Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

October marks the launch of the third annual Dodge Foundation Board Leadership Training Series for Dodge grantees. The nine-course curriculum will take boards and executive leaders on a deep dive into effective board governance practices. Past participants shared how the workshops put them on path to success and the ups and downs of the journey in our spring guest blog series.

In preparation for our fall workshops we are introducing a new guest series by workshop alumni bloggers. They will tell their tales of the challenges and accomplishments of their board leadership experience. But first take the challenge offered by our lead instructor, Laura Otten, the director of the Nonprofit Center at LaSalle University’s School of Business. She loves helping boards, and she won’t hesitate to tell you the truth about what it takes to become an effective board.

Laura Otten
Director
The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University’s School of Business

Perhaps because I have spent the vast majority of my life in academic institutions or perhaps because as an adult, I started making my new year’s resolutions at Rosh Hashanah, I view September as the time of year to make new starts, new commitments, face new challenges. Thus, in preparation for the start of the new year, I am challenging board members everywhere to make a fresh start. I’m dropping the glove; will you pick it up?

Experience tells me that when you accepted the job as board member of the nonprofit in whose mission you believe completely (and if you don’t, you should resign now, as you are not doing anyone—from the nonprofit to yourself—a favor), you had no idea of the importance of the job or its magnitude. My guess is that you had no idea of the responsibility that was now placed on your shoulders. A magical board, comprised of individual board members who all understand their responsibilities and execute them, can help take a nonprofit to its next level.

An active, involved board doing its job (not that of the executive director) can make all the difference to a nonprofit. It can help to strengthen its operations through solid financial oversight, strategic planning, fundraising, and executive director oversight. It can help to build its positive reputation by fulfilling its ambassadorial role, building a compensation structure that attracts the needed talent, and strategically building the board so that it, too, attracts the best and the brightest. It can ensure that the organization stays focused on its missions, fulfilling its promises to its client base, donors, and the general public through strategic planning and evaluation of all of its programs, establishing a clear course for the future and measurable benchmarks for successful programs. And this list could go on and on, but I trust you get the point.

An ineffective board, one that revisits matters again and again but never moves off the mark, or one that is active doing the wrong things—such as using board meetings simply to gather data (i.e., hear reports) rather than to look strategically at that data or to do the executive director’s job and discuss where the new sign should be put or who to hire to mow the lawn—can lead an organization to stagnation and, ultimately, to defeat. These boards give the executive director, staff and other volunteers no direction, no oversight, no support, no guidance—none of the “extra” that a board is designed to bring to an organization. These are the organizations that are caught in an eddy, swirling round and round, working to stay afloat but getting nowhere; these are the ones that are on the way down. A strong executive director might manage to swim out of the eddy, but with no guidance as to the best way out may end up in a riptide—still struggling, still looking like a functioning organization, but still going nowhere.

What do you want your legacy to be? Helping the organization to flourish? Or to stagnate or possibly die? To achieve the former, a number of things must happen:

1. The board and executive director must be working in partnership, with neither dominating but rather working in a collaborative relationship of give and take, sometimes leading, sometimes following, etc.

2. Boards need to get educated as to what their real responsibility is—not what they hope it is, think it is, want it to be. Once educated, there needs to be the translation of knowledge into action, with benchmarks and accountability and assessment.

3. There needs to be a determination of whether the right players are at the table in the right positions. Is the executive director—be he founder, long serving, brand new and everything in between—the right person for the job as it is now and needs to become? Is the composition of the board right for/up to the task at hand? Is the leadership of the board right for these changing times? A board president has the ability to allow a nonprofit to languish doing nothing, to spin its wheels working at the wrong thing or to move in the direction of becoming a stellar board. A president’s collaborative leadership—not a dictatorship or an oligarchy—can help move the board, and, thus, the organization, to a higher level of performance.

4. The board must understand that high performing boards do not happen overnight and that once achieved require vigilance to maintain. This is a job for long-distance runners, not sprinters. But, as I’ve said before, the benefits are worth it all

Board members: the starter’s pistol has been fired. Will you go for it? If the answer is “yes,” you should check out the Dodge Foundation’s Board Leadership Series that offers nine workshops that will help a board become highly functioning and effective.

Laura Otten has been the director of The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University’s School of Business since 2001. She began her affiliation with The Nonprofit Center shortly after it was formed in the early 1980s, working as a consultant and trainer, primarily in the areas of Board development, strategic planning and program evaluation, and she continues to play these roles in addition to providing direction and leadership to The Nonprofit Center’s educational, consulting, and leadership development programs. She is a national expert in numerous aspects of nonprofit management and governance. She earned her MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College.

The Dodge Foundation is nearing the end of the second annual Board Leadership Training series led by the talented trainers of The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University’s School of Business.

