Board Giving: Not Everyone is a Millionaire

The financial pressures of COVID-19 are causing non-profits to look first to their boards. My last article wrote about ways to activate nonprofit board members as crisis partners and outreach ambassadors. Help from board members in this crisis starts with their willingness to work with charities to help forecast a realistic financial picture that begins with board gifts. If the board doesn't give then who will?

The new problem is that board members don't know what their own financial picture is going to look like in the coming months and years. The old problem is that most boards have mixed financial constituency. Everyone brings some value to the table, but some board members are in a position to make money gifts that are not possible for others. In certain scenarios, like a church vestry, there isn't a natural giving component in the package of board responsibilities.

How do you find an elastic way to prompt board gifts that applies to all your board members? I recommend asking your board to consider and vote in these three guidelines:

1) Each year every board member must make an unrestricted gift each year that is meaningful to that person's financial circumstances. 

2) Make the charity where you serve one of your top three philanthropic priorities for the duration of your board service. 

3) Make your charity a revocable part of your estate plans through your will, or (easier and without a lawyer) as a percentage beneficiary to your retirement account.  

Sometimes new giving guidelines can be qualified with a trap door clause: Any board member who has a personal financial crisis can take a one-time pass supporting the charity for that year. Board members seldom rely on this, but it can provide some sense of protection to encourage them to vote in guidelines.

In some cases, you may wish to replace "meaningful gift" with a hard dollar number expected each year from board members. This is good practice but can cut both ways. On one end you may lose board members because of the gift requirement. On the other, your most generous board members may be giving more than the target number so you are guiding them to cut back.

One approach to equalize giving over time is to set a target number (hence, $10,000 unrestricted each year) and ask board members to meet that number, but not immediately. If they are giving less than the target number ask them to give the average of their last three years of giving. Then ask for them to add a 25%-per-year increase each subsequent year until they reach the $10,000 target.

The "give or get" approach is also widely used. At the end of the day, you will want to see board members giving personally at some scale. If not your board then who?