Forming Powerful Leadership Councils: How Nonprofits Can Convey Legitimacy, Extend Their Reach, and Raise More Revenue
Table of Contents
What a Leadership Council Is — and What It Is Not (Section 1 of 7)
What a Leadership Council Does: Six Functions (Section 2 of 7)
Four Situations Where a Leadership Council Is the Right Answer (Section 3 of 7)
How to Recruit: The Protocol That Works (Section 4 of 7)
Launching and Working with Your Council (Section 5 of 7)
Five Requirements That Determine Whether a Council Thrives or Fades (Section 6 of 7)
A Casebook: How an Honorary Council Helped Turn an Agency Around (Section 7 of 7)
Executive Summary
A nonprofit can deepen their fundraising by exercising a power that all charities possess — the power to convey legitimacy upon others. This is done through leadership councils, and it happens less often than it might. A leadership council is a group of individuals outside the board who fulfill special functions for the agency without assuming governance or fiduciary responsibility. They extend the organization's reach into the community, lend their credibility to its work, and in well-designed councils, raise meaningful revenue that the organization could not have generated on its own.
This white paper covers the full arc of building a leadership council — what it is, what it does, when to form one, how to recruit for it, how to launch it, and the minimum requirements for sustaining it. A casebook drawn from practitioner experience closes the paper with a documented account of how one Honorary Council was built and what it produced. BoardSource's Advisory Councils: Nine Keys to Success (boardsource.org) is a complementary governance-oriented resource for organizations that want additional perspective on the structural relationship between an advisory council and the board.
Section 1 of 7 — What a Leadership Council Is — and What It Is Not
A leadership council is a group of individuals outside of the board — though some of them may also be board members — who fulfill special community functions for the agency. Unlike board members who assume governance responsibility, the council is a non-governance group with no legal or fiduciary obligations, and that distinction matters enormously in practice. A CEO once put it memorably: "The difference between my board and my council is that my board is for heavy lifting; the council only does light lifting." An organization may not need the entire House of Representatives to accomplish certain goals — sometimes a special committee is all it takes to get on the bandwagon.
There is a certain power that exists in all nonprofits, and it comes with the distinction of working for a good cause. Though nonprofit work is frequently unremunerated, people associated with a charity can carry their heads high because they are ennobled by the high-mindedness of the organization's purpose. A leadership council is the instrument through which that ennobling quality is extended outward — and through which the legitimacy of community leaders, respected professionals, and prominent figures flows back in return. Both sides gain something genuine. The organization acquires the credibility of people who have chosen to be associated with it, and those people acquire the credibility of a cause larger than their individual professional identity. When the relationship works well, the community notices.
Before considering what a leadership council does, it is worth being clear about what it is not, because the difference matters as much as the definition. A council is not a second board — its members do not govern, do not vote on policy, and do not bear fiduciary responsibility for the organization's finances. It is not a rubber stamp — a council whose only function is to lend names to letterhead without any engagement tends to produce neither revenue nor goodwill, and it fades quietly from neglect. And it is not a committee — council members are not charged with managing programs or overseeing operations but with carrying the organization's name and mission into communities, conversations, and relationships that the board and staff cannot reach on their own.
Unlike the board, a leadership council is free from legal and procedural strictures, and it can be custom-fit to the agency and the specific task it is formed to accomplish. That flexibility is one of its genuine advantages. It is also, left unmanaged, its vulnerability — something the requirements in Section 6 address directly.
There are many ways to name a leadership council, and the name matters more than it might seem. "Friends of," "Honorary Council," "Citizens Council," "Presidents Council," "task forces," "volunteer councils," and "fundraising councils" are all labels that have served organizations well in different contexts. The right name is whichever one will attract the kind of members the organization wants. The name should be tested on a few trusted people before committing to it. The name "advisory board" tends to send a mixed message — the word "advice" may not accurately reflect what the organization wants, and the word "board" implies governance that the council is specifically designed not to carry.
Section 2 of 7 — What a Leadership Council Does: Six Functions
Depending on the type of council an organization establishes, a leadership council can be empowered to achieve a wide range of goals — and the most effective councils are usually designed around one or two primary functions rather than asked to do everything at once. The six functions described here represent the full range of what well-designed councils accomplish.
Fundraising is the function most directly tied to revenue, and it is what distinguishes a fundraising council from an honorary one. Council members who are comfortable asking for money or making introductions for that specific purpose can write personal fundraising letters, make direct asks to their own networks, host parlor gatherings and intimate events at their homes or businesses, and accompany board members on major gift cultivation calls — extending the organization's reach well beyond what the development staff and board could produce on their own.
