If you brought board members into fundraising hoping it would lighten your load, I want to save you some frustration right now: that's not what's going to happen. At least not at first.

This is the misconception that trips up more development directors than almost anything else. You recruit board members for fundraising. You give them a quick pep talk. You hand them a spreadsheet of names. And then you wait for your workload to shrink.

It doesn't shrink. If anything, it grows for a while.

​Here's the reframe that changes everything: your board isn't there to save you time. They're there to do something you cannot do by yourself, no matter how skilled or tireless you are. They can open doors into networks you'll never have access to on your own. Your job isn't to hand off tasks and disappear. Your job is to build the structure that makes it possible for them to succeed.

In 2015, I left a large public university to work at a small seminary. When they hired me, I was the entire fundraising staff, save for one part-time person who processed gifts.

Beyond my connection to the mission, I was drawn to the autonomy of the role. I'd get to build a fundraising program from the ground up. I knew I couldn't do that alone. But in those early days, there wasn't anyone to call on.

So I started building people, not just programs. I drew my president into the work and helped her become a genuinely wonderful fundraiser. I scouted and recommended new trustees, people I knew would be useful to the cause of revenue generation. As the board's composition shifted, our trustees started wanting to help.

That's when I built them tools: packets to help them fill tables they hosted at fundraising events, a toolkit for a thank you call campaign, specific language they could post on their own social media for Giving Tuesday. Piece by piece, I gave them what they needed to say yes and actually follow through.

Did any of this save me time? Absolutely not. I was hustling constantly to give my board what they needed to succeed. But their success was my success, and it was the organization's success too.

So many people at nonprofits believe that if the board would just "help," their workload would shrink. In the long run, it does make the job more sustainable. But at the start, the goal isn't staff relief. Your role is more of a trainer, a systems builder, and a change agent for your organization's philanthropy culture.

I built this out over years of trial and error. Now I teach it as a framework, because you shouldn't have to figure it out the hard way like I did.

The instinct at most organizations is to skip straight to the ask. Get the board a list of names, hand them a script, and hope for the best.

That's backward. Before a board member will ever raise their hand to solicit a gift, they need to believe something different about fundraising itself. This is the Reframe step in my REAL Framework: shifting how your board sees money, giving, and their own role in it.

​Most board members carry some version of the same beliefs: that asking is imposing on people, that money is a slightly uncomfortable topic separate from mission, that they personally aren't "the type" who's good at this. None of that is true, but no one ever told them so. Giving is an invitation into something the donor already cares about. Asking isn't taking. It's alignment.

Until you address that mindset directly, all the templates in the world won't get your board moving.

Once the mindset starts to shift, the next step is behavior, and this is where a lot of board fundraising plans fall apart. Organizations tend to imagine one path to engagement: the ask. But the donor cycle has room for a lot more than that, and your board is full of people who can contribute meaningfully without ever making a solicitation.

This is where I use the Fundraising Avatars with boards. Some trustees are Door Openers, wired for connections, always ready to say "you should meet this person." Some are the PR Guru, naturally talking up your mission in rooms you're not in. Some are Gratitude Champions who light up when they get to make a donor feel seen. Others are Strategic Brains who'd rather help you build the plan than pick up the phone, Loyal Givers who lead by example with their own gift, or Task Tackers who show up reliably to execute whatever needs doing.
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​None of these are lesser roles. They're different superpowers, and a board that understands its own mix of avatars stops forcing square pegs into the "everyone must solicit" hole.

Pair that with a Board Fundraising Menu; think of it as appetizers, entrées, and desserts. Appetizers are low lift: opening a door, making an introduction. Entrées stretch a board member a little further, like joining a donor visit. Desserts are the parts people genuinely enjoy, like making a thank you call. When board members can choose from a menu that matches their avatar, engagement stops feeling like an obligation and starts feeling like a fit.

Once your board is engaged and moving, some of them will be ready for the Ask itself. This step is where coordination really matters. You need to track who is talking to who, who is asking who, what for and for how much.

And again, you need to be providing templates, resources, and structure. Give them a formula for building a compelling ask, a chance to practice it out loud, and language for handling the moment a donor says no or goes quiet. ​Give them scripts for donor conversations. ​Give them a one-page explainer on your case for support. Run a “mock meeting” practice session so the words feel natural in their mouths before they ever say them to a donor.

The last piece of REAL is the one boards skip most often: Learn. Every outcome, a yes, a no, or silence, is data. A yes tells you what worked and deserves repeating. A no is information, not failure.

​Build a culture where there's no such thing as failure in fundraising, only learning. That's what keeps board members coming back to the work instead of quietly retreating after one hard conversation.

