The Board Fundraising Activation Toolkit
Activate Your Board To Support and Participate In Fundraising
Before You Begin
First, bookmark this page.
You’ll be coming back to it often, and it’s the central hub for activating your board.
This system is not passive.
Activating your board for fundraising will require thinking, decisions, and follow-through.
It demands your attention. That’s intentional.
To support you through that mental work, I’ve provided clear instructions at every stage to guide your thinking, help you build faster, and remove guesswork.
Use them fully.
Please do not skip any step.
Each step builds on the one before it. Skipping ahead will create confusion and gaps that make execution harder later.
If at any point execution feels difficult or unclear, reach out.
Email me directly at [email protected] and explain where you’re stuck.
Most importantly, congratulations.
You’ve taken the first real step toward activating your board for fundraising.
Take your time. Start at the beginning.
Important Instructions: Saving Your Forms
Before using any of the forms provided, you must first save your own copy.
Do not edit or alter the original form before saving a copy.
This is very important.
How to Save a Copy
Open the form using the link provided
Click “File” → “Make a copy” (or the equivalent option in your form tool)
Save the copy to your own account
Use only your saved copy going forward
Why This Matters
Saving a copy before making any edits ensures that:
all responses go directly to you
your organization’s information remains private
no data is shared with or visible to anyone else
you maintain full control of the form and its responses
If you edit the original form without saving a copy first, responses may not be routed correctly and could compromise your organization’s privacy.
Once you’ve saved your copy, you are free to customize it for your organization as needed.
Always work from your own saved version.
Fundraising Strategy Pre-Planning
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.
Fundraising Strategy Creation
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.
Fundraising Strategy Facilitation Meeting
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.
Follow Up Template and Materials
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.