're clear I can deliver for you. If you're not

clear, don't make me think about it."

By the way, with these action items, I absolutely think talking about

the psychological approach that puts the peer pressure on

the board is a huge factor in motivating people because

nobody wants to look bad in front of their colleagues. If I

know that I have to make a report in front of my

colleagues, you better believe I'm going to be busting my

butt to get the work done and to have the report ready. I

want to look good. This is just human nature, right? So,

again, clarify their job about what you want them to do.

So, here are just a couple of ideas that I want to share with you

that, again, lighten the fundraising load and make it more

fun for your board members. I'm throwing a lot of different

concepts to you and I'm not explaining them thoroughly, but

I hope you can get the gist of what I'm talking about. You

can always buy my book from Amazon at a discount. I have it

all written up in there. Also, most of my book is written

up in short snippy articles on my blog. So, you can really

search on my blog.

But I believe in focusing board members on friend-making. Take

soliciting off the plate. I tell them I'd rather have die-

hard friends to my cause than donors because die-hard

friends will stick with me in and out. They will do

anything they can do and they will give me money if they

can. So, let's concentrate on friend-making. So, maybe we

should redefine fundraising into friend-making.

The more and more studies, the retention studies, all of the bloggers

and all of the latest research shows that if you slather

love and attention on your donors, your donor base, your

donor file, they will stick with you. So, maybe you need to

be treating your donors like friends, maybe like family.

Board members who are nervous about asking for money can

spend their wonderful time and energy there.

So, here are just a couple of my favorite jobs for board members to

do. I love parties. My Christmas party in Raleigh is

famous. I'm having three parties this month at my house,

goodness gracious, for different causes, for different

reasons. None of them are fundraisers, but they're all

cultivation sort of events. They all have sort of a

purpose.

So, board members can host small coffees or small socials to

introduce their friends to the cause. One time I was a

board member of the Carolina Ballet and I had a porch

party. I invited people to come meet the new director from

a porch party. It was a wonderful little event that opened

some key doors for us. Board members can host tours. I'm a

huge fan of a tour if you do it well.

Lastly, and this is one of my favorite data points in the entire

lexicon of fundraising research right here and I would

actually start my whole conversation about board members

with this slide and I would say, "What are your impressions

of this slide?" because if board members are really

systematically thanking your donors, your donors will give

more money. Here's the data from Penelope Burk. Just for

the recording, I'll put this down in words. These research

projects have happened over and over in multiple-sized

organizations.

What they do is that they pull a group of donors to get thank you

phone calls from board members within 24 hours of receiving

the gift. So, it's a very, very fast turnaround. And then

test five months later and they solicit both groups of

donors, including the ones that didn't get the thank you

call, they got all the same communications-regular paper

thank you, newsletters, everything-but the ones that get

the phone call in study after study, they're giving 39

percent more money than the other donors.

So, my friends, this is living proof that board members can directly

impact the bottom line without having to ask for money.

Yay! I'm going to say it again. Board members can directly

impact the bottom line without having to ask for money.

Yay!

So, just a final thought. I'm a huge fan of the "The Matrix." I watch

it all the time on the TV reruns. Every time Morpheus says

this line, I go, "Oh my god." This line says, "There's a

difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

So, we know the path to take but I would suggest that

taking the path and walking it is a whole other game. So,

that is my motivational push to you-my call to action to

you is to try to walk the path.

So, here I am with some fellow board members at my favorite board,

Lillian's List, and we are fired up ready to go. You can

create this. This is a volunteer board. You can create this

too.

Just to wrap up, these are some articles on my blog that you can get

a kick out of and that your board members like. "Show me

the Money: How to Move from Friendraising to Fundraising,"

"Top Ten Things to Understand About How Fundraising Really

Works Today" is an important article to share with your

board. The elevator speech exercise for your board, there's

a write-up about the mingle exercise. "How to Be a Personal

Advocate for the Cause," that's all about sneezing and

spreading the word. So, a lot of this is already written up

and you can get more information about it.

