Football is a lot like fundraising in that both are team activities. A great football team requires 11 talented players on the field; a full bench of players able to step in and play well; a quarterback with the ability to read the field, pass well, and avoid being tackled; and a coaching staff that understands how best to use each player for overall success. Great fundraising is not so different. You need a variety of people committed to winning and willing to do their part to make it happen. Yet so many organizations pin their entire fundraising success on the development office or, even worse, on a single development officer. It is one of the scariest myths in nonprofits. Such myths quietly undermine the capacity of otherwise good organizations to secure funding.
Myth: Fundraising is the staff’s job, and board service means attending meetings and contributing time and expertise.
Nonprofits select board members for a variety of reasons, the most common being visibility and community leadership, in the hope that these will translate into additional revenue. However, board members often believe that their professional expertise and visibility are sufficient for the role, and they are reluctant to fundraise, even though most nonprofits expect board members to solicit their networks for funding. A survey of more than 1,000 nonprofit professionals at small and medium-sized organizations found that respondents reported 56.5 percent of their board members did not support any form of fundraising activity. (Bloomerang) This points to a clear misunderstanding, on both sides, of the expectations and role defined at recruitment. Another survey makes the point even more clearly: 42 percent of respondents said their board has no expectation agreement for board members at all. (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
Each player understands his role before he ever steps onto the field, yet nonprofits fail to delineate the fundraising expectation, which does not always include asking. When recruiting for a board role, an organization should define fundraising explicitly as an expectation. A person who learns of the fundraising expectation only after being welcomed has, in effect, been misled, and the relationship begins with a misrepresentation instead of respect.
Myth: Not every board member needs to fundraise.
Not everyone on the football field is the quarterback or the wide receiver, nor should they be. The offensive linemen protect the quarterback as he executes the play, while the running back serves as a possible alternative target when a wide receiver is closely guarded by the defensive backs. In fundraising, not every board member needs to solicit gifts. Some people are completely unnerved by asking for anything. Asking them to solicit gifts usually works against the organization, because uncomfortable solicitors make donors uncomfortable, and few people give when they are uncomfortable.
Even if you are the player who cannot catch the football, you still have a role to play in ensuring the victory. Legendary offensive lineman Jim Parker, the first full-time offensive lineman inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, never caught a pass in his career, yet his job of protecting quarterback Johnny Unitas was just as critical to the team’s victories. Just as every player has a unique role in ensuring victory, every board member has a distinct role in securing the gift.
Confusion and reluctance occur because we associate fundraising solely with the ask. Just as a great football play involves more than crossing the goal line, fundraising includes identifying potential donors, cultivating relationships with them, and celebrating their gifts through thank you notes and meaningful stewardship. None of these requires a board member to ask anyone for money, yet all of them are essential to receiving a gift. Different members will play different positions, yet the most successful fundraising requires full team participation.
Myth: A good development director means less board involvement.
The role of the quarterback is to execute the play after reading the field. While plays are usually planned and practiced in advance, the quarterback may call an audible when an alteration would improve the chance of success. The rest of the team needs to be prepared either to execute the planned play or to adapt quickly to the audible. The planned plays and even the possible audibles are developed well in advance of the game and studied by players who have only fractions of a second to execute.
The senior development professional acts as the quarterback for the fundraising strategy. He or she develops a plan for the cultivation and solicitation of the donor in conjunction with other members of the team, including the executive director and board members, who likely have a personal relationship with the prospective donor. When a quarterback must run every play alone, the team cannot win. Both development professionals and board members must work together to secure the gift. It is a shared responsibility.
Like football, fundraising is never meant to be a solitary endeavor. Both will always be team efforts and require participation from everyone who claims to want a victory. The exact roles each team member plays should be negotiated and made clear when the member is drafted. You cannot play well on a team when you do not know the playbook. Establishing fundraising expectations clearly during recruitment is the equivalent of a newly drafted football player learning his team’s playbook.
Fullanthropy Perspective
A board member cannot meet an expectation that no one has stated, and an organization cannot state an expectation it has not yet developed. Before recruiting a new member, it helps to know what your organization needs its board leadership to do. A board job description is one way to lay out those expectations clearly before a board member accepts the role..