Nonprofit board members: The next 3 minutes can transform your nonprofit’s next event

As a nonprofit board member, it can be challenging to know how to best help your nonprofit. After all, they are the experts. They know their sector far better than you ever will.

So how can you help them?

1 simple thing you can do today to help your nonprofit get new donors

Here is one simple thing you can do today. Right now.

1. Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/upcoming
2. Look for any event from your nonprofit.
3. Click on the “…” and choose “Invite friends.”
   
4. Choose 5 new people to invite. (Facebook makes it easy. They gray out the people who’ve already been invited.)
   
5. Click “Send.”
6. Get on with your day.

Board members are ambassadors

One of the most important roles we can play as board members is introducing our friends to the cause. And Facebook can make that easy.

Two words of caution:

• Please don’t blindly spam your friends with event invitations. That will dilute the benefit of your invitations. And it will lead to people “unfriending” you on Facebook. No one likes spam.
• Facebook doesn’t let you send a message to people when you invite them. So it might be nice to send them a message saying something like, “Hi [their name], I just invited you to [your nonprofit’s name]’s event. I only chose to invite a few people. I thought you’d be interested because [some specific reason you thought they’d be a good fit]. If you can come, it’d be great!”

Transforming your nonprofit’s next event

Will your five invitations “transform” your nonprofit’s next event? I’m not sure. But it would if everyone on your board did this.

In my experience, Facebook Events seem to get more noticed than many other updates on Facebook. So you’re helping get this on your friends radar will help them learn about the nonprofit. Of course, it’s up to your nonprofit to be interesting on Facebook and to even have events listed there!

Why not do it right now? https://www.facebook.com/events/upcoming

If you want to learn more about the Our Hearts Foundation 5k, go to their event on Facebook. I’m not on the board. They’re just good people doing good work.