How to Recruit a Fundraising Board

One of the biggest woes of a nonprofit leader, aside from the endless fundraising circuit, is an ineffective board, particularly when it comes to fundraising. But you cannot just recruit a bunch of warm bodies to your board and then assume that they will magically bring money in the door. If you want your board to effectively contribute to the financial engine, you have to start from the beginning. And that is to recruit a money-raising board.

In order to assemble an army of volunteer money raisers, advocates, ambassadors for your nonprofit, you have to get strategic. You must move away from scarcity-based board recruitment where you beg people to fill vacant holes on your board and instead create a recruitment strategy that identifies the right people with the right skills, experience and networks who will become your partners in bringing more money in the door.

And that strategy looks like this:

Connect your strategic plan to your board
Start by taking a look at your long-term strategic plan, and ask the simple question, "What skills, experience or networks do we need on our board to make each goal of our strategic plan a reality?"

Don't think in broad terms like "fundraising" or "marketing." Rather think very specifically about target audiences you want to access, new networks of people you want to find and specific skills that your strategic plan requires. A childhood literacy nonprofit probably needs board members who have key connections to local school districts, possess education-related expertise or can talk intelligently about smart program design.

Recruit for specific needs
Once you identify what skills, experience and networks your board must possess, test that list against what your current board has in order to find holes. Those holes become the very specific types of people you want to recruit.

If a strategic goal is to expand your program beyond your current region, but no one on your board lives or has connections outside your region, that's a hole. Start brainstorming whom might fill that hole and how to gain access to them (for some help check out LinkedIn's cool tool).

Find each member a job
You don't get people to help bring money in the door by asking them to just bring money in the door. You first must get them excited about what the organization is doing (the overall strategy) and then highlight their unique contributions to making that happen.

Be very clear with each individual board member about what he or she brings to the table and how you would like to tap in to those specific skills, experiences and networks to drive your strategy forward. People become invested in something when they believe they are making a real and specific difference. Help each board member figure out exactly how to do that.

Tie everything to your financial engine
Once you figure out each individual board member's job, brainstorm how that ties to money. To create a sustainable financial engine for your nonprofit, money has to be part of every conversation.

If, for example, you determine that a particular board member's legal expertise is critical to your nonprofit's ability to launch a new program in the coming year, then also work with that member to figure out how that new program will become financially sustainable. Perhaps there is an earned income component to the new program that he or she could help you to develop.

There are many ways board members can contribute to the financial bottom line, so think outside the fundraising box and get strategic about how each individual board member can contribute not only strategically, but financially. (Here are nine ideas to get you started.)

Inspire momentum
If you assemble a group of people who contribute very specific skills, experience and networks to the organization's overall strategy, and if you effectively work with them one on one to nurture the assets they bring, you will soon see momentum build. Each board member understands his or her unique role, is excited about how it fits into the bigger picture, and has connected that role to the financial engine of the organization.

Once you start to see successes with individual board members, share that with the whole board. Let them see what individual members are doing and how it moves the organization forward. They will be inspired to embrace their own unique roles.

Many nonprofit leaders start from the wrong place of cajoling, demanding, begging or simply giving up on the idea of board members and fundraising. If instead you start from the position of getting each individual board member to find his or her unique role to play, the money will follow.

Nell Edgington is president of Social Velocity. Reach her at info@socialvelocity.net