Advocacy takes the council's credibility into the public sphere. Members can speak on the organization's behalf at hearings, write letters to elected officials, engage with media, and serve as community voices in ways that board members or staff might be constrained from doing by their own professional positions or perceived conflicts. A group of physicians willing to testify at a public health hearing on the organization's behalf represents the kind of credibility that cannot be purchased and is genuinely difficult to manufacture.
Credibility — the function that underlies all the others — is what a council conveys simply by its existence. The presence of respected names on an organization's letterhead and website signals to prospective donors and funders that these individuals have looked at the organization and found it worth their association. That signal can open doors that program descriptions and outcome data cannot.
Expertise extends the organization's knowledge into fields the board and staff may not represent — legal, medical, financial, political, or technical knowledge that is needed on a consultative basis but cannot be engaged professionally. This function is particularly valuable when the council is organized around a specific program area where that expertise is directly relevant.
Community liaison connects the organization to networks and conversations that neither the board nor a marketing initiative could reach in the same way. Council members move through professional and social circles where the organization's name and mission might otherwise never appear, and they carry it there simply by being associated with it.
Hosting rounds out the six functions with one of the most practically productive tools in the council's repertoire. A council member who hosts a "party with a purpose" — an intimate fundraising gathering at their home or business — creates a setting the organization itself could not create, brings in guests who would not otherwise encounter the work, and often produces both revenue and new donor relationships in a single evening. [For how to organize a smaller fundraising event see my White Paper, Beyond the Gala: Leveraging Intimate Micro-Events for Sustainable Donor Acquisition.]
The legitimacy exchange that underlies all six functions can be understood this way: two sides come together — community need and donor resources. The nonprofit makes that need clear, and once the two sides are brought into contact, the organization enjoys endorsement while the donors enjoy affiliation with a cause larger than themselves. The council is the instrument that facilitates this exchange, standing between the organization and the wider community, vouching for both.
Section 3 of 7 — Four Situations Where a Leadership Council Is the Right Answer
The decision to form a leadership council is most productive when it is made in response to a specific organizational situation rather than a general aspiration toward greater community presence. Four situations emerge consistently from practitioner experience as particularly well-suited to the council model, and understanding them helps an organization decide not only whether to form a council but which kind to form.
Acquisition or Merger
When two organizations merge, the new board does not necessarily have to double in size, and yet not every board member from the smaller organization may want — or be needed — to sit on the new board. A leadership council offers a way to keep valued people engaged even when their formal governance role has changed or expired, maintaining relationships that may produce revenue, advocacy, or goodwill long after the merger has been fully absorbed. This situation arose with an organization I worked with that found itself with 55 people on its board after a merger. The new CEO had to decide what to do with all of them, and the answer was a Community Council that kept the best of those relationships active without adding governance complexity.
When the Organization Needs to Fly Under the Radar
Some situations call for community presence without institutional visibility — a clinic whose services are contested in the community, a dialogue initiative working in a politically sensitive environment, a health program that might attract unwanted attention if the organization's name were too prominently attached to a public statement. In these cases, a council whose members act on the organization's behalf can accomplish things that neither a board member nor a staff member could do as effectively, given the institutional visibility their roles carry. At times, the organization itself may have reason to fly under its own radar of perceived political affiliations, and a council composed of members who represent a wider range of associations can broaden the apparent base from which the message comes.
A Major Campaign
One productive way to supplement a major fundraising campaign is to establish something like a Citizens Council or a Community Council around the campaign's goals. The greater the perceived reach of an initiative, the more likely significant donors are to want to participate — major donors respond to the sense that they are joining something larger than a single organization's ambition, and a council whose names appear on the campaign's letterhead and materials validates the initiative to prospective supporters who do not yet know the organization well. A medium or small nonprofit that is relatively new in its sector or geographical area may find that prominent names on its campaign materials draw far more attention to its work than its budget or tenure alone would attract.
Garnering Greater Representation in the Community
For organizations that need to establish or deepen their presence in a specific community, sector, or constituency — and that may not have board members who authentically represent those communities — a leadership council can build bridges that governance structures cannot. Councils of this type tend to range from a dozen to forty members in most cases, though they can grow considerably larger depending on the size and mission of the organization. The measure of success is not how many names appear on the letterhead but how genuinely those members represent the communities the organization serves or seeks to reach.
Section 4 of 7 — How to Recruit: The Protocol That Works
Before reaching out to a single prospective council member, define clearly what the organization expects of them — both the time commitment and the tangible goals they are being asked to help accomplish. Anyone approached is likely to be a busy person, and vague expectations tend to attract vague commitments. Concrete goals convey seriousness: "We want passage of this particular piece of legislation in the next election cycle," or "We need to raise $1 million to build our new facility." Alongside those goals, specify the hours and frequency of meetings expected each quarter or biannually, depending on the nature of the work.