So, thank you, Christy. I'm glad you loved "Donor-Centered

Fundraising." I do too. That's Penelope Burk's great book.

Christy says, "Aren't board members often being asked to

support multiple causes and organizations?"

I would say you don't want anybody on your board who's not going to

make your organization one of their top three philanthropic

priorities. I would ask people when they join, tell them

that that's one of our expectations that we're among your

top three philanthropic priorities. You don't want your

board members spread too thin, do you, in terms of what

they're supporting?

My three parties this month are all for different things and I have

different roles, but I'm a little bit worried about over-

different groups of people are going to be invited too. But

I worry sometimes about representing too many causes at

once.

Other questions? Steven? I can play around with my yellow . . . Woo!

Steven Shattuck: I know. You should have done more with that. I'm a

little disappointed.

Gail Perry: Look, there's a question mark for questions. I'm not right-

handed. So, this is very difficult to do with my right

hand.

Steven Shattuck: I'm sorry about your pie chart. I don't know what

happened there, but you recovered quite well.

Gail Perry: Yeah. Capital campaigns-Cathy, let me speak about capital

campaigns.

Steven Shattuck: That's a good one.

Gail Perry: One, Andrea Kihlstedt wrote the book on capital campaigns. When

I started out in the '90s, I clutched that campaign in my

heart. She and I have a blog site called Capital Campaign

Magic. We are doing coaching on capital campaigns virtually

and we're also writing a lot about capital campaigns and

we're doing free webinars about capital campaigns.

Capital campaigns are complex, sophisticated and I think board

members have a particular role. The first place you start

with your board in terms of motivating them for the capital

campaign is to get them to understand the strategy, the

unique strategy that capital campaigns employ that will

raise millions of dollars. We could go on and on, but

that's a long and deep topic.

Okay. A hundred percent personal donations required by board members?

Absolutely. I think that you need to have a fellow board

member say, "Let's put our money where our mouth is. We all

have to be giving." I've got an article I resurrected on

Twitter yesterday about the "Seven Steps to Solicit Your

Board." This was my strategy when I was a staff fundraiser

that really worked for me.

Casey, "If you can't get board members fired up, how do you guide

them to take a step down without potentially damaging a

relationship?"

Ooh... First of all, I would buy Simone Joyaux's book called "Firing

Lousy Board Members." Read that. But let me tell you what a

friend of mine did who was the executive director of a big

nonprofit here in Raleigh. They really didn't demand it a

lot of their board members and it was a high-performing

group of people. He would go see a board member who was non-

performing and he would say to the board member, "Is there

another way you would like to serve our organization since

you haven't been able to do such and such and such?" And he

said almost invariably the board member was relieved and

they were feeling guilty and they jumped at the chance to

shift to a different role.

It's dicey. I would say it's dicey and you need to protect yourself

politically. Getting rid of a board member, you have to be

very careful about that. I wouldn't say I'm an expert on

that.

I can't see this whole question. There's a long question here from

Charity.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. It looks like she's saying, "As a supporter of

a high school group, it's hard to keep donors on when their

kids are in the band?" That makes sense. "Often the

requested donation is not given by many families. We need

to raise money for uniforms." So, she needs to work with

donors and quickly. What's a good strategy for meeting with

companies for the first time?

Gail Perry: Well, first of all, if I'm meeting with companies for the

first time, I try not to make a cold call. I would start

with the prospect list of contacts that we have that are

acquaintances of the school or school members. So, you need

to first make a prospect list of companies that employs

existing relationships because you don't want to make cold

calls because cold calls are not particularly successful,

right? So, use a particular relationship.

And how much does it cost per kid? "Oh my gosh, we've got these ten

kids that can't afford their uniforms and it's $100 each

and who wants to sponsor a kid in the band?" Kids in the

band are just so exciting and it's like a lovely cause. I

think people would jump at the chance, but you have to

present it in a way that's very powerful and exciting and

use emotion and don't, don't, don't make cold calls.

