<p>Have you considered recruiting volunteers/service providers that live on the neighbor islands so you don’t have to fly people out there? My experience is there are tons of retired folks from the medical professions that would love to volunteer a few hours a week.</p>
<p>“You need to re-write the board agreement to include a minimum contribution. I agree that it’s standard with all the non-profits I’m involved with. (minimum of $250 is what I see and for larger organizations $1000 is standard). Given the geographic challenges Hawaii presents, perhaps you can approach your grantors about approving travel.”</p>
<p>Agreed. Where I work, there are minumum giving amounts that are expected (higher for trustees than overseers_. If they aren’t doing that, they are bringing something else to the organization, either by being complete experts in the field or contributing work. We have a development committee where board members help to plan events and ways to bring money in, and many of them host house parties to introduce the organization to their friends, who might donate. Being on a board is a very good thing to have on your resume, so they need to actually have some involvement with the organization as well.</p>
<p>You mentioned that they are talking about giving other places. Generally if you volunteer to be on a board somewhere, you are committing that that place will be towards the top of your giving priorities.</p>
<p>$1000 would be a very significant amount of money to quite a lot of the people on the board of my non-profit. Even $250 would not be easy money for them. I guess it depends on the make-up of your board and the constituency you draw it from. Our board is elected from current and former users of our service and our volunteers, and our role is to be representatives of our users and work for their benefit. A lot of the board are people who are skills rich but money poor. It would be a big problem if people felt they were excluded for financial reasons - it would go against the whole ethos of the organization. We have no minimum donation, people give what they can either in money or in skills - there is no-one who does not contribute in some way, just that it is not always by giving money.</p>
<p>I do think people on your board should be giving to your organization before they give to others though, unless there is a very good reason why they are not.</p>
<p>For the nonprofit board I serve on, the board agreement talks in terms of a “personally significant yearly financial gift” and spells out participation in annual appeals and major fundraisers as well as general committee work. This gets the point across that contributions are required, but permits members of different means to give accordingly.</p>
<p>Create a steering committee within the board. So basically expand your board. The “community”, as all communities, has wealthy as well as needy and having a board that represents all areas of the community: community leaders, education, business, healthcare, etc. is not a negative. Have the steering committee members contribute financially and help with the development plan.</p>
<p>Our board only has 5 members on it, plus me as a non-voting member. Several have TALKED about giving but only given (nominal $20 and $100) one-time donations; I have donated countless hours, in-kind and cash. I don’t understand it. Under the by-laws we could have up to 9 members and the person who has donated the most to our organization has agreed to join our board; she’s also a healthcare professional with over 35 years of experience.</p>