I have become a big fan of webinars for professional development, and I attended several in 2024. I gleaned good information from each of them, and am appreciative to all who hosted, but I found the follow-up resource I received from one of Gravyty’s webinars especially helpful. It’s called the 2025 Donor Pipeline Workbook, and with Gravyty’s permission, I’m sharing the resource here: Gravyty’s 2025 Donor Pipeline Workbook
At Project Partners, I have the privilege of serving an exceptional nonprofit board of directors—the HEB ISD Education Foundation—as their consultant and project manager. While I have collaborated with numerous nonprofit boards across the nation, this group of leaders truly stands out as one of the best in the country! Every day, I am inspired by the dedication, leadership, and passion that these volunteer leaders bring to the table. Their unwavering commitment to the mission, along with their readiness to contribute time, treasure, and talent, profoundly impacts the success of this organization, which supports HEB ISD’s commitment to excellence in education. Working alongside them has been an incredible learning experience, and today, I want to share some insights on what it means to be an effective board member.
In three recent conversations with executive director clients, the topic of re-establishing relationships was discussed. Our community is experiencing a shift in those taking leadership roles within our philanthropic landscape, plus the way people work, meet, and communicate has changed in recent years. So, the need to go back to the basics of researching, identifying, cultivating, and soliciting donors, collaborators, and board member prospects is top of mind to many nonprofit executives.
Because of that, I reached into our files to retrieve a handout that we provided in one of our Good Advice Over Coffee sessions held as part of our 25th anniversary and pulled the advice we provided on building a base of community support for your cause.
With a recent invoice payment, we received a handwritten thank you note insert from a client, (and we were still in the middle of the assignment).
At a board meeting, we were given an iced sugar cookie in the shape of a unicorn with appreciative words of how unique our services were to the exact needs of that board and foundation.
Another time, we received a crystal vase from an executive committee with sentiments of how we served as the vessel for their cause to flourish and how they hoped we would remember them by filling the vase with fresh flowers in the future.
I recently accompanied a client to a meeting with a fund manager at a national bank. The fund manager oversees several family foundations and community trusts based in Tarrant County, some of which had funded our client’s organization in the past. We wanted to meet so that the new Development Director could introduce herself, share recent updates, and get feedback on the grant process. Over coffee, the fund manager encouraged her to apply to any trusts in her portfolio that seemed like a good fit for the organization’s mission and programs. Her strategy when reviewing applications was to review each application on behalf of the trust itself, not the bank. So, receiving multiple applications during the same grant cycle from the same organization was not discouraged. In fact, it was welcomed.
