Engaging your Board in Fundraising and Sponsorship

This post is aimed primarily at the charity and non profit. For my private sector and sports team readers…next week we will be back at it with some tricks of the trade for you. This one’s for the charities! Thanks to my good friend Mena Gainpaulsingh of Purposeful Fundraising Inc. for guest posting and sharing her expertise!

How to Engage Your Board in Corporate Fundraising and Sponsorship

We hear it all the time. Boards need to be more engaged in fundraising and sponsorship in our organizations. Board can bring so many resources to the table, from making introductions to CEOs of companies to hosting networking events. They can support your sponsorship efforts or stand in the way of them. They can represent a considerable asset to a corporate sponsor in terms of their network or they can simply fear sponsorship and prevent you from moving forward.

In my experience of working with Boards, I often see some common themes that lead to Board disengagement. Thankfully, there are ways in which you can move forward to make your Board the best fundraising resource ever.

Build Trust

Lack of trust has got to be one of the main reasons why Boards don’t donate and do not bring you their networks. Boards, understandably want to protect their friends, associates and other contacts from being treated badly. They may even have been burned before, having taken the chance to make an introduction to a contact and then find that the contact has not been treated well by the charity. So help them to feel that they can trust you, but also in the charity, by demonstrating that you understand the process, that you won’t mistreat their friends and business associates and that you have impact in a cause that they care about.

Do What You Say You Will

This leads on from the point above in terms of helping your Board members to trust you. If you say you will call, call. If you promise to send them some further information, do it, and do it on time. Never be late for meetings and don’t let your meetings overrun. These are all factors that impact upon how much your Board members feel that they are being respected, and in turn, that you will respect their friends.

 

Re-Connect Them With the Cause

Constantly. I’ve sat in many Board meetings where we deal with the governance of the organization, but then never talk about the impact that we have. While I understand that we need to get the governance work done, I begin to forget what drove me to join in the first place. Over time I stop feeling inspired, and then less enthusiastic about encouraging others to get involved.

So use your Board meetings as an opportunity to let them know about why your cause is so important. Tell them stories about how their hard work, and money, is making a difference.  Make it front and centre of your meeting and the first thing on the agenda. Remind them about why they cared in the first place, and why they care now. Help them feel like this is a place and a cause that they feel compelled to invite their friends to join, as sponsors, donors, volunteers and as fundraisers.

Show the Love

I can’t say this enough. Board members sometimes end up only feeling the obligation that their role puts upon them, but do not feel appreciated for their contribution, or indeed, inspired to do more. In fact, I have sat on Boards and committees where I had both raised and given money and not once had I been thanked.

So thank, thank and thank again. Ask them how you can recognize their support. Understand their motivations for being engaged and find ways to feed that motivation and to give them what they need and want. Cultivate a relationship that makes them feel part of something amazing, that is changing the world and that this change wouldn’t happen without them.

Prioritize Fundraising & Sponsorship

Far too often raising money is the last item on the agenda, only ten minutes is allocated to it, and by then everyone is tired and just wants to get home. Yes, your programs are important, but you can’t run them if you don’t have funding and if people don’t appreciate the importance of sponsorship to your organization. So after you have re-connected your Board with great stories, at the start of your meeting, let them know how important sponsorship is to making this stuff happen.

Give Them the Tools and Support to Thrive

    Having a great Case for Support: A regular experience I have with Boards is that they just don’t feel like they know enough about your organization, and your funding needs, to talk to people. Yes, they have your website, your Annual Review and your Board reports, but even with this, it can be a struggle to figure out the right way to talk about the cause. The right Case for Support helps your Board to better understand what the organization does, what it needs funding for but it also gives them the language that they need to use when talking about the cause. As a result, not only can they feel more enthusiastic as a result of reading it, but also more confident when talking to others, while giving them the message that you most want them to hear.

   Help them to understand the difference between sponsorship & philanthropy: You don’t need to go into a deep dive with this with your Board, but by helping them to understand that donations and sponsorship often come from different places in a company and there are different motivations behind them, it can help them to build a meaningful connection to the right people in the corporation, whether it is the Brand Manager or the Community Engagement Manager, to help you meet your goals.

   Coaching: Helping your Board to understand fundraising and sponsorship better, and their role within this, can make all the difference in encouraging them to get engaged. People often think that fundraising and sponsorship is about strong-arming their friends or cold-calling, when in fact, this approach rarely works and less often makes anyone feel good about giving (and giving should ALWAYS feel good). Where your Board members are often best suited is in making introductions to the people you want to reach, and being willing to engage in the process, so help them to do that.

   Make it easy for them! Your Board is best engaged at a level that they are most comfortable and in line with their time commitments, so do not want to be bogged down with scheduling, writing letters, doing research etc. So do it for them. Give them the backup their need to do the stuff that really matters, and that’s reaching out to their contacts. Whether they need help with scripts for a call, drafting an email, researching a company, or even if they just have questions, be on hand to give them the support they need.

