Podcast: Maximizing Board Member Roles for Capital Campaign Success

Season 4, Episode 1

In this episode, Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt dive deep into the critical roles that board members play in a successful capital campaign. With decades of experience, Amy and Andrea share practical insights and actionable advice on how to fully engage your board members, ensuring everyone is aligned and contributing effectively to the campaign’s success.

Tune in to learn how to turn your board members into your campaign’s biggest champions, and be sure to share this episode with your fellow board members and fundraising team.

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Amy Eisenstein:
Your board members play a really important role in your campaign, but they may not know what their roles are, and you may not know what their roles are.

Hi. I’m Amy Eisenstein. I’m here with my colleague and co-founder, and friend, Andrea Kihlstedt. And today we are going to talk about the most important board member roles in your campaign.

Getting Your Board in Shape for a Capital Campaign

All right, Andrea, we’re just going to go back and forth today about what some of the most important board member roles are and how to get them engaged in those roles, so get us started.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yes. I’m going to start with a controversial one, Amy. Most every board has one or two, or if you’re unlikely, maybe more board members who really are not engaged, and really they’re just dead weight. And your most important role as an executive director or development director, or a board chair is to politely invite them off your board before you dive into a capital campaign because you don’t want a lackluster board moving into a campaign. So start by making sure that everyone on your board, every board member understands the campaign, is excited about the campaign, and is willing to dive in and help.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes, I love that. So get rid of board members prior to your campaign that aren’t going to be, everybody needs to be rowing in the same direction, so if you have somebody that’s fighting the campaign, this isn’t a good time for them to be on your board.

Now, I just want to add a caveat that you shouldn’t wait until you have the perfect board to start a campaign, because nobody has a perfect board, and you’ll never have a perfect board, and so the idea of waiting until you recruit all the right board members is not okay either. But if there are people that really aren’t excited about the campaign, don’t want to help in any way, are fighting it, it’s time to get rid of those board members. Great point.

Board Members Can Help Select a Campaign Consultant

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Here’s a juicy way for board members to help. Early on in a campaign, you will be wanting to select a consultant for your campaign. Most every campaign uses a consultant, and board members can play a really important role in helping make that selection.

Amy Eisenstein:
Yes. Excellent. And we hope, of course, that Capital Campaign Pro is one of your top three consultants to consider, and so we would love to meet with your board members and talk through your campaign and how we would help, and help them get an understanding of what their roles and responsibilities are, and what role the consultant can and should play. That’s great. Yes, include your board members in those conversation, in those decisions so that they learn what a consultant’s value add is.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Yeah. Amy, when the board member or a group of board members comes to meetings with prospective consultants to help select what the right consultant is, they’re going to learn a ton because each of the consultants is going to talk about how a campaign works from their perspective. So it’s not just that you want the board members to be there to lend their opinions about what consultant is good or bad, but you want them there because it’s such a wonderful opportunity to begin to educate your board members about what a campaign really is, so there’s a double whammy in that.

Amy Eisenstein:
Right? It’s a great learning opportunity for your board members. Great.

Making Gifts to the Capital Campaign

Another board member role, and we can pretend this isn’t here, but let’s just get to it, and that’s making a stretch gift, right? Board members need to lead by example in campaigns. If you expect others in the community to make stretch gifts for your campaign, which is what campaigns are about, we want every board member to step up and make a significant and meaningful gift for their own personal budget that’s over and above their regular gift to your annual fund.

Every board member should be giving to your annual fund, and every board member should be expected to make a gift to the campaign as well. And I think one of the things that’s helpful in talking to your board members about thinking about a gift is this is often a multi-year pledge, and it is often made from assets, so from retirement funds, from stock, from property, from other assets, and I know not every board member is in a financial position to make a significant gift, but a significant gift for their own budget, whatever that means.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
It’s common for organizations to make what we think of as an error in how they think about this. Sometimes organizations will say:

“Well, every board member should be expected to give $25,000 to the campaign.”

Or some flat fee, or a thousand dollars or whatever number in number it is a flat figure. And that’s just not an effective way to think about giving in general, but to think about giving to your campaign. You will likely have people of varying capacity on your board. And what you’re going to be asking them for is a gift that is for them, an important gift that they will have to think hard about.

And it may be that somebody on your board, if they were to give $500, that would be a much more sacrificial gift than someone on your board who would give a million dollars, right? That you can’t evaluate that in terms of the dollar amount.