Kim Klein, co-founder and former publisher of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, offers a question worth applying to every prospect before outreach begins: "A good question to ask yourself is whether you would agree to serve on such an advisory board." That question cuts through wishful thinking about who might say yes and focuses the list on candidates for whom the time commitment and the purpose are genuinely compatible with their own lives.
Building the Wish List with the Board
Before approaching anyone, develop a list of characteristics wanted and needed from council members — which are not the same thing. A council formed to advance legislation might want members with legal backgrounds, but what it needs are individuals who are comfortable speaking in public. Developing this list in consultation with the board surfaces connections that might not otherwise be visible, and it also builds board buy-in for the council itself, since board members who helped identify candidates tend to feel invested in the council's success.
Three types of individuals make particularly good council candidates and are worth prioritizing in any search:
People who have made meaningful contributions to the board or the organization in the past but for whom no current structure exists to maintain that involvement
Those who would like to be associated with the organization but genuinely do not have the time that trusteeship requires
Individuals who are fond of the organization but have competing interests that preclude them from becoming a trustee — they can still lend an endorsement through council membership
The Recruitment Sequence
Once the list is developed, reach out by phone before scheduling any in-person meeting. A phone call confirms interest and saves everyone's time — there is no point in meeting with someone who hasn't the time or inclination to participate. If a prospect is open to the conversation, arrange a meeting in person and bring at least one other person, just as you would for a major gift cultivation call, to provide additional perspective and help answer questions.
Though the organization initiated the outreach, treat the in-person meeting as an interview for a volunteer position. Is this person genuinely enthusiastic about the work? Are they comfortable committing time? It is far better to be disappointed now than to appoint someone who will not be engaged — and there may be future councils that are better suited to a particular individual. If a prospect doesn't return calls, try three times with two days between each attempt, then send a handwritten note asking them to call. If there is still no response after a week or two, move to the next candidate.
What Fundraising Councils Specifically Need
A fundraising council can recruit from a wide range of professional backgrounds, as long as members are somehow connected to potential financial resources. Wealth alone, however, is not the right criterion — having money does not make a person effective at raising it, and this is particularly worth remembering with those who have inherited rather than earned their wealth. What a fundraising council needs are individuals who can approach and persuade potential funders — individuals, corporations, or foundations — and who have the connections to reach them directly.
The ability to host a fundraising event at home or at a place of business is another strong qualification. And if prospective members are wealthy and willing to lead by example with their own generous gift, so much the better — because council members who ask others to give while declining to give themselves will find their solicitations ring hollow.
Gender Parity as a Priority
Gender parity in council recruitment is worth establishing as an explicit goal from the outset rather than an afterthought. Women remain underrepresented in philanthropic leadership, and a gender-balanced council signals something meaningful about the organization's values and opens recruitment to the broadest possible pool of talent. Building parity into the initial wish list is far easier than trying to correct an imbalance after the council has already formed.
Section 5 of 7 — Launching and Working with Your Council
Once recruitment goes well and candidates are appointed, the council can begin working almost immediately — one of its genuine advantages over the board, which is bound by quorum requirements and formal process. The organization can appoint co-chairs from the outset, and gender parity is worth prioritizing there as well. Each new member added augments work already underway without requiring anyone to wait for a formal quorum to be reached.
Formalizing the Commitment
After receiving verbal consent from a council member, send a letter of invitation to memorialize that consent in writing. The ask happens in person; the formalization follows in writing once the invitation has been accepted. By the time of the first meeting, present each member with a written list of whatever membership requirements and benefits have been established — having their name appear on the organization's letterhead and website, what meetings are expected, what the council will be working toward. These should be in writing, not conveyed informally, because clarity about expectations is what distinguishes an active council from one that eventually drifts.
The Initial Gathering
The first gathering is worth doing well, because it sets the tone for everything that follows. Consider hosting it as a tour of the agency — giving members a direct experience of the work they are now associated with — and use the occasion to announce the date for the annual council meeting. This gathering orients members in a way that no letter or packet can, it creates social connections among members who may not know each other, and it establishes the first shared memory of the council as a functioning group rather than a list of names.
Ongoing Maintenance
Once the council is running, the work of sustaining it begins — and this is where many otherwise well-formed councils quietly lose momentum. Check in with council members regularly, keep them current on organizational developments, and take an active oversight role regarding upcoming deadlines and results benchmarks. Invite a guest speaker occasionally to address the council on a subject relevant to their work or the organization's mission — it is one of the more effective ways to renew engagement and give members something to look forward to beyond the annual meeting.
