How board member involvement can strengthen your year-end appeal

Engaging your organization’s board members in your year-end appeal can boost the effectiveness of your appeal. But in order to involve your board members productively, it’s important to choose an approach that best suits your organization. To gather some practical and effective ways to involve board members, I spoke with fundraising expert Erik Hanberg, author of The Little Book of Boards.

Here are Erik’s suggestions for how board members can contribute in simple and helpful ways:

Stuffing envelopes.

Many hands make light work, and if you’re mailing a solicitation letter with a remittance envelope or other materials, board members can help you tackle this task more efficiently.

Making calls tied to your appeal.

Simply calling to say, “I serve on the board; hope you received our letter and will consider making a gift” is an effective way to remind people of your appeal and encourage them to follow through with a gift.

Calling donors to say thank you.

This serves as an extra expression of gratitude and can help prime donors to give again next year, since they’ll remember getting a call or voice message from a board member.

Writing or adding notes to solicitations.

Some organizations have their board president write the appeal letter. Erik notes that while this method can be effective, it can sometimes be time-consuming in terms of content and revision. Another option is for the executive director to prepare the letter and have board members add short, handwritten notes on the letters of people they know to help make the appeal stand out.

Forwarding online appeals or sharing social media posts.

This is a lightweight way to involve board members and maximize the board’s network.

Making asks.

Erik notes that this option is worth mentioning, but it does carry some risk since board members aren’t necessarily experienced in stewarding donor relationships or asking for a gift. However, sometimes board members have personal relationships with donors or potential donors and can open doors for your organization. In this case, a less risky but effective approach is to have the board member make the introduction, and then the executive director makes the ask.

How to set your board members up for success

Whatever you choose, Erik recommends that you think of board members as “helpful amateurs” and treat them as such. Just because they’re clearly invested in your organization’s mission doesn’t mean they automatically know how to help out with your appeal; so make their participation as easy as possible for them. This takes some prep work on the part of staff, but it’s worth it.

For example, if board members will be making thank you calls, Erik recommends framing the work so it requires board members to make as few judgment calls as possible. This means preparing sample scripts or talking points for them, which can also help board members feel more comfortable. Provide clear instructions on how they should document the results of those calls.

And, rather than asking board members to complete these tasks independently, tackle this work as a group. In Erik’s experience, it’s hard to send work home and expect it to get done. While everyone has the best of intentions, the work gets lost in the shuffle of everyday life. Instead, if board members will be making thank you calls, reserve time at the end of a regularly scheduled board meeting to get the work done. Erik has also had a good experience hosting a phoneathon over Zoom. Everyone was on mute, but they had their cameras on. This approach provided accountability to board members as well as a sense of camaraderie.

What if your organization has never involved board members in its appeal before?

If you’re not sure how to kickstart this effort, Erik finds that the easiest way to start is with thank you calls. It’s a good way to show board members that making calls isn’t scary, since it’s hard to argue with a thank you. Give them advanced notice by letting them know in September or October that the board will be making thank you calls in December, and assure them that you’ll provide a script to take the guesswork out of it.

Conclusion

In Erik’s experience, board member involvement has the potential to improve the return on your appeal. When you identify a specific way that board members can help and provide them with the guidance they need to do so, you can increase the success of your appeal while productively engaging board members in your fundraising efforts.

About Erik: Erik Hanberg has spent more than 20 years working with nonprofits. In addition to serving as the director of two nonprofits, he has served as an Interim ED twice and worked for nonprofits in marketing and fundraising. He has also served on boards and committees for more than a dozen organizations, often in leadership roles, and several times during a capital campaign. He is the author of four books for nonprofits focusing on nonprofit management, fundraising, social media, and board governance.