You have to evaluate it in terms of how much money, how many resources does a board member have, and what are they willing and able to make to your campaign? So don’t fall into the trap of saying everyone has to give a certain amount or everyone has to give or get for the campaign, that’s not the way it works. You want everyone, every board member to make a gift that is for them a really thoughtful, significant and important gift.

And if you talk about that early in your campaign, it will also have the effect of weeding out the board members who really aren’t going to be behind your campaign. If somebody’s not willing to do that, then they should step aside, and that’s going to be good for you, not bad for you.

Amy Eisenstein:
That’s right. And I think every board member needs to be talked to individually about their gift. Just a reminder, you’re not going to plunk a pledge form down at a board meeting and ask them to return it next week. That’s not how board member gifts are solicited. They’re solicited as if they’re your very VIP donors, and ideally the board president or the campaign chair with the CEO is going to sit down with each board member and talk about their specific gift.

Every Board Member brings Connections

All right, we want to talk about board members important roles in advocating for the organization and for the campaign. What does that mean to you, Andrea, when board members are good advocates for an organization?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Every board member has their own community. They have people and organizations, and a community of people that they interact with. And they should make it a point, particularly as an organization moves into a campaign, of talking about the organization and how excited they are, and simply being a positive spokesperson for the work of the organization, and talking about how pleased they are to be on this board and how being on this board is such an important aspect of what they do, and see where there are people within their community who light up, who might like to get involved, so it’s that simple.

It’s not that they have to go out and dig up new communities to advocate. They just should think to be proactive in their own communities with which they interact, whether it’s their work communities or their social communities, or their religious communities, or their athletic communities, or the communities of their children’s schools.

We all have different, often multiple communities that we interact with. And every time a board member has an opportunity to talk about what’s exciting them and about the campaign, they should.

Amy Eisenstein:
I think that’s —

Andrea Kihlstedt:
That is a way of catching fire after a while.

Amy Eisenstein:
… such a great reminder. That’s amazing. So I just want to point out that on our website at the capitalcampaignpro.com website, under free resources, there’s a Board Member’s Guide to Capital Campaigns, and you can download it for free. It goes into much more detail than we’re going into on this podcast, but we want to offer this free resource that you can hand out to every board member, and it explains their roles and responsibilities, and helps them understand what the expectations are, and it’s great primer for board members.

A Critical Role for Board Members: Asking for Gifts

All right. Another role of board members we haven’t mentioned yet is asking, and I think that this is such an important one because this is one that freaks everybody out.

Now, I want every board member to be helping with fundraising, but that does not mean that every board member needs to be asking, certainly not for individual major gifts, which are a key component of any capital campaign. So identify the board members that are willing, that are eager, that are excited, that want to learn, that are comfortable or willing to get comfortable with asking.

So not every board member needs to play the role of asker, but we do want a few key board members to help with asking, and identifying them is your job, and training them. What do you want to say about asking, Andrea?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
It’s important that every board member be invited to participate in some way, and as you say, some will be willing and be good at asking. And the broader subject there is that every board member should be willing to help and support the staff in the campaign.

There are many things to be done in a campaign, and there are some things that the staff will seek help from board members in. So if you are a board member, you should think about ways in which you can support the staff. Now, some of that is when they have something that needs to be done that’s appropriate for you to do, you should step up and help them do it.

And most important, when you say you’re going to do something, be sure you do it. Nothing is more frustrating and time-consuming for a staff member than to have people say they’re going to do something and then not do it right. That’s really, really, really frustrating.

So board members should step up and offer to help, maybe host a house party, or maybe help add a house party, or maybe hand write invitations to things. I mean, some things are very simple and don’t take a whole lot of works, and follow up phone calls to see if people are coming to events, I mean all kinds of things can… Thanking donors once they’ve made gifts. There are all kinds of things that board members can do to help, so step up and support the staff.

Supporting Your Staff and Board Members

You can also support the staff just by noticing and telling them they’re doing a good job. Campaigns are stressful for staff members. It’s a whole different level of stress and energy, and effort. And if board members can be aware of that so that they can say to a staff member:

“I see how hard you’re working, and I see what a great job you’re doing. Thank you so much. Let me know how I can help.”

Or:

“Can I take you out for lunch just to let down your hair for here a little?”

Little gestures like that will go a long way in keeping up their courage and confidence and will to make it happen.

Amy Eisenstein:
I love that. So let me just add to that, that if you have concerns or worries about the campaign or a staff member, don’t bring those up in a group. The board meeting is not a time to bring those up. Call up the staff member and sit down over coffee, or offer to come in, or have a private meeting to… I’m sure you do have concerns as a board member, but if those can be addressed more quietly, and then as Andrea suggests, praise in public, right? Point out what —

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Right, I love that.