Board members can attend the council's annual meetings, and council members can occasionally be invited to board meetings. How exactly the two groups interact is a decision for the executive director and board to make together, and it is worth establishing those norms in writing before ambiguity creates friction.
The council's main purpose, throughout all of this, is to allow the organization to delegate goals that it does not have the capacity to address on its own. In the best councils, members coalesce and act as a leading edge of the organizational vessel — reaching into communities, sectors, and relationships that the board and staff cannot access directly.
Staffing the Council
Someone on the staff needs to be accountable for the council's ongoing health — liaising between the council and the CEO, scheduling meetings, following up with members, tracking recruitment, and making sure the executive director stays in regular contact with council leadership. A lack of engagement, or a growing sense of irrelevance among members, can quietly doom a council that was well-recruited and well-launched. Assigning this function to a specific staff member — even at 25 percent of their role, as one council in the casebook below required — is what keeps the council from becoming dormant. The aspiration is real: a council that coalesces and acts as a leading edge of the organizational vessel. The infrastructure that makes that aspiration possible is what the next section addresses directly.
Section 6 of 7 — Five Requirements That Determine Whether a Council Thrives or Fades
Leadership councils of every kind — honorary councils, friends of committees, presidents councils — share a set of minimum requirements below which they are unlikely to sustain meaningful engagement. These are not aspirational standards. They are operational thresholds, and they are simpler than they might sound.
One: A few people dedicated to nurturing, caring for, and feeding the group. A council left to maintain itself will not. Someone on the staff, at whatever proportion of time the council's size and ambition require, must be accountable for the ongoing health of the group — scheduling meetings, following up between them, tracking recruitment, and keeping the executive director in regular contact with council leadership.
Two: An annual meeting date set a year in advance. Setting the annual meeting date at least a year ahead signals to council members that the organization regards the council as a permanent structure rather than an ad hoc convenience. It also allows members to plan around it, which increases both attendance and the sense that the organization takes the commitment seriously.
Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina offers an instructive model of what this kind of institutionalization looks like over time. In 1992, before he was even elected to Congress, Clyburn held his first fish fry as a thank-you to South Carolina Democrats who couldn't afford the price of the state party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. He anchored the date permanently to that existing event — the fish fry is always held the same night as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner — so the date was never subject to annual renegotiation. Thirty-four years later, Clyburn's World Famous Fish Fry is a nationally covered political institution, drawing presidential candidates and thousands of attendees to a free public gathering in Columbia. The menu has never changed: fried whiting on white bread with mustard or hot sauce.
The nonprofit lesson is in the structure, not the scale. Clyburn institutionalized the gathering in two ways at once — by tying the date to an existing, reliable external anchor so it was never a question, and by grounding the event in a genuine act of gratitude that gave it an authentic purpose its audience could feel. A leadership council whose annual meeting is set twelve months in advance, anchored to a recurring moment in the organization's calendar, and designed around something members genuinely value attending is a council that will still be meeting thirty years from now.
Three: A commitment to meet once a year with each member personally or by phone. Individual check-ins — not just the group annual gathering — are what maintain the personal dimension of council relationships. A member who hears from the organization once a year at the annual meeting and never otherwise is a member who will gradually disengage. A brief annual call or meeting with each person, to share developments and hear their perspective, sustains the relationship and surfaces concerns before they become silent withdrawals.
Four: Ongoing recruitment treated as a routine task. Councils lose members to geography, competing demands, and changing circumstances, and recruitment treated as an emergency when membership lapses is recruitment that always starts from behind. Building new member identification into the regular rhythm of council management — rather than responding to attrition after it has already happened — is what keeps the council at the size and composition it needs.
Five: A clear, substantial, and concrete purpose. Vague councils attract vague commitment and produce vague results. The purpose should be specific enough that any council member can describe it in a sentence to someone who has never heard of the organization. "We are raising $1 million for a new facility" is a concrete purpose. "We support the work of this organization" is not.
Many councils die prematurely of neglect rather than failure — not through any deliberate decision, but through the gradual accumulation of competing priorities that push council maintenance to the margin. The five requirements above are not complex, but they demand consistent attention. Without it, even a council with excellent members and genuine potential will eventually go quiet, because councils, like all volunteer structures, need to be fed. The casebook that follows is a documented account of what happens when they are.
