Dear [First Name],

I’m delighted to share the chapter on board leadership from my new book, Boards and Asking Styles: A Roadmap to Success.

Serving as a board or committee chair requires a good deal of time and talent. Being a good leader means keeping your eye on the prize, delegating appropriately, creating unity, and much more. It requires a wide range of skills and every leader has strengths and weaknesses. No one has it all, and the best leaders are self-aware and surround themselves with people whose skill sets complement theirs.

Your board and committee chairs’ Asking Styles will give you a sense of their strengths and challenges and how to help them do their best work.

learn more about the book

By the way, you can still order an inscribed copy of my book and get free shipping, but only until December 7th, and only through our website.

It’s more important than ever for board members to work with staff to develop resources for your organization. And they can and will do it, but only with training and only if asked to do smart, strategic fundraising.

Asking them to fundraise without training will only make them push back or do it and feel anxious and inadequate. Asking them to hit up everyone they know stinks for them and won’t get you anywhere in the long run.

I want to help prepare your board for the upcoming year and Spring fundraising season. That's why I've decided to offer new board training packages for any size board, no matter where you are in the board training process. More info and a chance to register coming next week!

Fundraising 101 for Board Members
1 hour to understand basic best practices in giving and fundraising. Join board members from numerous other organizations in an interactive training webinar. Each board member chooses from one of three identical live sessions, which are recorded for those who can’t make any of the three. Includes worksheet and numerous bonus materials. You can learn more and register here!

Asking Styles Training for Boards
35 minutes to learn one’s Asking Style plus time to discuss as a group. Each board member watches the recorded training for their Style and completes a worksheet. Package includes customized, branded landing page with your logo and a photo of your choice, training videos, and instructions for three Asking Styles exercises to do virtually or in person.

Group Rate Asking Matters Memberships
1-2 Hours a month on one’s own to learn over time, at a discounted rate when you sign up your whole board. Two 30-minute webinars monthly, opportunities to ask me questions and have them answered live, become of an online asking community and access our extensive resource library.

Customized Group Training
4-5 Hours as a Group to Dig in Deep. Interactive remote learning for your whole board (note: can be split in two webinar sessions), customized to address where your board is at today. Includes lifetime Asking Matters membership for everyone so they can continue learning over time.

Recorded March 27th, 2018

Jerry spent much of his career leading and advising on big campaigns, where the case for support is so critical.

Here Jerry shares why a strong, written case is so important, and what the key elements of the case are.

If we think we can send board members out to fundraise without giving them tools, we are mistaken.

We ask people to join our boards because we think highly of them. They might be successful businesspeople or impassioned community activists or enthusiastic volunteers. We bring them into the fold because they have a talent, track record, or other indicator of ability or “success.”

However, we mistakenly translate this into an ability to fundraise.

Fundraising requires a unique understanding, and training and practice are absolutely critical if we want them to be effective and successful. 

While the traveling the last few years has been intense and it was nice to be off the road for a bit, I am really craving being in the actual physical company of everyone. Until then, virtual will have to do!

Virtual does have its benefits. I was able to include people from all over the country in my virtual book tour. I finally met some long-time friends of Asking Matters and was introduced to some new ones as well.

I also continued my work with the Billings Public Library Foundation. Though we originally split the training into two 2-hour sessions, there was so much participation I ended up throwing in an extra 90-minute session this past Monday. This one was 100% focused on the Arc of the Ask – how to have an intentional conversation. During the session board members broke into groups to discuss how their Asking Styles would impact how their meetings would unfold – from both the asker and donor points of view. There were lots of "aha" moments!

I hope your year-end fundraising is strong.

Brian

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