Board member agreement template

The one page described in Board member fundraising expectations that hold. Four commitments a member signs, a giving policy you paste in from the appendix, and the conversation script the chair uses thirteen months later. No email required.

What is in it

Page one is the agreement itself, and it fits on one side. Four header fields sit above it: Organization, Fiscal year, Member name, and Date sent.

The first block is titled What I commit to. It is a table with four pre-labelled rows in fixed order: Give, Open doors, Attend, and Serve. Each row carries three cells. The first holds the commitment sentence with the number left blank, so Open doors reads as an introduction count and Attend reads as a meeting count out of the total. The second cell is By when, a date. The third is How this is counted, pre-filled with the record that settles it: the donor database, the introductions log, the minutes, and the committee roster.

The second block is titled Our giving policy. It is a bordered box with one instruction line above it. Paste one of the three structures from the appendix into the box, with the amount filled in, and delete the other two. Every member’s copy carries the same paragraph.

The third block is titled Alternative contribution, and most copies leave it blank. It is two fill-in lines for a member whose profession bars them from soliciting, or who has agreed a different way of opening doors. Write the alternative in rather than leaving the member to infer one.

The fourth block is Signatures. Two lines, Member and Board chair, each with Name, Signature, and Date. Below them sits a single sentence recording that the agreement covers one fiscal year and is signed again before renomination.

Page two is the appendix and is never handed out with page one. It has two parts. The first sets out the three giving policy structures, one after the other: minimum gift, top three gifts, and personally significant gift. Each carries its sample language with a fill-in amount, one line on what the structure does well, and one line on what it costs. The second part is the month thirteen conversation, written as the four moves the chair makes in order, with space to record the date, the exit the member chose, and the follow-up date.

How to use it

Fill it in this order, and note that the first two steps happen once a year for the whole board, not once per member.

1. The governance committee chooses one giving structure from the appendix. Choose before anyone sees the page, and choose once for the whole board.
2. The board chair pastes that structure into the Our giving policy box with the amount filled in, then deletes the appendix from the copy that goes out.
3. Fill the header fields and the four numbers on page one. The introduction count and the meeting count are the same for every member. Only the name changes.
4. Hand the page to a candidate before the seat is offered, not after. An existing member receives it in the same month every year, before renomination.
5. The member signs and returns it. The chair signs every copy, not the executive director.
6. Record the four counts per member wherever you track board service. Staff may keep the record. Staff do not chase it.
7. Schedule the month thirteen conversations now, in the month after the fiscal year closes, for anyone whose row is unmet. Use part two of the appendix on the call and write the single follow-up line the same day.

Keep the signed copies for the term. The counts summed across signed agreements are what the fundraising plan carries as the board’s commitments, so transcribe them once a year rather than rebuilding them from memory at the adoption meeting.

When not to use it

Do not use it in the year you are hiring or replacing an executive director. Ask for the personal gift on its own and bring the full page back after the hire.

Do not paste the minimum gift structure into the box in a year when you are seating members from the communities you serve. Use the personally significant structure until those seats are filled and have been through one signing cycle.

Do not send it to members who were recruited on an explicit promise that no gift would be asked of them. Use it for new seats and for renominations, and let that cohort age out.

Do not use it at all if nobody will hold the month thirteen conversation. The page then teaches the board that a signature on this subject carries no consequence, which is harder to undo than never having asked.