Excerpt from "The price of board membership: the give/get" Crains Chicago March 25, 2013:
Fundraising experts praise give-or-gets as a sound nonprofit tool. The give-or-gets guarantee a revenue stream each year and help ensure that board members are invested in the organization and its mission, not just serving to pad a nonprofit resume.
Still, only 23 percent of U.S. nonprofits specify a minimum donation for board members, according to a Grant Thornton LLP survey from March 2012 (the most recent available).
The policy has a drawback: “You're setting a ceiling as well as a floor,” says Gene Brandt, president of fundraising consultancy Ter Molen Watkins & Brandt LLC in Chicago. “For a lot of people, $10,000 is not the largest number they could consider giving. . . . You don't do as well with certain donors.