Use Fun and Games to Prepare Your Board for a Capital Campaign

The idea of a capital campaign is likely scary to most of your board members.

• They wonder how much they’ll need to give.
• They are afraid you’ll want them to ask their friends for money.
• They don’t know if you can succeed.

In the months leading up to a campaign, it will be important to prepare your board members — not through formal training or lectures — but through fun and engaging interactive activities.

3 Fun Activities to Prepare Your Board for a Campaign

Here are three ideas to help you set your board members up for capital campaign success.

1. True / False Quiz Competition

Use a true or false quiz to bust campaign myths and start an important discussion among board members. Set aside 30 minutes to have enough time to discuss each question.

Ask board members to get into small teams of 2-3 people. Hand out “quiz” sheets with a small number of questions. Give each team 6 minutes to answer the questions. Then ask (by show of hands) how each group answered the questions.

Discuss and debrief each question. For those groups who answered correctly, ask why they chose their answers. Use this opportunity to debunk myths about campaigns.

Sample Questions

Sample Question 1: True or False?

Campaigns depend on one celebrity to save the day. If we can just get someone like Oprah or MacKenzie Scott to give to us, we will have a successful campaign.

Answer:  False — It’s highly unlikely that a celebrity will save the day, in large part because no one at your organization has a strong enough relationship with that person.

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Sample Question 2: True or False?

Successful campaigns depend on a small number of large donors.

Answer:  True — Most capital campaigns’ top 20 donors give at least 50% of the goal.

Note:  Use this question to debunk the myth that if you could simply find 100 people to give $10,000 each, you would raise $1 million. Campaigns simply don’t work like that.

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Sample Question 3: True or False?

Our organization doesn’t have any donors capable of making those large gifts.

Answer:  False — The reality is that you don’t have any donors currently giving large gifts. This is because you’ve never had a multi-million idea before or asked for such large gifts. There are donors in nearly every organization and every community capable of making six and seven-figure gifts.

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Sample Question 4: True or False?

We can run a successful campaign with our current staff and no additional expertise.

Answer:  False — Most campaigns require outside expertise and additional staff.

The group with the most correct answers wins. And, if you help board members better understand how campaigns work, everyone’s a winner!

2. Board Member Bingo

This game introduces board members to difficult conversations. It will take some time, so set aside 45 minutes for this activity. It’s best used at a board retreat rather than a regular board meeting.

Create a custom BINGO card grid with 16 squares on a standard sheet of paper. You can use the sample card featured below, or something similar.

When the leader says “begin,” each player stands up and starts filling in the boxes with the names of other people in the room.

Game Rules

1. To fill in a square, players have to find someone in the room with the quality or characteristic in that square. For example, if the box says, “Has an MBA,” players should find someone who has earned an MBA and write their name in that square.
2. You can use each person in the room for a maximum of two squares. (So, if Joe is retired and has grandchildren, you can use him for both of those squares, but no more).
3. The person with the most squares filled in is the winner!

Give everyone about 15 minutes to work on completing their board. The remainder of the time will be used to debrief and discuss what you’ve learned.

Debriefing Questions

Ask the following questions during your debriefing session:

• What surprised you about the questions or about our board members?
• What are our strengths / weaknesses as a board?
• Do we have board members who have experience with campaigns or soliciting major gifts?
• Did you find anyone who loves to raise money or wants to learn to solicit gifts?
• Do we have anyone who has donated stock or have planned charitable bequests?

Take note of those board members who have campaign experience, as well as experience with more sophisticated types of giving and fundraising. They’ll be able to help lead discussions at future meetings.

3. Six-Word Stories

Help get board members excited about your campaign with a 6-word story exercise. You’ll need to set aside about 20 minutes during a regular board meeting for this activity.

Sample 6-Word Stories

Introduce the concept of 6-word stories by sharing perhaps the most famous example by Ernest Hemingway:

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Here are some additional examples to share that will be more relevant to the exercise:

• Save a dog. She’ll rescue you.
• Performing arts – more than a play.
• After school programs keep kids safe.
• New school buildings help students soar.
• Feed the hungry, nourish a soul.
• Scholarships provide hope for future generations.

Ask each board member to individually think of a 6-word story that best describes your organization or your campaign. Give them no more than three minutes.

Next, go around the room and ask what they came up with. Then, give them another three minutes to come up with one more version of their story, inspired by what they heard.

Write each board member’s final version on a flip chart. This will help you come up with keywords for your case for support and a possible tagline for your campaign.

More Capital Campaign Tools and Templates

Get instant access to additional resources for your board members inside our Online Toolkit when you join Capital Campaign Pro’s DIY program. This affordable program was designed for nonprofit leaders who want to do their campaign without a consultant and don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

In addition, you’ll find a wide variety of free capital campaign resources on our website.