So, I'm sure that you've got some relationships. Maybe there are some

vendors at the school. Who are the people who serve food? I

would even go to the local Walmart and Target because those

managers have discretion over smaller grants and they're

more accessible and they like this sort of thing. So, those

would be my places to start.

Steven Shattuck: Great. We've got a question here from Samantha,

Gail. Samantha's wondering, "In regards to personal

donations from the board, do you recommend setting a

specific minimum account or just a give-what-you-can

policy?"

Gail Perry: Well, I like to say that every board member should make a

proud personal gift every year. I think the proud personal

gift is an honest and caring way to call upon the board

members to reach to their highest calling. Having said

that, when I solicit board members, I like to put a number

in front of them that they're being asked for x-amount of

money. Also, I have varied the amount of money I was asking

from board members before based on their ability.

So, you can take one approach, which is that you keep secret the

amount of money that you're soliciting from board members

and you do it individually based on their capacity or you

can have the board members all agree that we need to all be

responsible for $1,000 or something like that and if we

can't get it, we need to bring it in. That's the give/get.

Now, there was a big discussion on #fundchat. If anybody's on

Twitter, "#fundchat" yesterday, you can search for it. A

bunch of us were talking about boards and about soliciting

boards. There was a lot of discussion about give/get

policies.

But I will say that the higher-performing boards that I have worked

with do have a give/get. Usually it goes for more

prestigious and larger organizations that it's a clear

expectation that if I'm going on the board of the Museum of

Modern Art in New York City, it's going to cost me X or Y.

The smaller organizations are not at that place. It may not

be appropriate.

So, it's got to be something that your board members themselves agree

upon if you're going to do give/get. I'm careful about that

because I don't want to be heavy-handed. I'm Southern.

Heavy-handed doesn't work as far as I'm concerned.

Steven Shattuck: Gail, what's your opinion on having term limits for

board members?

Gail Perry: Please go to my blog and pull out "Why Your Board Needs

Term Limits," that article because if you do not have term

limits, the energy on your board is not going to be

refreshed. You're not going to have any new ideas. You're

going to be in terrible danger of calcifying your

strategies and your mission and not changing with times.

And you're going to be in terrible danger of your board

becoming a social club, a martyr club, like, "Oh, we work

so hard. We're such martyrs," or a, "We own this

organization," club, none of which puts the organization's

mission first. It's all about us.

So, term limits are-and I'll tell you, I've worked with a big time

board up in the New York City area and this guy who was a

huge investment banker on the board, do you know what he

said to me? Get this, this is amazing, he said, "If we're

ever going to get serious about fundraising, we have to

have term limits." Boom. So, I can't be strong enough. It's

also part of every single list of good board practices that

you will ever find is term limits.

I know it's hard. "Oh, we can't find any new board members." Well,

maybe you need to try harder or something is going on. Look

at yourself about that.

Thank you. You found the article. Great, great, great.

Steven Shattuck: I did.

Gail Perry: I was poking fun.

Steven Shattuck: That's a great one. Gail, we've got a question from

Anne, a really good question, "When horses are your main

tool of intervention, how do you convince the owners that

supporting the hay and grain and vet costs is equivalent to

maintaining other overhead that another nonprofit would

have, maybe like the building or equipment?"

Gail Perry: Yeah. Well, maybe you need to talk about adopting a horse.

How much does it cost to maintain one horse? That might be

more fun than paying for the hay. So, maybe you need to

look at what's most sellable, what's the sexiest? "Oh,

gosh, I'm riding a horse named Blaze. Isn't he beautiful? I

get a picture of him every time I make a gift. I can go out

there or feed him or her apples." Hay and grain and vets

don't sound as much fun to me as underwriting a horse. So,

maybe you need to package your costs differently would be

my suggestion.