Amy Eisenstein:
… what a great job staff members are doing. Make a point at the next board meeting to raise your water bottle to the staff members who are working so hard because it’s a thankless job. Now, many of our listeners, of course, are staff members and they’re going:

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do we do this?”

So maybe this is a podcast that you would share with your board members. You don’t need to tell them, thank us in person, but say:

“Hey, there’s this great podcast on board member roles and responsibilities around a campaign, maybe you should listen to it.”

And that’s a good way to share some of these things.

Leveraging Your Board Members’ Networks

All right, let’s talk about brainstorming prospects and making connections, because I think this is a really important board member role. And sometimes it’s an exercise in frustration because you might give a list of donor names to your board members and they say, “Well, we don’t know anybody.” So how can we, in a constructive way, how have you, Andrea, gotten board members to have meaningful and engaging conversations around donors and potential donors?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
Well, what I find doesn’t work well is to say to board members, “Give us the contact information of all of your friends so that we can hit them up for money.” That doesn’t work.

Amy Eisenstein:
No.

Andrea Kihlstedt:
No board member wants to do that. The question is, who is already on your donor list that your board members know? And what you’re going to find is that there are some people that two or three, or four board members know the same person, and there are some people that nobody on your board knows.

Now, people can review lists pretty quickly. If you don’t want them to give a whole ton of information, you just want them to make check marks where they actually know somebody well enough to return a call.

So you can, at a board meeting or at a separate meeting:

1. Actually pass out sheets with names of your top 200 donors for the sake of discussion, and give them pencils.
2. Have them put their names at the top of the piece of paper and have them put a check mark where they know people, that they know them well enough that they would get a response.

And then you would collate all of those, and then you have really a magical document that says:

“Oh, donor, Susie Smith, these four board members actually know Susie Smith. Let’s see what we can learn about Susie Smith by talking to each of them about what they know. Let’s see if we can get one of them to invite Susie Smith in to meet with the executive director.”

Or you can come up with the next way forward once who knows who.

These things are fun to do in person, right? Though we often do them just by sending people lists on the internet, but it’s fun to do in person because then you can actually stop and talk about someone. You can say:

“Okay, Susie Smith, who knows Susie Smith?”

And then you start to get an interesting conversation going about Susie Smith in that, so sitting with beer and pizza as my friend Annie Robinson likes to do, right? And reviewing lists and having sidebar conversations about people is often a very nice social event where you learn a ton about people, and who they know and what there is to know.

Don’t Forget About Social Media Networks

Amy Eisenstein:
That’s a great idea. Another one is to use social media to leverage LinkedIn and other social networks and say:

“All right, here are 10 big prospective donors that we don’t know anybody who knows them. So we’re going to sit around this table together, open up your LinkedIn’s, and typed in this person’s name and see who you know that knows them.

• Are they a second connection?
• Are they a third connection?
• What overlaps do you have?

Go look on your other social channels, Facebook, and otherwise, who knows these people that you’re connected to? And let’s find the connections.”

Because often I think board members say, “Well, we don’t know anybody. We don’t know these people. We’re not connected to them,” but communities are smaller than you think. And by leveraging social media and the internet, you can quickly find out, “Oh, well, I don’t know this person, but three of my contacts know this person, and let me talk to those people about them.”

Final Thoughts

So many good board roles and responsibilities, Andrea. I mean, honestly, the list goes on and on, and we could have this endless conversation, but I think we’ve pointed out some great ones, and hopefully listeners have gotten some good ideas about how to start.

But I do hope you head over to the Capital Campaign Pro website and download that free board members guide to capital campaigns. It’s under the resources tab, free resources. Just look under board members and it’ll pop right up. All right, great. Well, any final thoughts, Andrea?

Andrea Kihlstedt:
No, I think it’s important to have a conversation like this sometimes, Amy. We tend to take these things for granted and not think intentionally enough about them, and maybe this podcast will inspire some people to pull together a subcommittee of their board to talk about board responsibilities.

And then there could be a presentation or a discussion at the board level about what’s going to be required of them and what they might do to help as the campaign gets going, right? Something like this is a good topic to actually have at a board discussion, a brainstorm how we board members might help with the campaign that’s coming up.

Amy Eisenstein:
Great idea. All right. If you’ve found this conversation valuable, I hope that you will give us five stars, head over to your podcasting app and rate, and review us. Give us five stars so that other people can find us. And thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.