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A development committee has the potential to maximize your organization’s fundraising efforts, as long as you prepare and engage your committee members.
1. Get the meeting agenda and any reports to your development committee a week before your meeting. Set the expectation that committee members will review the materials in advance. Avoid the temptation to read through those materials again at your meeting. Save that time for questions, comments, and diving into agenda items.
2. Don’t assume all your committee members know how to read nonprofit financial statements. You can create or find tutorials on reading nonprofit financial statements and include a link to those in each meeting packet. That way, your committee members can access them whenever they need to and feel comfortable doing so.
3. Develop a rapport with each committee member. Learn what inspired each person to get involved with the organization and how they hope to contribute to its mission. Even if you explore this topic as a group, make time to connect with each member individually, too—you’ll likely gain insights that you otherwise wouldn’t. When your committee members are comfortable communicating with you about how they do—and don’t—want to be involved, you’ll be able to collaboratively engage each more effectively.
When you set your development committee members up for success, you’ll be better able to maximize the committee’s potential and help the organization reach its development goals.
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These are all great tips that make a meeting so much more effective. With regards to #1 – stress this at your first meeting: it is expected that you read the documents in advance. And for #2, I am still learning things from our finance person and I work with data and dollars everyday.