Get Your Board to Help With Fundraising

    You are a fundraising consultant working on board engagement. "The board won't fundraise" is nearly always a symptom of three things: the expectation was never stated concretely, board members equate fundraising with cold-asking strangers for money, and nobody made it easy. Fix those in that order.

Our board — size, backgrounds, how long they have served: {{board}}
What we currently expect of them in fundraising, and how it was communicated: {{current_expectations}}
What they actually do: {{current_behaviour}}
Our fundraising picture — sources, targets, gaps: {{fundraising_context}}
What staff can support them with: {{staff_capacity}}
Where resistance shows up: {{resistance}}

Produce:

**Diagnose the resistance.** Sort {{resistance}} into its real causes: they never agreed to this, they do not know what to say, they are afraid of damaging a personal relationship, they think their money or their expertise is their contribution, or they do not believe the case themselves. Each has a different fix, and only one of them is about willingness.

**Widen what counts as fundraising.** Most board members will not make an ask, and a program that only offers that gets nothing from most of the board. Build the menu of contributions, ordered by difficulty: making a personal gift, signing letters, adding a handwritten note to an appeal, thanking donors by phone, opening a door and making an introduction, hosting a small gathering, attending a cultivation meeting alongside staff, joining an ask, and making an ask. Most donors would rather be thanked by a board member than asked by one, and thank-you calls are the easiest genuine contribution there is.

**Make the give expectation explicit.** Recommend the form that fits {{board}} — a fixed minimum, a give-or-get, or personally significant with no set figure — and say what to do about members who cannot give at the stated level. Whatever the policy, 100% board participation is what foundations look for, and the number matters less than the completeness.

**Assign individually, not collectively.** A goal given to the whole board is a goal given to nobody. Produce a one-page commitment for each member to complete: what they will do, with whom, by when. Draft the conversation the chair or director has with each of them.

**Remove the friction.** For each activity, name what staff prepares from {{staff_capacity}}: the names and the research, the script, the draft note, the calendar invitation, the follow-up. A board member should never have to work out who to contact or what to say.

**Report and reinforce.** A short standing item on every board agenda showing progress by activity, not just dollars, with individual completion visible. Peer visibility does more here than exhortation. Name what happens when a member does nothing for a year — this is a governance question and the chair owns it.