Creative Ideas To Build An Engaged Board with Sabrina Walker Hernandez

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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Sabrina Walker Hernandez has spent a whopping 25 years working in nonprofit management, fundraising and leadership. Listen to this success metric: she increased operational revenue from $750,000 to $2.5 million dollars and completed a $12 million comprehensive capital campaign in the third poorest county in the United States.

Her superpower? She works with small nonprofit staff and boards to build strong relationships that convert more gifts and donors.

Sabrina is a GEM in the space and so full of knowledge. Get ready to increase your fundraising capacity and recruit the most engaging board members.

In This Episode:

• Why every grant or partnership with a financial component to it should include the capacity to spend on professional development.
• How to consciously recruit the right board members and have intentionality in your process so you can fill the gaps without getting burned!
• Powerful techniques to manage difficult board members and toxic personalities, including how to exit them gracefully.
• Leveraging tools like StrengthsFinder to tap into the strengths of your board. Who are the cultivators? Who are the door openers?
• Sabrina explains “the fear of the 5” and why we need to make the ask when it comes to board fundraising (only 5% do!)
• Nonprofits need to be better at the “thank you” to foster stewardship. When board members pick up the phone and make the call, an endorphin rush will follow.

Notable Quotes from Sabrina

“I truly believe in order for an organization to get better, you have to invest in the people. That is exactly it. To get better, you’ve gotta invest because it’s a nonprofit entity. The industry is continually changing with the advent of technology. The best thing about going to a conference or going to a workshop? The content is great. I love the content, because I always learn something! But it’s networking with people that are in the trenches with you that are experiencing some of the same things that you are experiencing, or they’ve tackled that hurdle. I would get my best fundraising ideas from conferences.”

“For me, fundraising is not about making the ask, because to me, that’s only 5% of fundraising. Fundraising is 20% identifying and qualifying the donor, 60% is cultivation, 5% is making the ask, and then 15% is the thank you piece.”

Resources & Links

Connect with Sabrina on her website, Supporting World Hope. You can also find her on LinkedIn, Facebook, and email at sabrina@supportingworldhope.com. 

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you. 

Episode Partners:

We’re so grateful to our partners for this episode: Feathr and Hustle!

Feathr is trusted by nonprofits of all shapes and wing-spans — including Hiway 80, who used Feathr to launch new retargeting ads and email campaigns. The result? They reached 36,000 new people and brought in $13,000 in donations, 300% more than their original goal! Don’t rely on magic to hit your goals next year. Use Feathr to elevate your digital marketing campaigns and grow impact in 2023. Click here to learn more.

Meet Hustle’s Conversational Video Platform. Their person-to-person video and text message marketing suite empowers your organization with the tools you need to humanize communication, maximize engagement efforts, and build meaningful relationships with your audiences. Click here to try Hustle today & use code POSITIVEEQUATION to receive free MMS and video messages for your organization!