Over the past six months, teams of board members and executive leadership attended workshops ranging from Nonprofit Lifecycles, Assessment, Board Care and Feeding, Strategic Planning, Board Fundraising, Board Financial Management, Board/Staff Relationships and Succession Planning. We have heard terrific feedback and ideas from many board members who are actively applying the learning to their board work. We thought that every Board, large or small, start-up or mature, could benefit from learning from their peers. So over the next several weeks, we will feature Board members (and a few executive directors) as Monday guest bloggers to tell their stories of implementing change with their board. They will share their challenges and successes. We hope you will share yours as well and help us create a Board Development Learning Community.

We are kicking off this series today with Allison Trimarco, one of our trainers who spoke on a popular subject: board fundraising. She covered a lot of ground in her day-long seminar, but in this post, she captures one of the major takeaways and offers a wonderful exercise that you can try with your own board.

He’s Just Not That Into You

Matchmaking Between Nonprofits and Donors
by Allison Trimarco

Photo courtesy Sister72/Flickr

I spend a lot of time talking with nonprofit staff and board members about fundraising – what’s working, what’s not, and most frequently, how to get board members more involved in fundraising efforts. Everyone wants their board members to be active participants in raising money for the mission, but nobody has figured out a foolproof method for motivating these otherwise devoted volunteers to take on this critical task.

When I ask leaders what they wish more board members would do, the most common response is introduce new people to our organization, and ask them for their support. Essentially, we want our board members to be matchmakers between our nonprofits and prospective donors, finding people who are going to feel that spark of excitement when they meet us.

This kind of matchmaking is one of the most valuable ways a board member can support his organization, but people are often reluctant to do it. I think professional matchmakers could tell us an important reason behind this reluctance to participate – if the spark is just not there, there’s no point in pushing the relationship. But in our efforts to find new supporters for our mission, this is often what we do.

If a prospective donor doesn’t return repeated phone calls, if they don’t attend events, if they seem reluctant to get together when you invite them to lunch, well, they’re just not that into you. Not every cause is for every person, and it’s not possible to convert everyone you meet into an enthusiastic donor. Continuing to pursue a prospect when their behavior is clearly signaling that they’re not into you is not effective fundraising.

This kind of continued rejection is one of the things that make board members reluctant to fundraise. No one wants to be the person who has to keep calling and calling someone who doesn’t really want to hear from them – none of us liked this feeling when we were dating in high school, and most people don’t want to experience it as part of their community service. It’s okay to let a prospect go if they don’t seem that interested. In fact, it’s the smart, self-respecting thing to do. Don’t ask your board members to spend their energy chasing prospects that will never amount to anything. If you want them to be your matchmakers, let them assess whether or not the “spark” seems to be there, and if it’s not, move on.

How do you know if your fundraising program is (unintentionally) creating “he’s just not that into you” situations for your board members?

1. Prospects stay on a board member’s contact list for years, even though they have never made a significant gift. This is akin to having dinner with an ex-boyfriend a couple of times a year, even though it’s clear you are never going to get married.
2. Your prospect list is full of people who are not connected to your organization in any meaningful way. I think of these as the “random rich people” – names of well-known or wealthy people that get tossed around a lot during meetings. Are you asking board members to reach out to these people even if they don’t know them, and the prospect has never demonstrated any interest in the kind of work you do? If so, you’re basically asking them to respond to a “blind box” personal ad in a newspaper.
3. You’re spending a lot of time organizing different events that are attended by the same people. “Friend-raising” events have a role to play in any fundraising program, but if you’re having trouble getting new people to attend, you should think about a change in approach. Investing time and money in hosting multiple events where the same small group of people gets together and chats won’t bring new donors to the organization – and it distracts board members from meeting new people who could become donors. It’s like hanging out in the same bar every Friday night hoping someone new will come in.
4. Your board hasn’t spent any time thinking about the right kind of donors for your organization. Sustainable funding comes from solid, long-term relationships that meet the needs of everyone involved. It can be easy to have your head turned by flashier prospects, but these folks may not be “marriage material.” If you don’t know who you’re looking for, you’re likely to waste a lot of time on the road to finding the perfect match.

How do you figure out who you’re looking for? Here’s an easy group exercise that you can try at any board meeting to help your matchmakers look for the people who are right for you. All you need is flip chart paper and a marker.

Step 1: Think like a donor, not like a fundraiser.

All of our board members are donors – hopefully to your nonprofit, but also to other charities that matter to them. Ask them to think about why they choose to say yes or no when they are asked for a donation. Put your list of reasons why they say yes or no side-by-side on your flip chart, so you can compare them. Chances are, it will illustrate two fundraising truths: 1) people give to the causes that matter to them, when it is convenient for them to do so, and 2) approaching fundraising in a way that is respectful to the donor is always the most effective technique. This exercise helps remind us all that there are two sides to every fundraising relationship.

Step 2: Why do people like us?

