11 Strategies to Boost Nonprofit Board Engagement With Marketing

August 9, 2024

As web developers who build LOTS of websites for nonprofits, we understand the challenges you face. While we don’t run nonprofits ourselves, we know how crucial it is to have an engaged and supportive nonprofit board, especially when it comes to marketing.

So, we reached out to the real experts—11 inspiring nonprofit leaders—to share their actionable advice on the best ways to boost your nonprofit board member engagement with your marketing efforts. Whether you’re a nonprofit marketer or a leader, this episode is packed with actionable tips and proven strategies straight from the source.

Get ready to take notes, because these insights are designed to help you enhance your board’s engagement and amplify your marketing impact. Let’s dive in!

11 Nonprofit Board Marketing Engagement Strategies

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Let’s hear from our first nonprofit leader – Simon Hart.

Simon Hart, Deputy Director at Forge Youth Mentoring, is going to kick off this actionable advice train of an episode because I felt like he gave such a great big picture overview of the steps to engage your board with your marketing. Thank you Simon! We’re going to use his Educate, Inspire, and Simplify framework to organize the rest of the content in this episode…

Three phase approach to engage nonprofit board members in marketing.

Simon explained we need to educate our board members, which is 100% essential. The first step to educating our board is to educate ourselves to make sure we can lead and communicate with the team effectively.

Kari Hopkins, the COO of Coyote Hill Foster Care Ministries, starts by meeting her board where they are.

Meet them where they are.

First, ask your board how they consume content and communicate with their friends. Then, meet them where they are. We often want them to be on social media or follow the blog, but many use more traditional mediums. Meeting them where they are allows them to get excited as they see the organization come through the channels they use, passed along by their friends.

That’s no different from what marketers do when they’re planning their marketing campaigns. And usually, you want to attract more people like your nonprofit board members to your organization. So Kari’s advice just makes sense.

Rebecca Vickers, VP of Operations at FMO Media, takes it one step further and suggests to improve engagement, nonprofit marketers just getting started with an organization need to become educated about board dynamics and functions. She suggests marketers develop a relationship with board members and align the marketing plan with the overall strategic plan of the organization to avoid friction and ensure buy-in.

To be successful, you need buy-in from your board. 

Friction happens when boards and leadership are at odds about priorities. Avoid friction and get buy-in by making sure your marketing plan supports the overall strategic plan of your organization.

Observe first and assign later.

Assess the way the board functions and understand the group dynamics within the board before assigning key roles or responsibilities.

Develop a relationship with the board. 

Understand their motivators and strengths and align them with the appropriate opportunities where they can make an impact in your marketing.

Give encouragement and thanks.

Praise the board and give them credit for the impact they are having.

Great advice – a good marketer understands their audience and a good leader understands their team.

For our last self-education tip Natalie Hayek, a professional content writer with extensive experience in nonprofit, education, and the military community, suggests evaluating each team member to target the purpose each was brought to serve your organization.

Target the purpose that each member was brought in to serve – either wealth, wisdom or work.

PRO TIP: Start a Junior board to infuse energy and innovation in these areas!

So what I’m hearing is:

Once you’ve educated yourself about your nonprofit’s board – understanding how they want to communicate and developing relationships with each member – you can consider how they can best contribute and engage with your organization’s marketing. After that, you can move forward to educate your board and set them up for success!

Tami R Benus, serial board member and CPA, says we should think about our board members like new employees by offering guidance and direction.

Think of your nonprofit’s board members like a new employee you’re onboarding to engage in marketing.

They need guidance and direction.

Start by giving them talking points.

Create a recipe card to open up conversations to talk about what you do and what you have going on.

Share stories and examples.

For example, if you donate $50 or $100 it allows the organization to provide a specific service. This allows your board members to show what you use the donations for and it will increase the likelihood of donations.

And of course, make sure to thank them!

Great advice Tami! Everyone deserves a thank you!

You can do all three: educate, involve AND simplify with Fundraising Coach, Jamie Freidrichs’, advice.

Make sure you give them scripts, scripts, and more scripts!

Your board needs to be equipped and detailed scripts make it easy for them to confidently promote your organization. 

