By Karen Greve Milton, Senior Consultant, Danosky & Associates

It seems as if I have been involved in governance matters with non-profit organizations throughout my professional life, and even before that, if you count serving as president of my college choral group.  At present, I serve as a volunteer director on a board of a national non-profit organization dedicated to promoting civic education to citizens of all ages, or “cradle to grave” as we like to think of our mission.  Our directors are located throughout the country from the West Coast to the East Coast with the Mid-West in between.  Our constituencies also are located throughout our nation, from coast-to-coast, including Hawaii and Alaska.

Due to the pandemic, we have only met virtually through the wonders of Zoom for almost three years.  During this time, our long-serving Executive Director retired, a new Executive Director was hired, long-serving Board members left and were succeeded by new Board members, new senior professional staff was hired to oversee programs, development and operations, new audit and financial investment firms were selected, and we re-drafted our by-laws and mission statement.  And like all of us, we handled all these matters without any face-to-face meetings.  We even held our annual in-person Board Retreat and Meeting last year by Zoom. 

Next month, our Board members and senior/executives will meet in-person for the first time since the pandemic.  Half the Board members have never met in-person since joining our organization.  Our senior/executive staff, including our Executive Director, has never met in-person with the full Board.  Although I only in the middle of my first term on the Board, I coordinated last year’s virtual annual Board Retreat and Meeting and am performing the same service this year.  Last year’s annual meeting focused on our organization’s mission and mission statement:  who we are as an entity and what we do in our jurisdictional area to affect that mission.

Our focus for the discussion at this year’s annual meeting will be different from last year.  This year, we intend to focus on our purpose or the reason we exist, rather than our mission.  As we prepare for this year’s annual Board Retreat and Meeting, I have been scouring various websites for articles to include in our Board Meeting packet.  In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, a March 2021 article, by Anne Wallestad, then-CEO & President of BoardSource, entitled, “The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership,” caught my attention.  In her article, Ms. Wallestad argues, rather convincingly, that today’s non-profit boards need to be purpose-driven rather than mission-focused with fidelity to the organization’s reason for existence in its ecosystem with an emphasis on seeking equitable outcomes in its decisions and ensuring that the community served by the organization has a voice, if not a seat at the board. 

With our new Executive Director, my Board colleagues and I invested significant time over the past year in re-thinking and re-defining our organization’s mission and redrafting our by-laws.  Through our new Executive Director, we reached out to sister organizations in our ecosystem—for the first time in our history—and began exchanging ideas as to how we all shared the same mission: promoting non-partisan civic education.  We also expanded the diversity of our Board membership geographically, racially and demographically.

In thinking about the strides our Board has made in these pandemic years, we seem to be poised to take up the gauntlet posed by Anne Wallestad in her 2021 article.  This year, as we gather together in-person, our discussion will focus on her four principles of purpose-driven board leadership:

Purpose:  defining the reason our organization exists in today’s world

Ecosystem:  gaining a perspective about our sister organizations and considering the effect that our decisions may have on them and their purpose.

Equity:  ensuring that our decisions create equitable outcomes and

Authorized voices & power: making sure that we give voice to the communities we serve and include them in our decisions.

I believe it is important for all non-profit boards to engage in this dialogue and embrace this new way of looking at their organizations:

• their reason for existing,
• how their decisions affect their ecosystem,
• how they can continue to improve equitable outcomes for their actions, and
• how they can identify better ways to engage the communities they serve.

Purpose-driven boards will be more engaged with the communities they serve. It is through this stronger engagement that their communities will help the board find new and innovative means to promote their organization’s purpose for existing.  By better defining their purpose, they also will develop a board member profile that promotes their organization’s purpose in multiple areas; thereby making their vision, their reality.

2022 has begun and what a beginning – depending on your perspective. So much has transpired in such a short time and there continues to be significant changes in the nonprofit sector. As so many of us like to do, we are reflecting on trends that appear to be on the horizon and would like to share our perspective.

• There is a new generation of nonprofit leaders emerging – younger, more diverse with a strong enthusiasm for innovation. They will shake things up in the future

• The upcoming generation of leadership is far more collaborative, willing to share power and create strategic alliances

• The future will bring greater expectation for community engagement and for community voices to be heard

• Boards will continue to explore their roles as the call for greater equity and inclusion in the sector increases

• Philanthropy will continue to be strong and those nonprofits who engage with their donors and demonstrate their impact in the community will thrive 

With these trends in mind, we have been planning our education and training programs for the year. We are excited to kick off our series in February during Black History Month with a panel discussion on Diversity and Inclusion – with Emphasis on Inclusion. In March, I will be hosting an interactive session on Conversations with Donors, and in early April, Susan Rosati will be providing a training for both staff and board members on financial reporting and the fiscal responsibilities of the board of directors.

