Comments on: Who do you need on your board and how can you get them there?

By: Catherine Albert

Catherine Albert — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:23:02 +0000

Good Morning!

Cathy, think about the companies that serve your community. Your community IS larger than your town. Who is your electric company? Phone? Internet? Tractor dealership? Wal-mart? Bank? Where do people in your community shop? Go there. Even if they don’t have a publicized giving program, most of these businesses give in the communities they serve (THATS YOU!). These are often small amounts ($1000 or so)but it adds up. And don’t forget to thank them and thank them loudly when these companies help out! Let them know what you are doing. Keep them updated. You want to keep your donors happy so they will give again and again. -Fundraising for a nonprofit in a town of less than 500.

-Catherine

By: Mazarine

Mazarine — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:39:57 +0000

Cathy, that is tough. There are lots of ways to make money for your nonprofit that don’t involve dances, youth nights, or dinners.

You could also try surveying your current volunteers or people who DO come and ask them what you could do better, why they got involved, and then use this for your direct mail.

Then you could try buying a list and doing direct mail fundraising.

I don’t know what country you’re in or what state, but you could also ask other nonprofit community centers in your region about how they have overcome the issue of being rural and trying to engage people in town.

And finally, consider partnering with another nonprofit or charity in your town or region. If they have a similar or complimentary mission, it would be good to take advantage of their structure/brand/list/volunteers so you can start to build some traction.

Hope this was helpful.

By: Cathy Poitras

Cathy Poitras — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:29:40 +0000

I am on the board of a community centre in a village. You’d think the people would gladly volunteer to help or better yet, to be on the board and have a say but, no. We are the only source of entertainment in miles but if we put on dances, we have little turnout unless we hire an expensive, well-known band. Built a beautiful outdoor skating rink but can’t get anyone to clear snow or flood it. Had a “Youth Night” but only 1 set of parents volunteered their time. The parents were quite happy to drop their kids off for the night but try to get them to spend even one evening a month supervising them…. Our fundraising is almost exclusively putting on a dinner every 2nd week. They’ll come to eat but we have a volunteer base of only 12 women. Every article I read is for city organizations. We have one car repair garage with the owner and no employees; a family owned and operated store. We had a restaurant that employed several people but a year ago, it burned to the ground and they are not rebuilding here.

I’d be very interested in hearing what ideas you come up with for us. We really need help.

By: Libby Upham

Libby Upham — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:18:29 +0000

We’ve have found the best board members for our grassroots board by “advertising” openings to our supporters. These folks are tremendous workers who are already familiar with and support our mission personally. We put together a job description that didn’t pull any punches about fundraising, skills desired and the commitment involved, and emailed it to our list. I never would have thought to do this, but a friend at another organization had great luck, and we have, too.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:37:39 +0000

Great post. In your post, you just happened to mention one of my greatest passions: Book of Lists. I am in love with the product, and I love finding out how people are using it. In this case, finding contact information for execs who are prospective board members. It’s also getting a street level view of who the top businesses are, who the fast growers are, who the rich companies are, and who the big givers are, in order to get the right people from the right companies. For this kind of data and analysis, the Book of Lists is reigns over subscriptions to large business databases which would lack the focus, detail, currency, and local touch of the BOL. I know giving insight into how BOL is used wasn’t the focus of this post, but I greatly appreciate the insight.