Provide Education

Sometimes, it’s hard to get your board on board (see what I did there?) with sponsorship and fundraising if they don’t understand it. Sponsorship especially, I’ve noticed, gets a lot of people perplexed.

Many people assume that sponsorship is philanthropy or, even more confusingly, a donation, where you tell a business about your cause, and they hand over money.

Sponsorship is about marketing, meaning you produce marketing outcomes for the sponsor in exchange for promotions or cash.

Once your board understands the basics of how sponsorship works, you should notice their excitement naturally grows.

 

Ideate Together 

Do you know how to create winning assets and activations? Well, you need to have had a discovery session first to learn about the sponsorship prospect’s unique needs and challenges. But after that, I recommend making ideation a group effort.

You can ping-pong more ideas off one another when you have five or six (or more) of you in a room brainstorming together. The variety of perspectives, experiences, beliefs, and opinions will allow you to come up with more innovative and interesting asset and activation ideas than you would have created on your own (no offense to you).

You can also all learn about the requirements of sponsorship ideation, which is always good for your future sponsorship endeavors.

Make Valuations Collaborative

If you worked with your board to create activation and asset ideas for your next sponsorship opportunity, you might as well keep the collaborative native coming by planning your valuations together.

If you’re unsure what I’m talking about, allow me to explain a little bit. Valuations are required for any sponsorship deal. You research the market value for each asset on your list, then compare the market value with the quality of your services.

It’s one of the most important parts of your entire sponsorship process, as understanding the value of your sponsorship property is key to getting the amount of money you want. Remember, sponsorship is all about marketing outcomes, meaning you need to deliver assets and activations worth a certain amount to get that money.

That’s what valuing tells you, so you can see why you have to do it correctly. Now, having a lot of people involved does risk turning it into one of those “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenarios.

After all, valuations are less about ideation than planning assets and activations. You do have some say in what your final values will be, but it’s more straightforward with less space for deviation.

Therefore, it’s perfectly acceptable to pare down the group who helps with valuation to only the most important board members.

Recommit to Your Audience

It’s easy to get carried away with assets and valuations and discovery sessions and price tags and the whole shebang. But remember that at the end of the day, the point of a sponsorship is not to benefit your bottom line but your audience.

An audience doesn’t have to be customers, by the way. It can include donors, partners, investors, attendees, the whole nine.

Committing to your audience means knowing as much as you can about them. It means surveying them and asking a lot of questions about other events they’ve attended, brands they love, what they want to see at future events, and other thoughtful, forward-thinking questions designed to get you the information you need.

Another element of being committed to your audience is segmenting them into fine groups. I always remind my clients of the famous marketing saying, that the riches are in the niches. This means that smaller groups are worth more because of their specificity.

And yes, you can and should do this whether you have donors or customers. You still need to know who the people are who you’re catering your events, galas, or fundraisers around and put their needs first.

Get Everyone Involved in Fulfillment

Sponsorship fulfillment is like the neat little bow on your obligations as someone who provides sponsorship services. It’s about delivering a report detailing your audience data (yes, again, one more time for good measure), attendance, and assets and services you delivered.

The fulfillment report is also a nice little way to wedge open the door and talk about renewing sponsorship. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The reason I’m bringing up fulfillment is because I think your board should be involved. If you don’t have them partake in the report writing, some of them should sit in with the sponsor during the post-event meeting.

This is always a very eye-opening experience, as you and the sponsor can talk openly about what you did correctly versus what you did incorrectly. And no, your sponsorship property won’t be perfect; no one’s is. That’s okay, as long as you own up to it and are willing to take constructive criticism to help you improve for next time.

And that’s why I recommend having your board participate. The post-event fulfillment meeting is a great opportunity to learn more about the sponsorship process and discover ways to better fulfill a sponsor’s needs.

 

FAQs

What if my board says they’re too busy for sponsorship?

This very well could happen, as most boards are made up of busy people with a lot of responsibilities. However, you don’t want the board to forego sponsorship participation, so here’s what you do.

Make it as easy for them to get involved. Set up meetings that gel with their schedule, do some extra legwork so they don’t have to; whatever makes it easier for them to jump right in is best.

How do I bolster my board if the sponsorship process went poorly?

Well, you have to be willing to stare your mistakes in the figurative face to determine what it is you did incorrectly. But in the meantime, soothing one’s ego might mean talking about how it takes time to nail down sponsorship (because it really does) and how next time will go better.

Wrapping Up 

Encouraging your board to get more involved with sponsorship and fundraising is only more beneficial for them, as they’re clued into how your team is using the sponsorship dollars and what that fundraised money gets put toward.

Although it can sometimes be an uphill battle, fighting to get the board on your side is always worth it!

Mena Gainpaulsingh is a fundraising professional with more than 17 years of experience in the sector. As President & CEO of Purposeful Fundraising Inc, she has worked with many organizations, including WaterAid Canada, Starlight Children’s Foundation and Virgin Unite. She currently sits on the Boards of the Rideau Valley Wildlife Sanctuary and the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Ottawa Chapter.