There was another question in here about thank you letters that I

think I saw.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. Cynthia was wondering, "Do you have a

recommendation for writing the best thank you letter after

a donation?"

Gail Perry: I do.

Steven Shattuck: I knew you would.

Gail Perry: Well, you know, listen. I've got several articles on my

blog about thank you letters. But I think you need to wear

your heart on your sleeve with that dang thank you later.

Penelope Burk has got in her book-let me quote Penelope

Burk's thank you letter, four lines, "Dear Mrs. Carbunkle,

you must have heard the shouts of joy in the hall when we

received your gift of (blank) underwriting the Children's

Music Program. We are so thrilled. We're going to put your

money to good use, blah, blah, blah and here's the person's

name and phone number who directs the program. We can't

wait to give you a follow-up report about this project and

we want you to come down and visit." Something along those

lines.

So, your thank you letter needs to be casual in tone. It needs to be

warm. It needs to be personal. You need to ditch the lofty

crap, institutional crap and just be as warm and fuzzy and

lovey-dovey as you can possibly be. Some organizations

cannot bring themselves to do that because, "Oh, we have to

be formal. This is a very important nonprofit."

But if you can make it personal, the donor's heart will go "throb,

throb, throb," and they're going to love you more and

they'll probably give you more money. So, that's my quick

and dirty recommendation on thank you letters.

Steven Shattuck: Love it. Well, we're about out of time. We probably

have time for maybe one or two more questions. I would

encourage everyone listening along to send anything if

you've been sitting on your hands or wondering something.

Gail Perry: I want to mention-George wanted to know about resources

for smaller nonprofits.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah.

Gail Perry: A lot of my articles are very applicable to both large and

small nonprofits because I'm dealing-you can see that I'm

very practical and I'm very humanistic like, "You do this.

This is not hard." So, any-sized organization can get a lot

out of it.

I also want to tell you that I do have a webinar series that I do

from Fired Up Fundraising, my blog, and I bring the very,

very best fundraising gurus in the world in to do a couple

of free webinars a month. It's a broad-based training

program to educate you and your staff on fundraising.

We're doing basics and we're also doing the latest twist on the

basics so that if you're going to implement a basic, you

might as well implement the latest version of the basic,

like the best way to do the thank you letter, the best way

to do the Internet/Web, the best way to do your major gift

prospects and program so that you can be more efficient and

effective. I'm all about being efficient and effective.

Effective means we raise our money and efficient means we

save time doing it. Yay!

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. If you aren't following Gail on Twitter or

reading her blog, you've got to do that. It's definitely

one of the best in the sector.

Gail Perry: Well, I've just got to have some fun, you know? I just try

to be supportive and have some fun. It comes out every

Friday morning. "Avoid nonprofit jargon," thank you,

Richard, very much. Yes.

Steven Shattuck: Boo jargon. No jargon.

Gail Perry: No jargon. Boo! I have a blog called "Words and Phrases

Fundraisers Love to Hate," talking about jargon.

Steven Shattuck: One here from Jenny, "Do you have any resources

specifically for nonprofit theater companies?"

Gail Perry: Listen, I have an arts background. You've got people who

love, love, love, love, love theater. Those are your people

that you need to cultivate. Like, I was a ballet dancer. I

love, love, love ballet. Also, my very first job was with

the North Carolina Arts Council. I'd do anything in the

world for anything in the arts. So, you need to find those

passionate theater people and you need to let them

experience, give them special experiences. Invite them to

cast parties. Give them backstage tours during

intermission. Give them some free acting classes.

A lot of people in the arts think, "Oh, we can't raise money because

we're not hungry children." Listen, the people that are

passionate about the arts, like I was an aspiring ballerina

and they give me a tour backstage-when the Carolina Ballet

did "The Nutcracker," my girls and I got a backstage tour

during intermission and there they were. They was the

beautiful ballerinas. They're warming up. They're like

ethereal, alien and beautiful creature beings and I'm

going, "Ahh!" And I'll never forget that experience.

