Board Member Fundraising Campaigns

09 Feb Board Member Fundraising Campaigns

10 February 2026

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

What I really want to talk about today is Board members getting more engaged in fundraising work – not necessarily in the sense that they are asking for money. Or responsible for some arbitrary give and get amounts. But rather in the sense that they see themselves as ambassadors for the organization and regularly engage in activities related to building strong organization-donor relationships.

But I can’t really get there without talking first about governance.

I believe the following statements to be nearly universally true:

• Land trust organizations need to organize themselves around the premise that the corporate body must exist forever – that much is inherent in the mission. But to exist forever, the organization must have very strong systems for self-replication – recruitment, on-boarding, and evaluation.
• The Board must manage the Board. Organizations dependent on staff managing the Board fall apart eventually. This implies that the self-replication mechanisms related to the Board must be managed by the Board.
• The long-term strength of an organization’s fundraising program is related to the direct engagement of Board members with donors. Organizations thrive when the make-up of the Board is similar to the make-up of the donor base, because it enables peer-to-peer communication and fundraising. Organizations struggle when Board members don’t know the donor base at all and/or the two groups have very little in common.
• The committee responsible for these Board governance systems is the Governance Committee. And it has a lot to do. It should be chaired by the Board Vice-Chair (or Immediate Past Chair) and should meet regularly. (See also Thoughts on Board Governance)

OK – with those premises in mind, the prescription for Board members getting more engaged in fundraising work becomes clearer:

• The expectation that Board members will be engaged in fundraising work needs to be explicitly understood before a prospective Board member accepts the role. Clear Job Descriptions and a structured interview will help.
• The onboarding process (See also Scavenger Hunt for New Board Members) needs to include training and experience in talking to donors.
• The annual evaluation needs to include an integrity check. (I like using “integrity” here instead of “accountability.”)

A few years ago, consultant Marc Smiley introduced me to the idea of a Personal Action Plan (PAP) for Board members, and I like it a lot. This is a short list of 3-5 activities each Board member agrees to accomplish during the year. The items could be chosen from a menu of options, could be replicated from last year’s list, or could be assigned based on current needs. Regardless, the Board member agrees to the tasks and is responsible to the President and Vice President for getting them done. Regular check-ins will be helpful.

In my view, at least one of the PAP activities, and probably 2 or 3, should be related to building relationships with donors and/or representing the organization in public. This is community leadership and the community needs to see the Board member as a community leader. Put another way, we ask that our Board directors represent the community or communities that we serve. We should also ask that they represent the organization back into their individual communities – beginning with community members who already support the land trust.

And at the beginning of each calendar year (like in February, for example), the Board President and/or the Vice President, should sit down with each Board member and discuss the year that was and the year that will be.

In 2014, I wrote up a white paper on this interview idea. (You can find an updated version here: Board Campaign Mechanics. At the time, I was concerned that Board directors were being forgotten completely. Many weren’t giving simply because they were never being clearly asked to give.

Since then, I’ve begun to see this interview in a larger context. Annual Board evaluation interviews should absolutely include a specific request for an aggregated annual gift – meaning they should not then be asked through the year for everything else piecemeal that comes along. But the interview itself should be about leadership development, director satisfaction, mentorship, and volunteer productivity as much as it is about support.

Annual one-on-one interviews with directors is a sign of good leadership. It can open channels of communication, alleviate anxiety, improve organizational comradery and morale, recognize performance, and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Many land trusts evaluate the Board experience as a whole – some using individual surveys and facilitated group discussion. Whereas I think that approach is more efficient and has merit, I don’t think it substitutes for this more individualized approach. It helps evaluate the Board functioning as a whole. These interviews help evaluate each director’s lived experience.

What do you think? Are you using some version of these annual Board director interviews? I’d love to hear of your experience.

Cheers and Have a Good Week!

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Jiří courtesy Pixabay