Once you’re in the habit of thinking like a donor, ask yourselves why donors might be interested in supporting your organization. Be careful to avoid “insider” reasons that might be very important to longtime board and staff members, but wouldn’t inspire a new supporter. Think of it this way: on a first date, you don’t tell stories about a previous relationship. You talk about who you are today and the exciting things going on in your life right now. Longtime supporters sometimes want to start a conversation with a prospect by telling the organization’s life story – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Really great matchmakers focus the conversation on today’s achievements and tomorrow’s vision, and relate that to the prospect’s own charitable motivations. Once it looks like the relationship might be going somewhere, you can learn more about each other’s history. To help board members feel more prepared for these “first dates,” spend some time talking about the strengths of your mission and your organization. Understanding this will help you to identify the types of people who are likely to be inspired by your work, making it easier for board members to find new matches.

Step 3: Where are our red flags?

Finally, ask yourselves honestly: why might people hesitate to give to us? Have you been in the news recently for something negative or controversial? Is your cause difficult to understand and embrace? Are your programs effective and your finances strong? Facing these issues head on will help you decide if you need to invest in a bit of a makeover before you send your matchmakers out to look for Mr. or Ms. Right.

The impact of the recession on fundraising is real, and it may be a while before we see more favorable conditions. Helping board members find new ways to generate support for the mission will be a key priority for most organizations, but many continue to think of fundraising as a nerve-wracking, distasteful activity to be avoided at all costs. In reality, fundraising is just the transfer of passion about a cause from one person to another – and our board members are some of the most passionate people around. Encouraging them to share their passion for the mission with the right people – people who are truly into your work and enjoy knowing more about it – is the best way to bring out the matchmaker in everyone.

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Allison Trimarco is the founder and principal of Creative Capacity, a consulting firm that collaborates with nonprofits to find creative solutions to management challenges. She is also an affiliated consultant and instructor at The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University.

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Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

I have been attending the introductory workshops of the Dodge Foundation’s Board Leadership Series over the past several weeks, taking copious notes and itching to share tidbits of wisdom I am learning.  It would be impossible to capture everything covered in the six-hour workshops or to adequately describe the discoveries and paradigm shifts in thinking that can only come from participation.  Still, I am committed to sharing some of the basic “aha” moments.

Laura Otten, the Executive Director of the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University’s School of Business starts her Board Bootcamp workshop with a sobering statistic:  there are 43,697 nonprofit organizations in New Jersey.  At this point a hush descends over the group as they pause to take in the fact: “My organization is competing with 43,697 other nonprofits for funding, board members, clientele, and to have our message heard.”   That explains the reality nonprofits feel everyday and the constant push to find unique and effective ways to distinguish themselves amongst the crowd. The Board Leadership series is designed to help strengthen your greatest untapped asset in accomplishing this: your Board.

Laura Otten (and the Board training series) identifies a continuum of ways a Board can help differentiate the nonprofit organization it governs.  She began with the most basic thing that every single board member can do in their role as ambassador: she wants board members to go beyond the “elevator speech” and develop the “sideline speech.”  This is the speech board members need to have ready for parties, galas, and business functions or when they are on the sidelines of a soccer or football game and someone asks the inevitable question: “So what do you do?”

Ask yourself, “What percentage of your board answers that question with their employment history and then adds:  ‘AND I am a proud board member of a wonderful organization that does X, Y and Z and is important because of A, B and C.’?”   If you answered anything less than 100%, Laura contends, you are wasting a major asset.

But getting your board to talk about your organization is only half of the equation.  They also all need to be providing a consistent message.  Certainly each board member should and will have their personalized story of why they care about your organization, but at the end of the day, they all need to be telling the whole story of what makes your organization unique.

Board Presidents and Executive Directors: hear this clarion call and be sure that 100% of your board members are out in the world serving as your ambassador and have been given the proper tools to do it well.  It is a perfect use of board meeting time to work on this task, and it will not only yield a more engaged community, but a more invigorated and engaged board.

Also, consider attending one of the Dodge Foundation board leadership workshops that focus on other areas of governance:  Board Recruitment; Strategic Planning; Financial Management; Executive Director and Board relationship; Fundraising; and Succession Planning.  Then you will be the one bringing the learning back to your board  and colleagues.

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Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

We spend a great deal of time at Dodge thinking about ways, beyond sending a grant check, to build the administrative and board capacity of our grantees. When a large number of our grantees are struggling with a particular issue, we try to bring in some experts to provide some answers.

This past year we hosted an extended series of workshops to help our grantees strengthen their board governance. It has been an exhilarating ride, and we plan to use the Dodge Blog as a way to share some of the insights of our terrific workshop leaders as well as to share support materials we have gathered along the way. We kick off our conversation with a salute to today’s looming tax filing deadline!

If you have dreaded filling out the Form 990 for the IRS in the past, you might find yourself wanting to run for the hills when you learn what is required in the new and improved 990. The IRS is now asking a host of questions about your nonprofit board and governance practices.

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