What Does It Take To Be A Team?

A fundraising team, that is.

How do you move from a board made up of disparate individuals – different social circles, different capacity, different reach – to a group that can work together towards a common goal?

And to wit: a common fundraising goal?

I was ruminating on this the other day when I went to another of this season’s fundraising events, and I was comped. Well, that often happens, because some of the nonprofits we work with like to have us around, and their events aren’t priced for those of us working in the nonprofit sector. So at the last minute, as is often the case, I get asked to come sit at a sponsor’s table who has extra seats. The nonprofit knows I will be a good representative, and I want to be supportive, and there you have it.

But I knew that some of the group’s board members were also comped – or given a separate, off-line, price of admission. And that got me thinking about team-work.

Is a fundraising team primarily composed of individuals who can give and ask at a “stretch” ticket level? Or is the aspiration to have every board member pitching in on fundraising – as each as they can?

And if it’s the later, how do you get around disparities – the $250 ticket-price event that 5 out of 12 board members can sell tickets to; 5 others can scrape up the cash to buy one ticket themselves; and 2 can’t even hope to come close? How do you get that group to function as a team, with such different relationships to that event?

I think – no I know – you can, and the answer lies in creating a structure, and an ethos, where each board member knows their job, does their job, and feels responsible for their job on the board. And where all members are on a train moving in the same direction, even if some are in the lead, some in the caboose, and some standing to the side watching the oncoming traffic so they can direct the train to switch tracks without crashing off the rails.

An example: that $250-a-head cocktail party. One board member created the e-vite and other promotional materials. Another obtained an in kind wine donation, and a third made follow-up calls to Advisory Council members to remind them to come (and to pay). Two other board members hit the streets to sell tickets to their friends, and the board member that was hosting the event cleared out her space, got her husband on board, and reserved a babysitter so her kids would be out-of-sight, out-of-mind on the night of.

Not all board members had a cadre of potential $250 donors to whom they could pitch the event, but all understood that that was the right direction for the organization to be heading in, and all pitched in to make this initial foray a success.

On the night of, since the event wasn’t sold out and the per-person additional cost was negligible, all board members were asked to come, and those who couldn’t afford full-price admission were asked to make a gift at a level they could manage. Then, all board members were given a “cheat sheet” annotating expected attendees so that the most important future major donor prospects were approached by several people over the course of the evening.

Team work. Not all are alike, but all put in equally to stoke the engine forward.