When you think of the Red Cross, the Boys & Girls Club, and Girls Who Code, what do they have in common? They are all nonprofits organizations that rely on fundraising as part of their revenue to accomplish their missions. In the United States, about 50% of nonprofit revenue is donated or granted. Many organizations rely on their boards to secure these resources, and other than representing their organization ethically, securing resources is the most important role of a nonprofit board. Boards can take two different structures: working and governing. A working board has significant involvement in their organization’s daily operations, such as running programs and coordinating volunteers, while governing boards focus on strategic planning and oversight. With this knowledge, I evaluated the engagement of each structure of nonprofit board in their organization’s fundraising.
I explored data from the Indiana Nonprofits Project to understand the overall climate of Indiana nonprofits. Then, I interviewed staff and board members in two Evansville, Indiana organizations. I chose these two for a few reasons. First, I am familiar with many Evansville organizations, so I was able to get connected easier. Second, the Lilly Endowment has established Community Foundations in every Indiana county which has significantly increased the vibrancy of the sector throughout the state. Lastly, both organizations have children as the target population of their mission, so the most significant difference between them is the structure of their board—one has a working board and the other has a governing one. I asked questions to understand the differences in fundraising engagement between the two types of boards.
My data showed a variety of differences within the boards, including but not limited to board composition, strategic planning, relationship building, and technology. Figure 1 shows a difference in the two boards’ engagement in strategic planning which can include their fundraising goals. After speaking with the Executive Directors of both organizations, I learned that the governing board organization has a subset of their board responsible for identifying problems that require a board solution; in the working board organization, the staff is responsible for identifying issues and then bringing it to their board. This difference in initiative is important because the fundraising responsibilities are more distributed with a governing board, while the staff with a working board are more engaged in these tasks than their board.
Figure 1. Strategic Planning Observations
|
Strategic Planning |
Governing | Working |
| Initiative in Problem Solving | “A subset of the board looks at developing systems and approaches that work.” – ED |
“I bring a need to the Executive Committee, and we talk about next steps.” – ED |
Beyond strategic planning, I observed a significant difference in the relationship building and networking of each organization and their board. In the governing board organization, their board is involved from the first donor contact to the final ‘thank you’. Figure 2 demonstrates this commitment from invitations through stewardship. There is a great board-staff partnership in building donor relationships. In the working board organization, the board heavily emphasizes invitations. Once the invitation is made, the Executive Director follows up to cultivate the relationship and solicit a gift. This difference speaks again to the distribution of fundraising responsibility between each organization’s staff and board members.
Figure 2. Relationship Building Observations
|
Relationship Building |
Governing | Working |
| Involvement in Invitation | “We try to get everybody involved in invitations with their sphere of influence.” – Chair of Board Development Committee |
“Building the relationship is more about invitation opportunities.”– Board Member |
| Involvement in Follow Up | “We ask all of our Board Members to be involved in cultivating, soliciting, or stewardship.” – ED |
“The board member focuses on contact, and I focus on cultivating.” – ED |
With these two data sets, I compared my interview findings to statistics about nonprofits across Indiana. I found that the challenges and patterns in my organizations were consistent with those of responding Indiana organizations. While each organization expressed a number of challenges in regard to securing resources, the governing board organization had more structure and policy in place to address those challenges. This supported my initial hypothesis to a certain extent, but I was surprised to find that my working board organization was not that far off from the governing one.
Figure 3. Nonprofit Board Continuum
The two board structures seemed to operate as more of a continuum than a dichotomy. In Figure 3, younger organizations may begin with a working board, which is first establishing how to achieve their mission. As time progress and the organization grows in time and impact, they may enter a growing phase as they work through challenges and scale their impact. Their board might look to expand their focus to strategic planning in addition to daily operations, with both working and governing characteristics. As organizations continue growing, they may have enough financial and staff resources for their board to focus only on fundraising and strategic planning, which looks and operates more like a governing board. At any point, boards can be flexible in their structure to best fit their organization’s needs.
This continuum idea speaks to the flexibility and adaptability of the nonprofit sector—a characteristic that makes it so critical in combination with the public and private sectors. Nonprofit organizations, from the ones we all know like the Red Cross and the Boy and Girls Club to small, grassroots organizations, all have the power to create the change that gets all of our attention. Their boards, regardless of structure, are one way they can ensure the resources to create that change.
Becca Samuel is a junior honors student from Evansville, Indiana. She is studying Nonprofit Management and Leadership at the Indiana University Bloomington O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. On campus, she works at the O’Neill Career Hub as a Peer Educator, the Teter Quadrangle Center Desk, and as a Teaching Assistant for V261 Using IT in Public Affairs. She is looking forward to graduating in December and starting a career working in fundraising at a small nonprofit.
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