#115 | How do I convince our board to invest in fundraising capacity?

It was great to catch up with Bret after an engagement with the Naperville Chamber of Commerce. Rather than attempt to answer his questions immediately after my presentation, I suggested we meet on the podcast. He thought that was a great idea, and I appreciated the chance to expand on the three lanes.

As a board member at Gigi’s Playhouse who is thinking about raising more money, Bret finds himself in the same place that a lot of volunteers do. The three lanes is an ideal framework for thinking through this process. The three lanes is not intended to prescribe a particular plan but to provide a description at a systems level of how fundraising is playing out and how it might be improved upon.

Bret shared the common experience of an evenly-split board that consists of those who apparently see the opportunity versus those who don’t. I have seen this even split where half the team believes investing in additional capacity is a good idea and the other half does not. The remedy is generally to find the centrists in the group, those who are sort of on the fence and can most easily be persuaded to tip the odds in favor of capacity building.

Once again, we are especially grateful to OneCause for being our sponsor.