Years ago, while serving as a board member for a small local nonprofit, I witnessed what frustrates many nonprofit marketers and fund developers. We were in a board meeting, and the CEO introduced the new development officer. After which, the development officer launched into her opening remarks and shared some lofty fundraising and marketing ideas. She was super excited and her excitement was refreshing, but it was not well-received by her audience.
We were a group of seasoned board members who had ‘been there’ and ‘done that’ with fundraising. We were tired of the “let’s try this” approach. Over the years, we had seen our share of development officers come and go. So while this new development officer was enthusiastic and certainly had good intentions, all that the board members saw was a long list of ideas with limited resources to back them up. Lots of effort and little return.
After the introductions, the board members barraged the development officer with questions.
Sounds like a lot of work. Will you have volunteers helping you?
Have you seen these ideas work with other nonprofits?
What is the average money raised from each of these events?
How much do these events cost?
Is our team strong enough to make this happen?
How many sponsors did each event have?
Our new development officer was discouraged and undoubtedly saddened that her ideas weren’t greeted with enthusiasm and strong support. She was deflated from the board’s initial reaction, and I didn’t want her to lose hope. Since I was the board member in charge of the board fundraising committee, I spoke up and suggested that the new development officer and I get together and work on the next steps before spending more time on the topic.
So how could we have avoided all of this strife? Let’s walk through the solutions to the issue.
1. First, meet with your CEO and then each department leader
If you are new to the position of a fundraiser, do this in the first week of your employment. If you have been in the role for years and are struggling with leadership buy-in, start with this step. Let’s call them fundraising discovery meetings. In these individual meetings with leaders, your goal is to uncover the fundraising story of your nonprofit from different perspectives and gauge their levels of engagement. Below are some questions for starting the meetings.
- What do you see as the biggest fundraising challenges for this nonprofit?
- What fundraising events or initiatives have produced the biggest revenue? Why do you think that is? What did you like about each of them?
- How involved are your department’s employees in fundraising?
- How involved are you (the department leader) in fundraising?
- How involved are you willing to be? Why?
Last question: If you finish a meeting and discover that a leader is simply either not involved with fundraising or is not as involved as you need them to be, ask them this question…
What can I do, or what do you need help with to get you and your team to be more involved in fundraising? What would make it easier for you?
If the leader is already actively involved, ask them this question…
How can we make participating in fundraising easier for you and your staff?
Fundraising discovery meetings will uncover a wealth of detail. When you meet with your team, you will uncover the large and small challenges with fundraising for your nonprofit. But don’t look at these as challenges; look at them as opportunities for improving your marketing and fundraising. Each of your department leaders has their own reason for supporting or not supporting fundraising. Our job as development officers is to move everyone to enthusiastically supporting fundraising. And we do this by listening, engaging, and providing the tools and resources they need.
When people are frustrated about doing something, it’s often because they don’t have the resources or skills they need to do it successfully. They need someone to listen and help. In your meetings with department leaders, you will be given plenty of ideas for fundraising, but it doesn’t mean you have to implement all of their suggestions. It is just important to listen and to consider their suggestions.
2. Meet with each board member individually
Nonprofit board members get involved with the nonprofit for their own reasons. Uncover their reason and cultivate it. Find out what each board member hopes to personally gain from their involvement. Here are some questions to get you started at these individual board member meetings:
- What drew you to support our nonprofit?
- What are your biggest fundraising challenges?
- What is your biggest professional challenge right now? (You may be able to host an event that helps them with their business challenge.)
- Introduce the concept of audience-focused fundraising events to board members. What types of audience-focused events would they support most?
- Are you comfortable with our publically sharing about you and the important work you do for our nonprofit? If so, what do you think is the best way to tell your story? (For this question, provide examples of ideas such as a newsletter story, social media posts, an interview in a blog post, or an interview with the CEO on the nonprofit’s podcast.)
Here are some examples of board member mission-focused content that promotes the nonprofit and the board member:
Example board member content for social media, newsletter and an email campaign. Link this content back to the board member page with a call to action.
Example board member content in the form of an advertorial (magazine like content). Link this to a landing page, and it with exhibits, presentations, newsletter mailings, and social media.
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3. Create a Revenue-Generating Marketing & Fundraising Plan that is Attainable and Measurable
The discovery meetings with your nonprofit team and board members will result in a long list of fundraising ideas. These meetings will also reveal a list of the resources, training and support your team needs to be successful with fundraising. Combine the list of fundraising ideas from your meetings with any ideas you’ve uncovered during your fundraising research. It’s now time to evaluate all of the fundraising ideas to identify which ones will produce the most revenue.
- What are your nonprofit’s annual business goals? Which of the ideas will best help support these goals?
- What is your required annual fund development goal?
- What events or initiatives from your list seem to raise the most funds?
- Were any fundraising ideas suggested by more than one person?
- Which types of audience-focused fundraising events were most appealing?
- Which of the fundraising events or programs seem to fit best with your community’s demographics?
- Research these types of events to identify other nonprofits (not in your local area) that are successfully raising money with these events. Find out how much they are raising with the event by reviewing the 990, Annual Report, or Social Channels. Alternatively, contact the fund development officer for the nonprofit and inquire about the revenue. In exchange, offer to share some of your event ideas with them.
Create your master list of fundraising initiatives, and complete your nonprofit marketing and fundraising plan. Use the Nonprofit Marketing Academy’s two-page Marketing and Fundraising Plan as a template, if needed.
In your plan, include the following detail for each fundraiser, campaign or fundraising initiative. As your team completes a fundraising initiative, adjust the figures in the report to match actual outcomes.
Example content to use when reporting about fundraising and marketing campaigns.
4. Present the Marketing and Fundraising Plan to the internal leadership team and board of directors
In the example above, the detail included for each marketing and fundraising initiative is the exact detail leadership needs so they can see the value of the initiatives and the return on investment. Each campaign will support one or more business goals, which in turn supports the nonprofit’s overall mission. Each campaign is goal-oriented and measurable. Most important, they are adjustable. If any of the marketing tactics are not working or producing the needed results, they can be examined, adjusted and tweaked, or canceled. This ensures the nonprofit is not wasting money or time on ineffective marketing.
5. Use a Project Management Tool to Turn the Plan into Action
Once you have buy-in from leadership and the board of directors, it’s time to assemble your teams. A marketing lead should oversee all of the marketing efforts, however, each campaign can have different team members (staff, volunteers, board members) in addition to the marketing lead. By diversifying the teams based on the campaign and interests of team members, you can avoid burnout and frustration.
For best practices, use a project management platform like Asana to build out your campaigns and engage the team. At this time, you will transfer each campaign to the project management tool and begin developing the tasks and action items.
You are ready! Learn step by step how to build a high-revenue nonprofit marketing and fundraising plan in our most popular online course. Watch a free lesson here and access our two-page Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising Plan.
So what’s missing? What else can you think of to help gain buy-in for marketing efforts from your nonprofit’s leadership team?
