How LinkedIn Can Boost Your Board
Social media can help you connect in all sorts of ways — with new friends in your field, relatives you rarely see, or ex-boyfriends you’d rather forget. But did you ever think about the ways that social media can help you connect with new board members?
LinkedIn is a great place to start. After all, it’s a platform dedicated to helping people leverage their personal contacts for professional gain. Like all social networks, it’s about connecting with the people you know – and hopefully with the people they know, as well.
Forging relationships with acquaintances takes time, but sparking the flame can definitely happen online. And if you’re looking to recruit new board members, you’re in luck — just last fall, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Board Connect, a service to help nonprofits do just that. What’s more, LinkedIn says this tool is especially well suited to small or medium-sized nonprofits, who don’t necessarily have the brand recognition or budget to recruit more high-profile board members.
If you sign up for Board Connect, you’ll get:
– Free access to Talent Finder, a premium service to help you find top talent
– Access to the LinkedIn Board Connect Group
– Access to educational videos about board recruitment
The Talent Finder is the key benefit here, since it’s usually a subscription service and can help you access higher net-worth individuals or those with more years of service in their fields.
The LinkedIn Nonprofits page has a great slideshow that walks you through how to use the tool.
Geri Stengel on Beth Kantor’s blog offers a good tip on how to use Board Connect successfully: Since these special features are only available to one person in your organization, make sure you choose the person with the most network connections. This might be your executive director or another board member. The more connections you have, the wider your network, the more likely you are to find the right candidates.
You’ll want to make sure you have a company page, if you don’t already, where potential board members can quickly learn more about your organization (important for those second-level connections – the colleagues of friends who might not have heard of your nonprofit before).
Crucially, LinkedIn is only a starting place for recruiting new board members. Once you’ve initiated contact via email or LinkedIn’s mail service, you’ll have to invite your prospects to have a phone chat or a lunch to talk more about your organization. The in-person contact is absolutely vital, both to gauge their suitability to be on the board and for you to make your best pitch about the importance of your work. Doubtless you know this from any fundraising “asks” you’ve undertaken, but a pitch works much better face to face! Better yet, bring potential board members by your service center, headquarters, event, or wherever you can SHOW (not tell) the impact of what you do. Nothing is more powerful than your mission in action.
Have any of you used LinkedIn Board Connect successfully? Share your story!
