Three reasons your board isn’t fundraising.
Last month I sat across from an executive director who had run twelve campaigns and never once asked her board to give first. She was terrified to. I get it — I was once, too.
Most board chairs would rather quote Robert’s Rules of Order than write a personal check, and the asymmetry of being the only person in the room making the request can feel like the floor falling out. But the math is the math. If your board doesn’t give first, your major-gift donors notice.
1. They were never asked to.
The most common pattern I see: nobody on the recruiting committee actually said the words “we expect you to give and to ask.” So the board member said yes to a different job than the one they got. That’s a recruitment problem, not a fundraising problem.
2. They don’t know how.
A two-hour training, twice a year, fixes this. Most don’t get it. They get a binder. The binder doesn’t help.
If your board doesn’t give first, your major-gift donors notice.
3. The ED is doing it for them.
When the ED carries every ask, the board learns they don’t have to. So we wrote the ED a script — twelve minutes of board meeting, once a quarter, where she names a prospect and asks who in the room knows them. Twelve minutes. Quarterly. That’s the whole intervention.