We recently hosted a webinar with Renee Jones, International Champion Auctioneer, and Certified Benefit Specialist, on maximizing board power for your next special event.
One of Renee’s biggest takeaways from the webinar was creating and sending out a Board Questionnaire for you and your organization to connect on a deeper level of understanding with your board members. Renee has been encouraging the organizations she works with and is a part of, to do this for the last 11 years.
This brief questionnaire can be completed by board members, staff, or volunteers so you have a better grasp of your major supporters general contact information, interests and preferences. It is to collect both generic details like contact information, both personal and professional, including their preference of how to be contacted, and also questions focusing in on their preferences for travel in relation to your next special event.
You can take a look at all of Renee’s suggested questions in her guide here – Board Questionnaire
A number of the questions included have a monetary suggestion that can tie back to your event. Feel free to scale the price points up or down based on your organization and supporters. For example, “If you had $2,500 to spend on an experience, what would it be?” could scale up or down depending on the types of auction packages you have in mind for your event.
Not only will this board survey allow you to capture current contact information for key supporters, but you can also use this to empower your board members to lead the charge on procurement for your auction. You can learn about their favorite restaurants and give them the tools to make asks at those local places. Add their name to solicitations of major hospitality or travel chains (we all know getting airline tickets donated is like striking gold!) and help them see personal resources that could be utilized for auction procurement.
One final piece of the completion of a board survey is to continue to modify the survey as time passes and send updated or changed questions to current board members. The survey will empower both your board and your organization to make better asks and be better connected!
