Year-end annual fundraising is when the rubber meets the road. This is the time for creative fundraising campaigns!

Last fall BoardAssist launched a junior board matching pilot program to find junior boards for all the terrific millennials who approach us for board service. The pilot was an immediate success with loads of amazing young professionals approaching us for junior board seats. From the nonprofits we helped, the feedback has been extremely positive. While many were concerned that having a junior board would take a lot of staff time away from other critical functions, what we’ve heard has been wholly to the contrary. Millennials are terrific self-starters that don’t need or want a lot of hand-holding. Give them a task to do, and they will get it done!

Identifying new trustees for your board of directors is one of the most important functions any nonprofit board performs. And with nearly 2 million board seats opening up in this country every year, board recruiting can be challenging. For that reason, many nonprofits opt to turn to board recruiting services like BoardAssist for help. Choosing the best board recruiting service for your nonprofit is critical.

What questions should you be asking as you think through who will perform the very important function of board recruiting for you?  

As New York’s leading personalized nonprofit board matching service, BoardAssist is approached daily by New Yorkers who want to make a difference in the nonprofit world but don’t know how to get started. For many, the decision has been made to give back, but they aren’t sure if they want to do so by joining a board, or just volunteering, or simply being a generous donor. For others, they want to join a board but are unclear on what the difference is between a full governing board seat, an advisory board role or a junior board position.

We hope this week’s post explaining the many different ways folks can serve the nonprofit community will help you on your journey. Thanks for considering any of these roles – the nonprofit community needs you!

What do nonprofit executive directors really want from their board members? We know nonprofit leaders rely on their boards for financial support, but they also need so much more from them in non-financial ways. What ways to help mean the most to nonprofit leaders? Who better to ask than this week’s guest blogger, Ellen Simon, the former head of Union Settlement Association, one of Harlem’s largest nonprofits for more th an 100 years. Thanks for the great advice, Ellen!

As one of the leading personalized nonprofit board matching services in the country, we get asked quite a lot, “what can my board be doing better to win at the board recruiting game?” We would answer that your board is already way ahead of a lot of other nonprofits if they understand that board recruiting is indeed a competitive sport, with not enough terrific board members available to fill all the board seats that open up each year.  That’s the first step. 

Not all nonprofit board members are financial experts, but every board member owes the stakeholders of their nonprofit, the duty to help steer their nonprofit in the right direction. For help in doing that, we turned to finance pro Paul Konigstein, in this week’s terrific guest post, including a checklist for the less financially inclined on the board that Paul developed. Thanks Paul!

Your first reaction: of course they will take the call! But surprisingly, many nonprofits don’t take the call when that new donor is a potential board member. Is your nonprofit one of the many that isn’t responding promptly to every potential new donor that calls? How could that even happen?

Where and when your board meets might be more important than what your nonprofit actually does…at least to some potential board members. Surprising news for some nonprofits, but with nearly 2 million board seats opening up in the country every year, board candidates have a lot of options when deciding to join a nonprofit board. For most board candidates, there is no shortage of potentially appealing board on which to serve. So how do board candidates choose a board? Believe it or not: if often comes down to where the board meets and at what time of day.