Section 7 of 7 — A Casebook: How an Honorary Council Helped Turn an Agency Around
In 1990, I became the CEO of a nonprofit that was just a few years old. In my first week on the job, a prominent funder told me in no uncertain terms that there was a glut of agencies like ours — agencies with similar missions — and that we should seriously consider folding. I was angry. I didn't want to hear that we were redundant; but in the quiet of my heart I knew the funder had a point, and I also knew that if this agency was to continue, we would have to find a way to distinguish ourselves from the glut of others, and do so quickly. The solution turned out to be an Honorary Council.
The Council's Purpose
We needed advocates to distinguish the agency and raise awareness of our work in the wider community. We knew that community advocacy would keep the organization vibrant and responsive to community needs, and that it would build goodwill among our neighbors, political representatives, and prospective new donors. Successful council members helped build our agency's reputation, influence, and funding base, hosting "parties with a purpose" on our behalf and recruiting new members for our organizational committees. The council's purpose grew over time — not so much by design as by the enthusiasm the members had for the work.
Naming the Council
We were not fond of the name "advisory board" because both words sent the wrong message. Advice was not primarily what we were seeking, though we welcomed it. And we did not want the council to be a board in the governance sense. We chose "Honorary Council" because by allowing the agency to associate with their names, the members were in a real sense honoring us. That framing proved useful in recruitment.
The Council's Mission
The mission of our Honorary Council was to boost the agency's public affairs in three areas: enhanced networking and goodwill among community members; increased credibility through association with and endorsement of the agency; and augmented fundraising, particularly by individual donors.
Structure and Responsibilities
Council membership consisted of fifty-five individuals from a cross-section of professional fields — education, finance, politics, and the wider community. Their names appeared on our stationery and annual reports. The council had no governance or fiduciary responsibility. Members were asked to attend one annual gathering and were encouraged to host a "party with a purpose" at their home or workplace. Six of them — those with the strongest networks — did so regularly, some annually and others every two years.
Issues We Resolved Before Launching
Before launching, we answered three structural questions that proved important to the council's longevity. First, how would the council and the board interact? We elected council co-chairs and invited them to occasionally present at board meetings. Second, who would staff the council? We assigned that responsibility to our development associate, at 25 percent of his overall role — a decision that turned out to be vital, because without dedicated staff attention a council becomes dormant almost immediately. Third, what would our nomination process look like? Senior staff handled it in the first year, then we moved it to the board's nomination committee, where we also set criteria for membership.
Ready, Set, Go
After only two planning meetings, we took the following steps, many of which proved decisive. We created a prospect list with our board, letting the candidates decide whether membership was right for them rather than pre-screening ourselves into a smaller list. We suggested and vetted co-chairs, making gender parity a priority from the outset because women are underrepresented in philanthropic leadership and we wanted to signal our awareness of that. We had phone conversations with candidates before scheduling in-person meetings, to confirm interest first. We mailed invitations only after receiving verbal consent, then invited candidates to a tour of the agency. We followed up to confirm attendance and encouraged everyone to bring a spouse or close friend — we had been told people were more likely to show up with someone, and it proved true. We hosted the initial gathering, secured written commitments, and announced the date for the first annual meeting.
The Results
Within the first two years, our Honorary Council produced an annual return of $250,000, and the revenue continued to grow. Funds came from the members themselves and from others they had asked to give. We set annual benchmarks based on each member's past giving and capacity, and we documented that the council connected us with government leaders and funders we had previously been unable to reach.
The most meaningful outcome, though, was not the cash. We had needed to distinguish ourselves, and we had been unknown — one agency among an acknowledged glut of similar ones. The council's names on our letterhead, combined with their active advocacy in the community, produced a level of credibility we could not have purchased or manufactured. The funder who had told me to consider folding had been right that we needed to distinguish ourselves. The Honorary Council was how we did it.
Conclusion
Legitimacy based on respect through association is a power that all nonprofits possess, and a leadership council is the instrument through which it becomes operational. The council says to the community, through its members' association: we have checked this organization's references, and they are solid. The credibility conferred upon the council's appointees, in turn, endows them with the standing of the organization they have chosen to be associated with — a genuine exchange, in which both sides gain something real.
The council built with the right members, the right purpose, and the minimum infrastructure required to sustain it carries the organization's name and mission into communities, conversations, and relationships that the board and staff cannot reach on their own. That is a form of reach worth building deliberately.
What has your experience been with leadership councils or advisory councils — and what made the difference between one that thrived and one that faded? Share your experience in the comments section of the website.
A Note on Use
This white paper is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with executive directors, development directors, board members, and campaign committee members who may find it useful — provided the author's byline remains intact: By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA. Reproduction in publications, training programs, or institutional materials requires attribution. To request permission or discuss reprint rights, please reach out through the contact page.