So, you've got people who are that passionate about theater that you

can give that experience to as well. So, I don't want

anybody to say, "Oh, we can't raise money because our cause

is not sexy," because to your supporters, it is sexy.

Steven Shattuck: Emma here was wondering, "Should the amount required

of the board member contributions be related to the size of

the budget or the number of members or both?" What should

they do there?

Gail Perry: Neither.

Steven Shattuck: Neither.

Gail Perry: The amount of the required board member contribution needs

to be based on a) their capability and b) whatever they

agree that they should be doing. Remember there are two

ways to do it. One way is to have your board members decide

how much their expectation is going to be of each other.

The other way to do it is for you privately to solicit your

board members based on their capacity.

So, I would not relate it to the budget. Some people say, "Oh, the

board needs to be giving 10 percent of the budget, 20

percent of the budget." It depends on who you have on the

board. You may not have the money in the seats and you

don't want to make people feel bad. It's up to you to go

enlist those people to join the board who can make those

kinds of gifts.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. I was talking to Jay yesterday and he told the

story of an organization that had Bill Gates on the board

and someone asked him for a donation and Bill said, "How

much did everyone else give?" And the fundraiser said,

"About $75." And Bill said, "Okay, sign me up for $75." So,

they only got $75 out of Bill Gates based on what everyone

else was doing.

Gail Perry: I think that I would have made the case for exporting his

interest in funding a project. You've got to push Bill

Gates differently.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah.

Gail Perry: I'd say to Bill Gates, "Listen, everyone else is paying

$75. What do you think would be appropriate for you?" "No,

really, now Bill."

Steven Shattuck: "Come on, Bill."

Gail Perry: "No, really."

Steven Shattuck: Well, cool. Well, we're about of time. I want to

give you the final word. This was just a lot of fun. I hope

everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. Gail, just one last

time, where can folks find you online? How can people get a

hold of you?

Gail Perry: Yeah. You can send me an email at GP@GailPerry.com like

we've got on the screen or you can go to my website,

FiredUpFundraising.com or GailPerry.com. I guess I need to

put that on that little list. You can Google me, "Gail

Perry fundraising" and I'm afraid you're going to get a lot

of hits because I've been blogging for so long.

Steven Shattuck: Oh, yeah. You'll find her.

Gail Perry: But I love to hear from people. I respond to almost all emails

unless they're really offbeat or weird if people ask me a

question or something. So, I love to hear from people. I am

going to be sending you a follow-up email with the

PowerPoint and a couple of links.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah.

Gail Perry: Okay?

Steven Shattuck: Great. You'll get the slides from Gail and I'll be

sending out a recording here in the next couple of hours so

you can relive this presentation with your board members if

you'd like or anyone else in your organization.

Just so you know, we do these webinars once a week. They're totally

free and totally educational. We've got some really cool

ones coming up in the next couple of weeks. Anne Peyton is

going to join us and she's going to talk about how to

develop a stewardship program. And then Kivi Leroux Miller

is going to join us to talk about videos and infographics.

So, that will be a really great presentation.

Gail Perry: Listen, don't miss Kivi. She's one of the leaders in the

field and she's amazing.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. That one is going to be really great. So,

check that out. Click on our webinar page.

Gail Perry: I want to sit in on that.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. You should sit in on that, Gail. That would be

awesome.

Gail Perry: I want to. Yeah.

Steven Shattuck: Well, cool. Well, Gail, thanks again.

Gail Perry: My pleasure.

Steven Shattuck: We will talk to you soon. So, thanks for joining us

and have a great rest of your day.

Gail Perry: Okie dokie. Everybody take care and good luck and onward

to the cause, right? Onward and may you get one idea from

today and help put it to work so that things will shift in

your organization and raise more money.

Steven Shattuck: Right on.

Gail Perry: Bye, bye.

Steven Shattuck: Bye!