Does your Board love your newsletter, website, blog, or social media?
That might be a bad sign.
Your Board includes some of the people who care most deeply about your organization.
Your communications should appeal to the people who have taken an interest but don’t love you yet. Woo them.
Your Board knows your organization and its programs really well already.
Your communications should touch people who don’t remember your agency’s name…but care about the difference you make. Tell them stories.
Your Board may obsess about whose name is mentioned, whose face is in the photo, or whether you write in paragraphs. Or sentence fragments.
Your communications should ignore those issues as much as possible. Be useful to the people you want to reach.
If you inform, educate, and entertain your audience, they will know, like, and trust you. They will become your loyal supporters. They will give time. They will give money. And that’s what your Board will really love.
GREAT point! It’s why I always try to educate the board about that – once they understand, it’s so much easier. The most common complaint I’ve gotten is “none of my friends would read a letter more than one page long”. Of course, they wouldn’t know (until I tell them) that they’re likely wrong – that a two-pager almost always does better. And a four-pager might beat that!
It’s fun when they see the difference and learn to trust the professionals with things like that.
Agreed, Mary. Of course the first thing a Board member is going to think is “How would I react to this letter?” (or blog post, or email, etc.). The second thing is “How would my friends react?” But that’s a small sample. Unless we want our donor base to be made up entirely of the Board members and their friends, we have to think about what works for the community.
Excellent post, Dennis! My recommendation to clients is: If the board is in love with it, it’s likely NOT going to be read, acted on or do what you intended. Start over.
This is an evergreen issue that most nonprofits don’t pay enough attention to…thanks for shedding the spotlight on it.
Lori, you’re welcome. I appreciate your comment! Tell me, what do you do when the client says, “We have to give the Board what they want,” or “It’s good enough, it’s not worth fighting over”?
Big smiley face here…I ask them what the amount is that they want to raise this year and share that they are able to exceed that if they follow some key best practices. Leaving the board out of the approval process for copy is one of them.
I often ask them and their board members to read this PDF: http://www.bridgespan.org/getattachment/07ad15ba-bf1a-48d5-89a3-b5a5db63a515/Basic-Responsibilities-Nonprofit-Boards.aspx
And then invite a discussion about what the organization has “trained” the board to work on: daily tasks or governance.
This conversation often leads to a decision that the organization is not ready for outside help/coaching/guidance because they don’t want to change how things are being done.
I guess if the organization really doesn’t want to change, even to raise more money, it’s good to know that up front!
But I’ll bet you often succeed, because the lure of raising the money combined with the chance to do it without a lot of additional meetings and emails with the Board would be very attractive to most nonprofit staff.