Fundraising Committees

Written by Max | Edited by Rory Hart
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    A Woman Holding a Phone and Cash

    © Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

    Vast majority of content in this topic applies to for-profits and nonprofits. This book also covers this topic.

    Developing, Operating and Restoring Your Nonprofit Board - Book Cover

    Overview of a Nonprofit Fundraising Committee

    This Committee provides guidance, oversight, and support to all major forms of donor planning, development, management, and reporting. Unfortunately, many Boards believe that this Committee’s members are responsible to do all of the fundraising along with staff members. Instead, it is much more beneficial if the Board sees this Committee’s job as ensuring that all activities to raise funds from donors are always done in the most strategic, planful, and systematic ways. The results of the Committee’s work should be included in a Fundraising Plan that is formally approved by the Board. The Committee should ensure that the implementation of the Plan includes all members of the Board as well as key staff members. Typical recurring annual goals of this Committee might include to:

    1. Identify the fundraising target (financial goal) for the year.
    2. From prospect research, suggest the percentage desired mix of donors, among individuals, corporations, foundations, and government.
    3. Identify specific potential donors for each mix and how to approach each.
    4. Develop action plans, including who will approach each donor and by when.
    5. Ensure all Board and key staff members are trained with talking points about how to approach their respective donors.
    6. Ensure the organization sufficiently has administrative and database resources to administrate donations.
    7. Establish a Fundraising Plan containing information from goals 1-6, and ensure the Board monitors the status of that Plan.

    The Committee should have a work plan that itemizes these, or very similar, annual goals and also associated objectives with each goal such that when the objectives are achieved in total, they also will have achieved their respective goal. When committees do not have work plans, they often flounder in finding valuable and focused means to provide value to the Board. Unfortunately, in these situations, many Board mistakenly conclude that “committees do not work”, or they reduce the number of committees, thinking that inactive committees were because there were too many — rather than realizing that committees can be extremely useful when focused on the most important annual recurring goals.

    Additional Perspectives on Nonprofit Fundraising Committees

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    Max