October 6, 2015 | Read Time: 2 minutes
For the past four years, the Sacramento Region Community Foundation has required that nonprofits participating in its BIG Day of Giving sign a commitment form to reinforce their obligations and help start a conversation with their board and leadership.
“It’s an easy way for us to hold them accountable,” says Jeannie Howell, the foundation’s community impact officer, who oversees the giving day.
Unlike some other groups, which allow nonprofits to simply register online for their giving days, the Sacramento-area foundation requires all participants to attend a mandatory orientation session and pay a registration fee. The form below, which is distributed at the orientation, explains payment options as well as other important terms of participation, such as creating a profile on Guidestar’s DonorEdge database.
Everything on the form is conveyed during the orientation, but it “sometimes just doesn’t stick, so the form is a way to reinforce everything that they learned,” Ms. Howell says. “If you’re going to require a lot from your nonprofits, you definitely want to have something like this as a backup.”
For example, “It’s come in really handy a couple times after the fact when we had nonprofits claim they were never told x, y, and z,” she says. “You have something on file.”
For the 2016 giving day, in May, it will be optional for returning organizations to attend orientation, so those groups will be able to complete the form online.
For the 2015 event, the foundation added a line on the form for the board chair to initial, indicating that he or she understands the nonprofit’s responsibilities. Having to seek a board member’s signature provides “an easy way to start the conversation with board members and get their buy-in upfront,” Ms. Howell says.
Gettting board leaders to sign off also serves as a kind of psychological push, she says. “It confirms that they’re committing to something.”
In addition, the foundation created the role of team captain—someone at each nonprofit responsible for serving as the sole point of contact with the foundation. The idea was to streamline communications so that an organization’s volunteers, board, and staff don’t all contact the foundation with the same questions. The team captain must also sign the form, ensuring that all key personnel understand their responsibilities from the start.
