How to Get 100% Board Giving Without the Awkward Conversations
Open your last annual report and look at the list of board members. Now open your donor records and look for those same names. For a lot of nonprofits, the two lists do not match. Every board member signed up to govern the organization, lend their name, and help it thrive — but when it comes to a personal gift, a few of them quietly sit it out. And the development director is the one left wondering how to bring it up without making the next board meeting feel strange.
I want to talk about that gap, because it is more common than most fundraisers admit, and the fix is gentler than you would think. 100% board giving is one of those goals that sounds aspirational until you realize how much rides on it. Foundations look for it. Major donors notice it. And your own confidence in the ask grows when you can say, honestly, that everyone closest to the mission has already given.
Here is the encouraging part. The reason board giving feels awkward usually has nothing to do with stingy board members or a development director who is bad at asking. It is almost always a structural problem — something that was never set up at the beginning. Once you see that, the awkwardness starts to drain out of the conversation.
Why the Ask Feels So Awkward
Let me name the thing everyone feels. Asking a peer for money is uncomfortable. Asking a fellow board member — someone you sit next to, someone who might be a friend or a colleague — can feel close to impossible. Nobody wants to seem like they are pressuring a volunteer who already gives their time. So the ask gets softened, delayed, or skipped, and another year goes by with board participation stuck below where it should be.
This is not a failure of nerve. The discomfort comes from a missing step much earlier in the process. When board giving was never named as an expectation during recruitment, the first time it comes up feels like a surprise — and surprises about money are awkward by nature. A board member who joined believing their time and expertise were the contribution can feel ambushed when a personal contribution suddenly appears on the table. They are not being difficult. They genuinely did not know this was part of the deal.
The numbers tell the story. According to a BoardSource survey reported by Giving USA, 68 percent of nonprofits have a policy requiring board members to give annually — yet less than half of nonprofits, just 49 percent, actually reach full participation. That gap between policy and reality is where all the awkwardness lives. The expectation exists on paper, but it was never made real in a one-on-one conversation. And the cost is concrete: many foundations only fund organizations where every board member is a contributor, so a single holdout can quietly close doors you never see.
The most common reason a board member has not given is the simplest one of all. As that same research points out, they have not been asked. Not pressured, not reminded by a group email — personally asked.
Make Giving an Expectation, Not a Surprise
The single best move for 100% board participation happens before someone ever joins the board. It is the recruitment conversation. When a board prospect hears, early and warmly, that every member makes a personally meaningful gift each year, giving stops being an awkward request and becomes part of what they signed up for. BoardSource is direct about this: for boards that raise funds, the target should be 100 percent participation, and every candidate should know the giving policy before they say yes.
Notice the phrase "personally meaningful." A good board giving policy does not demand the same dollar amount from everyone. A retired teacher and a business owner sit on the same board, and asking them for identical gifts would either scare off the teacher or shortchange what the business owner might give. The healthier approach sets a range, suggests a minimum, or simply asks each member to give at a level that is significant to them. The goal is participation, not a flat fee.
You will also hear about "give or get" policies, where a board member can either write a check or raise the equivalent from their network. It is a workable option, though there is a quiet cost to it. When a member only "gets," the board misses the chance to count them in the full participation number and to steward them as a donor in their own right. A "give and get" posture — give first, then help raise more — keeps everyone in the column that matters and models the very behavior you want them showing the rest of your donors.
If your board already has gaps, you cannot rewrite the recruitment conversation that already happened. What you can do is reset the expectation going forward, name it clearly in your onboarding, and treat this year as the year the culture shifts. A clear, agreed-upon policy turns a personal ask into a shared standard, which makes the conversation feel less like you singling someone out and more like everyone rowing the same direction.
Board members are often some of your most capable givers, and many of them would give more if they understood how to make a gift go further. A donor-advised fund or a gift of appreciated assets can stretch the same dollars considerably.
Curious how you or one of your board members could maximize their giving? Use our DAF Calculator.
Try the DAF Calculator
The Personal Ask That Doesn't Feel Like Begging
Once the expectation is set, the ask itself gets much simpler — and it works best as a real conversation, not a mass email. A personal ask consistently outperforms an impersonal one, and with a board of ten or fifteen people, going person by person is entirely doable. This is the part development directors dread, so let me make it concrete.
Start with leadership. The board chair and the development director should give first, and give visibly. When the chair can say "I have already made my gift this year, and I would love for you to join me," the whole tone changes. It is no longer a request from a staff member to a volunteer. It is one committed person inviting another into something they have already done themselves.
Then go one by one. In each conversation, connect the gift to the mission the board member already loves — the same way you would build a case for support for any donor. Explain plainly why their gift matters, even a modest one. Many board members assume their annual gift is too small to bother with next to a major donor's check. They need to hear that the act of giving is what counts. Board giving typically makes up only about 10 percent of an organization's total gifts, but its real value is the signal it sends — to foundations, to major donors, and to your own staff.
And keep the framing honest. You are not squeezing anyone. You are inviting full participation in a mission they already chose to lead. Most people, when asked warmly and directly, say yes — because the truth is they were usually just waiting to be asked.
Don't Forget to Steward Them
Here is the step that quietly protects your board participation rate year after year: treat your board members like the donors they are. Thank them promptly, show them the impact of their gift, and report back the way you would for any supporter. A board member who feels stewarded gives again without a second thought. One who writes a check and hears nothing starts to wonder why they bothered.
This is where a simple stewardship rhythm pays off. The same thank-you, the same impact update, the same personal touch you give a first-time donor belongs to your board members too. It closes the loop and makes next year's ask almost automatic.
Engaged board members do something else valuable, too. When they are giving and feeling stewarded, they start opening doors — making introductions, naming your organization to their networks, and helping you build a major gifts pipeline that reaches well beyond the boardroom. Full board giving is often the first domino. The ones that fall after it are the ones that change your year.
Where to Start
If your board giving is stuck below 100 percent and you are dreading the conversation, here is what I would do this week.
Find out where you actually stand. Pull your records and count how many current board members have given in the past twelve months. You may be closer than you think, or you may finally have the number that makes the case for a policy.
Talk to your board chair first. Full participation has to be led from the board, not pushed by staff. Ask your chair to give first, publicly, and to help carry the conversation with peers.
Draft a simple giving expectation. One paragraph that names participation as the goal, lets each member give at a level meaningful to them, and becomes part of every future recruitment conversation.
Make the asks personal. Divide the list between you and the chair and have real one-on-one conversations. Not email. A warm, direct invitation to join in.
Some of your board members are exactly the people who could become transformational givers — through a planned gift, a whole life policy, or a legacy commitment that outlives their term. Those conversations are worth having well.
Interested in learning more about how a whole life insurance policy could benefit your nonprofit? Connect with a team member at Sage & Main.
Connect with Sage & Main
Getting to 100% board giving is rarely about convincing reluctant people to part with their money. It is about setting a clear expectation, leading by example, and asking each person the way you would want to be asked. Do that, and the awkwardness fades — and you walk into your next funder meeting able to say, with a straight face and a full heart, that everyone closest to this mission has already put their name on the line.
C.J. Bergmen is a pastor, licensed counselor, and fundraising strategist who helps organizations and generous individuals approach giving with honesty and long-term vision.