3 Reasons to Get Board Members Involved With Online Fundraising

Online fundraising was definitely not the first (second, or even third) thing we thought of when we considered ways to engage board members.  How wrong we were!  Guest blogger Sean Chisholm of San Diego’s Stay Classy tells us about the opportunity we miss when we don’t engage our board in online giving in his terrific post:  3 Reasons to Get Board Members Involved With Online Fundraising.  We’re convinced!

3 Reasons to Get Board Members Involved With Online Fundraising

When you think of a “nonprofit board member” what comes to mind?

Large donations?

Meetings?

Fundraising galas?

Whatever it is, chances are, your mind probably doesn’t leap straight to online fundraising. Online fundraising simply isn’t something that most board members participate in, and it’s not something that people usually associate with board service.

Why is this the case? Well, one reason is that the average board member tends to be older than what’s commonly perceived as the “target demographic” for online fundraising. Another reason is that board members are usually expected to either solicit major gifts or make sizable personal contributions to the organizations they serve. When you take these two things together, it’s easy to see why board members usually remain on the sidelines for online campaigns. Even though this is the norm though, that doesn’t mean things should stay this way…

For starters, while online fundraising may skew towards younger supporters, there is data that suggests that older participants are every bit as effective (if not more effective) at online fundraising than their younger counterparts. Plus, there are some unique advantages that can be realized from having your board members participate in online campaigns– advantages that simply do not flow from personal contributions or major gift solicitation. Consider, for example, these three benefits of getting your board members involved in online campaigns:

1. Leading by Example in a Visible Way

The best leaders lead by example. They aren’t afraid to take up tasks that others might perceive as “beneath” them; in doing so, they inspire the people around them to perform better in their own roles. There’s a certain amount of this catalyzing effect that can happen when your board members take up the banner for one of your online fundraising campaigns.

Because it’s not expected that board members will get involved at a grass roots level, staff members will likely take notice when they create fundraising pages and start bringing in contributions. Traditional fundraising activities like soliciting major gifts and making direct contributions do not have this level of visibility. Staff members probably have no idea what each board member is giving or what gifts they are soliciting. When board members fundraise online, however, it allows staff members to see the commitment that top leadership has to helping out financially. This, in turn, can help foster a culture of participation from the top down.

 2. Leaders Can Showcase Their Why

This second point is related to the first one in the sense that it is also a function of the public nature of online fundraising.

Personal fundraising pages are meant to be vehicles for self-expression. Individuals create pages, in part at least, to explain their personal connection to the cause and to share that message with friends and family. In other words, an inherent part of personal fundraising is broadcasting your reasons for caring about the cause to your network.

When your board members get involved in your campaigns, they are able to share their own “why” with supporters. This has the effect of humanizing your leadership, and by extension, your brand. At the end of the day, people don’t just want to know who leads your organization, they want to know why those people are involved. Personal fundraising pages provide a great opportunity to share these stories.

If you happen not to be one of the 15 million or so people that have seen Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk about “How Great Leader’s Inspire Action,” you should give it a view. In the video he discusses the importance of marketing your “why,” arguing that people are wired to resonate with your purpose and mission. Leveraging board members to tell their personal stories can be an effective technique for articulating the broader “why” of your organization.

3. Not All Board Members are in the Same Position

So far we’ve been operating on the assumption that Board members are most familiar with cutting large checks and soliciting major gifts, and many of them are. That being said, there are still a lot of board members out there who are not in the position to make large personal contributions and who lack the personal connections to solicit large gifts. They may have plenty of independent value, in other words, just not plenty of independent wealth…

For board members who fit this description, online fundraising can be a powerful tool to help them contribute on a financial level. At StayClassy we’ve seen individual fundraisers raise tens of thousands of dollars by themselves, and some of these “power fundraisers” were just teenagers! Also, since the average online contribution tends to be much smaller than the typical “major gift,” if your board members are raising substantial amounts online, that means that they are bringing in lots of new donors.

Whether you are more focused on dollars raised or donors acquired though, the basic point is the same. Online campaigns provide a great opportunity to empower board members who are not able to cut large checks. This can be an especially welcome outlet for younger board members who may feel some level of inadequacy if they lack the financial resources of other board members.

So, will online fundraising be replacing major gifts from board members any time soon? No, of course not. That being said, it can be a useful avenue to explore for organizations. Getting board members involved with online campaigns, can bring cultural, branding, and financial benefits to an organization in a way that more traditional forms of financial support cannot.

 

Sean Chisholm is the Director of Marketing for StayClassy, a leading online fundraising platform for nonprofits. An early member of the startup’s team, Sean has seen thousands of different online campaigns being run by every type of organization over the years. He enjoys sharing the insights he’s gleaned from that experience on the company’s blog.