A board member with a menu of options, a clear job description, and real training still needs you in the loop. Fundraising is relational work, and relationships wobble. Donors get quiet. Conversations stall. Board members second-guess themselves.

Check in regularly. Ask what's working and what feels hard. Celebrate the small wins out loud, in front of the full board if you can. This isn't a "set it and forget it" initiative. It's a relationship you're building with your board, the same way they're building relationships with donors.

​If you are the fundraising lead, engage your Executive Director and your Board Chairperson in the follow-up process. If you have a Fundraising Committee, the chair and members of that can also be helpful here to check in with board members to see where they are with tasks and what kind of support they might be missing in order to deliver.

None of this saves you time in month one. It might not save you time in month three.

What it does is bigger: it activates a broad, warm network of potential donors that no single development director could ever reach alone, no matter how many hours they put in. Your board members know people you will never meet. Their invitation to give carries a kind of trust that an email from the development office simply cannot replicate.

And for your donors: contact from a volunteer leader taking time out of their busy day to say thank you goes such a long way. That makes an impression.

Reframe the mindset. Engage each person where their strengths are. Ask with clarity. Learn from every outcome. Do that consistently, and you won't just add donors to your database. You'll build a culture where fundraising is shared work, not a burden one exhausted person carries alone.

That's not a shortcut. It's the long game. And it's the only version of this work that actually lasts.

Cheers,

P.S. Want more content on board fundraising, mindset, and sustainable revenue growth? Subscribe to the blog and get new posts delivered straight to your inbox.

P.P.S. If you're a nonprofit CEO or development lead who's tired of carrying the fundraising weight alone, a free discovery call is for you. Let’s chat.

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Hi, my name is Jessica, and I'm a recovering perfectionist. In my past, I have rewritten the same subject line eleven times before letting it see daylight.

Sound familiar?

If you work in fundraising, especially if you're newer to the field, you know this trap well. You draft an appeal. You read it again. You tweak a word. You show it to a coworker. You tweak two more words. Days pass. Then a week. The appeal is still sitting in your drafts folder, waiting for a version of itself that will never exist: the perfect version.

Here's the truth nobody tells you: perfect copy stuck in revisions cannot bring in a single dollar.

I want to be clear here. Caring about quality is a good thing. Your donors deserve professional, polished communication. You should absolutely check your work against your brand guidelines. You should absolutely get the donor's name right, and the program name right, and your own organization's name right (yes, that happens more than you'd think). Those are real bars, and they matter.

But once you've cleared them, ask yourself one question: would sending this cause a scandal?

Wrong name on a major gift letter? Scandal. A sentence that could be a little tighter? Not a scandal.

Once you're past the "would cause a scandal" threshold, you're not protecting your organization anymore. You're protecting your own fear of being judged. And that fear is expensive.

Think of it like a report card. You don't need a valedictorian appeal with a perfect 100. You need a solid B+: clear ask, correct facts, on brand, nobody's name is wrong. That's launch ready. That's revenue ready.

Copy that would earn an 85% or higher is doing far more good in your donor's inbox than it will ever do sitting in an editing queue. Get it good. Proof it well. Then send it.

Because here's what actually happens when copy sits too long: the appeal deadline creeps closer, the campaign timeline gets tighter, and now you're rushing something out at the last minute anyway, except with way more stress and way less time to check it properly.

Perfectionism doesn't protect quality. It just delays it, and adds panic on top.

Or worse yet, you are launching something new and keep postponing the go-live date because the copy isn’t perfect yet. Don’t let this be you. B+ or better? Ship it!

​Nobody has ever unsubscribed because a sentence could have been tighter or could have had a smidge more hypothetical emotion. They unsubscribe because they never heard from you at all.

So, here's your assignment. Go look at your drafts folder right now. Find the appeal, the email, the letter that's been sitting there for longer than it should. Read it one more time. Check it against the real bars: is it accurate, is it on brand? Yes? Great!

Would it cause a scandal?

If not: ship it.

Your mission is waiting. Your donors are waiting. Go raise some money.

Cheers,

P.S. Want more content on fundraising and sustainable revenue growth? Subscribe to the blog and get new posts delivered straight to your inbox.

P.P.S. If you're a nonprofit CEO or development lead who's tired of carrying the fundraising weight alone, a free discovery call is for you. Let’s chat.

If you liked this…

• The REAL Framework for Board Fundraising Transformation
• Things You Might Have Missed (But Really Need to Know) From the Social Impact Staff Retention Project's Latest Report
• Diversify your Fundraising Revenue: The Six Revenue Streams Every Nonprofit Needs to Truly THRIVE
• Know. Like. Trust. Give. Advocate. The Full Journey Your Board Needs to Understand
• Now. Next. Needed: The Simple Way for Nonprofit Leaders to Tell Their Story in a Way that Attracts Funding