First off, a huge special thanks to the 25% of yesterday’s attendees who are board members. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about why it’s so important to train your board to fundraise. We can’t raise the funds our organizations deserve without your help.

Here are five key points to take away:

• 86% of all charitable dollars come from individuals, and we individuals make our biggest gifts to organizations where we have deep relationships and care deeply about the work. 
• We need our board members involved in fundraising because most of our organizations don’t have major gift officers to devote the time to cultivating the donor relationships that would lead to larger gifts.
• Board members can make the biggest impact not by hitting up everyone they know and calling in favors, but by building relationships for the long run with people who care deeply about the work. That might include people from their networks but is likely to also include some of their organization’s current donors and prospects.
• Board members don’t know how to fundraise and can’t do it well without training.
• Training must be ongoing, as it is for anything we hope to be good at.