Question Category: Board of Directors
Question
At our upcoming board retreat, I am scheduled to present information on why individual donors are so important to our organization. I'm a little nervous about the presentation. Can BEE provide me with some ideas?
Answer
You may want to begin your presentation with statistics from the Giving USA Foundation report. You can access a pie chart that shows these statistics by going here. Focus on the fact that 83.6% of all charitable funding comes from individuals. And it is probably even more as bequests and family foundations are related to individuals giving as well. Compare this percentage to the percentage of funding your organization currently receives from individuals. Is there room for improvement? BEE has found that this one piece of information is usually very eye opening. Next compare your foundation and corporate giving sources to the Giving USA statistics. If you have one or two grants that make up a large part of your overall philanthropic revenue, you might discuss how this could be a problem in the future (if these go away). This can help you make the point that by focusing on individual donors, your organization can create a large base of support and a more diverse base as well.
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