Your Board Isn't Fundraising. And The Way You've Been Trying To Get Them To Is The Reason Why.
Read To The End To Learn How To Activate Your Board For Fundraising Support and Participation
You've tried setting expectations.
You sat them down, explained the need, and told them fundraising is part of the role. They nodded. And nothing changed.
You've tried giving them targets. And one by one, they quietly withdrew, showing up less, engaging less, until you stopped expecting anything at all.
So here you are. Still carrying the full weight of fundraising alone.
Here's the truth: It's your board's responsibility to ensure your organization is adequately funded. Without your board's support and participation when it comes to fundraising, you will continue to self-fund and struggle in isolation.
But the sad reality is that setting expectations and assigning targets won't get them to give, fundraise, or build your organization's fundraising system with you.
Rather, they are the two fastest ways to lose your board entirely. Board members are volunteers. The moment fundraising feels like pressure, they disengage. Quietly. And before you know it, you have a board that is inactive or physically present but completely checked out.
It's not that they don't care. It's that the approach was wrong from the start.
What Actually Gets Board Members to Fundraise
One thing and only one thing consistently gets board members to show up for fundraising.
And that's building the fundraising strategy together with them.
Not handing them a plan. Not assigning them roles. Not setting expectations or giving fundraising targets.
But building the fundraising strategy plan with them. As we say in the nonprofit world, people who plan together execute together.
When your board contributes to identifying who should fund the mission, where to find them, and how to reach them and raise money from them, that plan becomes theirs.
And they commit to executing the plan rather than watching from the sidelines because they helped build and create the roadmap.
And here is where something powerful happens.
The Strategy You Build Together Solves Your Funding Problem at the Same Time
Most nonprofits don't struggle to raise money because of a bad mission. They struggle because they don't know the exact types of people, businesses, and grantors meant to fund their mission, where to find them, how to attract them, or the right process for raising money from them.
So they approach anyone who might listen. Wrong people. Wrong platforms. Wrong process. They over-explain. They feel like they're begging. Enormous effort. Inconsistent results.
But when your board builds the fundraising strategy with you, two things happen at once.
Your board gets activated. And your funding gets a direction it has never had before.
What This Looks Like in Practice
1. Your board members fill out a pre-planning form, sharing their ideas on who should fund the mission, deciding how they want to support the fundraising drive, and indicating their openness to giving financially to support fundraising execution.
The Outcome: They decide how they want to support fundraising based on their strengths, and the ones ready to give step forward willingly. No awkward conversation required.
2. You take those ideas, plus yours, and build a complete fundraising strategy following a clearly laid out framework by identifying your ideal funders, where to find them, how to attract them daily, and the step-by-step process to raise money from each one.
The Outcome: A clear fundraising strategy everyone can commit to.
3. You send it back to your board to review before your next meeting. At that meeting, your board reviews the strategy they helped create, adopts it as a working document, and commits out loud to their specific role in executing it.
The outcome: You gain board members' commitment and proceed immediately into execution.
4. After the meeting, board members who indicated they'd give receive a donation link to support execution. Every board member fills out a relationship mapping form, identifying specific people and businesses from their own networks that fit your ideal funder profile, and each board member receives a fundraising portfolio based on how they decide they want to support fundraising.
You walk away with:
- a warm prospect list of people already connected to someone your board knows and trusts (Ready to reach out to immediately.)
- funding to initiate fundraising execution
- and a committed board ready to go all in with you.
And for the first time, you are not carrying this alone.
And the best part?
You can execute every part of this process yourself. You don't need a consultant or outside help.
You also do not need to convene a board meeting to start.
You simply email each board member the pre-planning form using a definite email template that gets them to fill it out within a short period of time.
In two hours, you can synchronize all ideas into one solid fundraising strategy plan, following clear instructions, and email the plan to each board member to review before the next board meeting.
At your next board meeting, you review the plan together, adopt it, agree on execution, and proceed to follow up based on the board agreement using a clear facilitation guide so you aren't guessing through the process.
In a week or two, you have a board activated for fundraising, a solid board owned and back fundraising strategy plan, and funding to execute the plan.
I'm Rooney, the Founder of Nonprofit Board Builder, LLC
I've watched the absence of this process quietly destroy organizations that deserved to survive.
I've sat across from leaders with disengaged boards and no clear funding strategy who were close to giving up, and watched everything shift the moment they built the strategy the right way with their board.
The difference was never the mission. It was never the passion. It was always whether they built the strategy right, and whether they built it together.
I've contributed to raising over $5M in unrestricted funding and trained hundreds of founders and executive directors across the US. Every single time, the starting point is the same.
The most successful organizations are those where the board is fully committed to building and ensuring the success of the organization.
I work with a small number of organizations personally at any given time to activate their board for fundraising and build their fundraising strategy plan.
Alternatively, anyone can get the toolkit, which is always available, as my time is not.
What's Inside the Toolkit
1. Pre-Planning Form & Email Templates
A customizable form you send to your board members. They share funding ideas, choose how they want to support the fundraising drive, and indicate if they're open to giving to fund execution. Includes the email to send the form and the follow-up email after they respond.
2. The Fundraising Strategy Creation Kit
Step-by-step instructions to take your board's ideas and yours, and synchronize them into one complete, clear fundraising strategy plan.
3. The Strategy Adoption Facilitation Guide
To run the board meeting where everyone reviews the strategy, adopts it as a working document, and commits out loud to their role in executing it.
4. Post-Meeting Follow-Up Templates
Everything you send after the adoption meeting, the relationship mapping form for board members to recommend prospects from their networks, the donation link for those who indicated they'd give, and next step communications.
5. AI Instructions
To simplify and accelerate the entire strategy creation process.
6. Unlimited access to me as you go through the process.
What you walk away with:
A complete fundraising strategy. A board that built it with you, adopted it, and committed to executing it. Financial contributions from board members who chose to give. And a warm prospect list from your board's own networks, ready to contact immediately.
Done-With-You — $1,497
If you aren't confident in your ability to execute the process, we can do it together.
We build your complete fundraising strategy together. I facilitate the board process, help you identify your ideal funding audience, structure the adoption meeting, and make sure you leave with everything in place. This includes:
- Complete fundraising strategy built with Rooney
- Board pre-planning process facilitated
- Fundraising strategy creation
- Strategy adoption meeting structured and facilitated
- Warm prospects mapped from your board's network
- Post-meeting follow-up process set up
- Everything in the Toolkit included
Limited availability. If you are considering this, don't wait.
Your board has networks, ideas, and capacity you haven't been able to access.
The strategy is what unlocks it.
The moment they build the plan with you, they stop watching and start moving. Your ideal funders get identified.
Warm prospects start coming in, and funding gets a direction it has never had before.
You stop carrying this alone.
The only thing this cannot do for you is decide that today is the day everything changes.
That part is yours.
