Working With Your Board (When You Are Not in Charge of It)
What a board is for, what to ask of it in year one, and how to brief a chair or committee without overstepping. For the fundraiser who reports to the ED and still needs the board to help.
Through the Environment lens
Board members are often recruited for scientific, legal, or policy expertise rather than wealth or fundraising instinct, so the ladder in this module needs patience: a board member who joined to fight for an outcome may resist being asked to "fundraise" even lightly, and the small, specific role that lands best is often advocacy or storytelling rather than a direct ask.
Continuing education
1.00 points
Volunteer Involvement · Leadership and Management
Learning objectives
- Explain what a nonprofit board is responsible for, where fundraising fits, and why a first-year fundraiser's relationship with the board runs through the executive director.
- Prepare for and conduct a working relationship with a board chair or development committee that is useful to them and safe for you.
- Brief a board in one page and offer each member a small, specific fundraising role suited to what they will actually do.
- Analyze a first-year conflict between a fundraiser and a board and identify the moves that resolved it.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 16 min
Video lesson
What a board is for (and what it is not)
I Pause · Leadership and Management
- 18 min
Field guide· PDF
Working with a chair or committee without overstepping
II See · Volunteer Involvement
- 16 min
Template· DOCX
The board briefing one-pager and the year-one ask menu
IV Invite · Volunteer Involvement
- 14 min
Case study· PDF
Case study: the new hire and the board that wanted a gala
IV Invite · Volunteer Involvement
This is members-only material.
Members get every lesson, template, and worksheet in all eight tracks, plus the support to put them to work in your shop.
More in this stage
Fundamentals & Ethics
How Fundraising Works
The map you weren't given: where the money comes from, why people give, and what a development program is made of.
Major & Principal Gifts
Your First Donor Conversations
Scripts, practice, and nerve for the conversations that fund your mission: discovery visits, thank-you calls, and your first ask.
Annual Giving & Direct Response
The Annual Fund, Explained
Appeals, segments, and the giving calendar: how recurring annual revenue gets built, one season at a time.