Provide them with:

• FAQs 
• Event fliers 
• Brochures
• One Pagers
• Emails to forward along

They want to help and have great intentions, but they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. 

Even a power house board appreciates this level of help because they’re busy! Scripts allow them to share about your organization without overthinking it or making them feel overwhelmed.

Transition into meeting them where they are…both physically and how they want to communicate.

You can involve and simplify by assigning certain roles to each individual based on their interests and strengths. That’s how Amparo Vazquez, founder of Astekah, builds her marketing team. She considers the strengths of each board member and groups them together to accomplish specific tasks.

Delegate brand ambassadors.

Designate a small team of members to serve as more vocal brand ambassadors. Behind the scenes, other members of your team can create things like videos or content to then pass along to the more vocal brand ambassadors to share. Create specific items for them to choose from like a rolodex of information and others that can be customized to share their story and spread the word.

Rebekah Robertson, Executive Director of Stonebridge House, shares a few specific examples about how she involves her board members during events and allows them to be the stars of the show while she fields questions in the background.

Engage board members with your events by assigning specific tasks.

Include your board members in your events by giving them specific tasks. For example, during an open house ask board members to give tours and share who donated services and items to the organization. Or, during a year-end giving campaign, ask them to participate in a social media dance competition. 

Jennifer Rice, Founder of Sent with Love, involves her board members and simplifies by assigning specific tasks at board meetings.

Increase nonprofit board engagement in marketing by leveraging meetings and technology.

Try giving assignments by allowing the board members to sign up for tasks at board meetings. Asking board members to volunteer for specific tasks for events works well to increase engagement. And consider having each board member create their own donation page to track a running total to give them credit and thanks for how much they have helped raise. (She uses GiveButter.)

Jennifer isn’t the only one who leverages board meetings to bring marketing to the forefront. Anika Jackson, professor at USC Annenberg and philanthropist who has helped create multiple non-profit organizations, echo’s the advice Kari offered earlier to meet board members where they’re at and simplify the process of board involvement by having board members take action on marketing items during the meeting.

Incorporate marketing into your nonprofit board meeting agendas.

Communicate with them on a regular basis and make sure they have the right information, calls to action, and materials to do what you need them to do.

• Set aside time at each meeting to discuss marketing and give them easy access to materials like fliers, images, graphics, invitations, and social posts. 
• Take a few moments during meetings to have the board like, comment, and share notes. 
• Bring thank you notes to board meetings and have the board sign them. 

To wrap up this nonprofit roundup podcast, I want to close with this awesome piece of advice from Liz Sensintaffar, who has more than a decade of experience working and volunteering in nonprofit marketing. Liz does a great job of giving us a wrap up of Simon’s Educate, Involve and Simplify strategy and then some…

Use focused, action-oriented onboarding.

Get them involved right away!

Give them meaningful ways to take action as soon as they join, they’re eager to dive in and follow through, they just need you to show them how to help.

Give them meaningful, bite-size action items.

For example, don’t just say, “Help us spread the word.” 
Get specific and explain, “I’m launching a campaign, please share this specific post.” 

Instead of saying, “Help us with sponsorships.”
Ask, “Could you call this donor? Here’s their number, a script, and I want you to be the one to call them for this reason.” 

Keep their eyes on the mission.

Start each board meeting with a success story and consider having a former recipient of your services serve on the board. 

Impose term limits.

Burnout is a real thing – it can negatively impact the morale of your board and even influence newer members.

So there you have it, advice from 11 experts on ways to engage your nonprofit board in your marketing! 

As you move forward with the goal of involving your board with your marketing, keep Simon’s three part method in mind:

First educate – starting with yourself about the board, their motivations and abilities. Then flip it, educating the board members about how marketing aligns with the mission and providing training and resources to share and talk about the organization.

Using that education, you’re ready to involve your board members. Our experts all agree, providing resources and assigning specific tasks is the best way to get your board involved.

And of course, simplify. We heard so many examples of simplification, from note cards to templates to leveraging board meetings.

I just want to offer one last round of thanks to everyone who contributed their wisdom in this roundup.  Simon, Kari, Rebecca, Natalie, Tami, Jaime, Amparo, Rebekah, Jennifer, Anika, and Liz. Thank you!