I was speaking my colleague, Mary, a few weeks ago, lamenting the reluctance of board members to reach out and engage with donors. And then Mary nailed it – FOMD! Fear Of Meeting Donors. It is hard to understand why accomplished, well-spoken, very likeable people have this fear. But I am afraid it is true.

People, who usually have no problems making business calls, social calls, or calls to any person they don’t know, need to have a script to call a donor, or an extensive training in how to meet with a donor in person. Simply to say “thank you.” These very same people are usually very open about doing these things when it is first suggested. Then – it happens: FOMD. So, I would like to explore why this happens and how we can help each other overcome FOMD.

FOMD is not about meeting or talking to someone you don’t know. I believe it actually comes from a deep respect for the donor and an uncertainty relative to how to approach someone who has done something so nice as to give to your organization. There is also the fear of not knowing what the answer is to a donor’s question, and that can be a tad bit intimidating.

Here are a few tips for helping board members or any staff or volunteer making those calls:

1. Prepare a simple script. However, don’t load the script with facts. Rather share some nice information, such as, “This is a woman who is in her 70’s and has been giving for 12 years. She has come to a few of our events with other friends. Her giving has increased from $50 to a high of $400 in 2020. You are calling to thank her for giving $350 one week ago.” A board, volunteer, or staff can prepare this.
2. Provide a few facts or story of interest to share with the donor about your organization, such as the programs you have restarted after COVID, how things are going, or a funny anecdote. Your Executive Director, staff, or even your Development Committee could do this.
3. Share why this organization matters to you, when you made your first gift or why you joined the board.
4. If they ask a question you don’t know, simply say, “that’s a great question and I don’t have the answer, but I will find out and get back to you if that is ok?” (what a great way to reconnect with the donor, by the way)
5. Let the caller know you don’t want to keep them long – just long enough to say thank you and how much the donor is appreciated.
6. Enjoy the call. Donors are really nice people and fun to talk to.

I think the bottomline is that people just need encouragement to make that first call. With year-end giving appeals and strategies underway, it is important to overcome FOMD. The most important aspect of fundraising is communicating how much you appreciate a donor’s gift and how that gift is being used. The thank you letter that also serves as the donor’s tax receipt is not enough. A call or a meeting is so much more effective. Of course you can send an e-mail or a text. But think about making that call.

If you are a board member, volunteer, or staff, and are anxious about calling donors – here is one piece of advice: Just Do It. It may just be the most enjoyable few minutes of your week!

What a crazy idea..building the capacity we need, and maybe a little more? YES! That is exactly what I am talking about.

Today, as I am writing this, I’ve had three zoom calls with three clients who are all struggling because they have not built enough capacity. One is a national nonprofit who, for decades, lived with the mindset they could not spend money and had to make do with whatever they have. So they now have an antiquated database that won’t function as they need it to, and multiple staff who all have to take on an assignment, because no one was ever hired to do it and they all took on one aspect of it (hence using 3x the human capital). Another is the development department of an organization raising several million a year. They had just enough staff to get by – until several decided to resign over a period of four months. Now they are scrambling to manage a huge year-end appeal which brings in $1 million plus drastically short-handed. The third is an Executive Director near burn-out, because he never had funds to hire staff, launched a capital campaign short-staffed and is trying to perform the jobs of at least three people. The bottom line here is you can get by – until you can’t!

We need to build capacity for the future our communities want. We need to transform how we function in the nonprofit sector. And this is the time to do so, to imagine what is possible and invest the resources necessary to achieve it. As I was lamenting the calls I had this morning, I ran across this article in Non Profit Quarterly, “Don’t Rebuild, Upbuild! – Reimaging Nonprofit Infrastructure,” by Tiloma Jayasinghe, which I encourage you to take a look at.

To quote from the article: “Upbuilding is what happens when infrastructure is defined expansively, centering humans and communities, and with a strong equity, anti-oppressive lens. Upbuilding requires having the willingness and imagination to question why things are the way they are, whether they serve or oppress, and whether they can be done differently. In short, upbuilding means building something new and different as opposed to recovering and going back to “normal.”

The time has come…