Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

At the Mission Increase Foundation, we talk about PEO – leading your people through the stages of Participation, Engagement and Ownership en route to a deeper connection with your cause.  Jesus didn’t use people to get jobs done; Jesus used jobs, situations and experiences to get people done.  That’s what I’m talking about!  Through PEO, we need to provide substantive, intentional growth opportunities to the people God has blessed us with (yes, I’m talking about our donors!) to help them reach their God-given potential connected with our ministry and cause.

Here’s the thing, though... everybody grows differently and we need to keep that in our PEO minds.    

In his book, The Me I Want to Be, John Ortberg reminds us:

"God had Abraham take a walk, Elijah take a nap, Joshua take a lap, and Adam take the rap.  He gave Moses a forty-year time out, he gave David a harp and a dance, and he gave Paul a pen and a scroll.  He wrestled with Jacob, argued with Job, whispered to Elijah, warned Cain, and comforted Hagar.  He gave Aaron an altar, Miriam a song, Gideon a fleece, Peter a name, and Elisha a mantle.  Jesus was stern with the rich young ruler, tender with the woman caught in adultery, patient with the disciples, blistering with the scribes, gentle with the children, and gracious with the thief on the cross.  God never grows two people the same way.  God is a hand-crafter, not a mass producer.  Now it is your turn.”

It’s our turn as ministry leaders to understand our people and to help them grow in specific ways that are consistent with how God made them.  We need to tap into passions, desires and abilities.  As leader Mike Slaughter once said, “With our ministry, we like to discover a person’s burning bush and then pour gasoline all over it.”

This means that, although you develop a ministry-wide PEO Plan, your plan needs to be flexible and open.  Flexible as you continue to learn about your people individually and come to discover what they need to grow.  And – as always – open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, who is always faithful to guide and direct.

For me, reading Ortberg’s chapter entitled, "Find Out How Your Grow", was a real P-E and Ohhhhhhhhh moment.

Blessings on your day!

Don’t you love to watch those infomercials late at night that promise to make your life easier if you spend a few of your hard earned dollars on their product? It’s not that you need what they are selling, but that somehow they make you believe what they are offering is the answer you have been looking for.

If your floors are dirty, every floor sweeper/mop device is surely what you need to get the job done. If your car doesn’t dry quickly enough then that light blue towel will do the trick. Or best yet, if you are out of shape and don’t feel like exercising, you can surely find a device that will shake, bend and stretch you into a svelte new physique.

Nonprofit leaders can fall into this trap as well. Fundraising consultants and organizations promise nonprofit leaders unlimited income in exchange for their expertise. Follow their plan of action (usually one size fits all), and you can have the financial security you have been looking for.

However, in order to do this you need to agree to sign a contract with costs ranging from $14,000 for an initial year on up to well over $100,000 over a five year period. These types of arrangements typically allow you to attend a conference and receive four phone consultations each year (btw – you have to pay for your travel/hotel expenses associated with the conferences you will be attending).

What are the guarantees? And what about the costs connected with implementing these new plans and strategies?

I realize you don’t have the time, and I don’t have the space, to provide possible answers to these questions, but I would like to provide one answer that won’t ask you to sign a contract or pay a fee. At Mission Increase Foundation we have been providing no cost (to you) training for over 10 years. Each year, we provide 6 workshops in a classroom setting (offered 3 times in each of our 7 MIF office locations), and 3 online webinars.

Mission Increase Foundation will coach you in ways to connect with and grow champions for your cause. Through our teaching and consulting, MIF is seeing ministries grow and thrive during these tough economic times. Click here to read what other ministry leaders have to say about our training.

But wait; there’s more! In addition to our free workshops and webinars we are here to help you apply what you learn to your specific organization through our one-hour follow-up coaching calls-for anyone from your organization following each training event. And there’s no catch; no fine print. We exist to help nonprofit organizations grow so that they can in turn grow their champions and each can have greater impact on the causes God calls every Christian to impact.

If you haven’t been to one of our workshops, or haven’t attended in quite some time, register for a workshop in your area today.

And please connect with your local Giving and Training Officer if you have specific questions about Mission Increase Foundation. I'm sure they would be glad to serve you.

I recently heard Greg Boyle speak at my niece’s graduation from a fairly-elite, fairly-wealthy Christian school.  Boyle, in his keynote address, challenged the graduates to venture from their comfortable suburban existence to carry the Gospel to dark and forgotten places. 

The key to real transformation, he said, is not in service, but in kinship.  To paraphrase: “Service of the poor is obvious, it’s to be expected.  But service is just a hallway that leads to the great banquet hall of kinship.”

Service, as important as it is, can keep us at arm’s length. Service can underscore and even perpetuate the classifications of us and them, after all, they need us, and we have the goods to deliver.

Most ministry leaders I work with at Mission Increase Foundation recognize that in their ministry, they need to go beyond service to kinship.  They need to relate to their clients on common footing as humans, and all us of happen to be in desperate need of a Savior, whether rich or poor, male or female, Jew or Greek. Kinship is key.  

Yet how many of these same leaders seek to share this same common ground with their donors?

The Biblical expectation for the nonprofit organization is to actually prefer the needs of the donor above its own.  In Philippians 2:3-4, Paul challenges the Philippians to humbly consider others better than themselves, and to look after the interests of others as well as if they were their own.  Kinship.

But most nonprofits are hard wired to look after their own needs, not the needs of the nonprofit down the street, not the needs of the local church, and certainly not the needs of their donors. Paul models this kinship when, in chapter 4, his interest is in what can be credited to the account of the Philippians in their giving to him.  His concern for them supersedes his concern for his own well-being, though he was writing from prison.

And so it must be for us.  Our concern for our donors—for their spiritual well-being—must supersede our concern for our own ministry needs, for our hopes and dreams and even budgets.

I recently had the privilege of helping to write curriculum for the May Mission Increase Foundation workshops on thanking and receipting.  (To view upcoming workshops, go to www.MissionIncrease.org.)

As part of this process, I studied scripture, deciphered God’s leading, thought through concepts and ideas, and read various pieces of mail.  One letter in particular grabbed my attention, although it wasn’t a receipt or a thank you piece; it was written to a colleague of mine explaining her experience after writing…

                                                $48,000 in checks to three different ministries.

Although I was given permission to share this letter, I’ve adjusted a few minor details and names for the sake of anonymity.

“I wanted to share the story below with someone who would appreciate it and might be able to use it in helping others become better fundraisers.

This year I served as the executor on my great aunt’s estate, dollar for dollar the most generous person I’ve known.  She made $1,000 a month in social security and pension and each month she gave away $1,000.  In her estate she gave 25% to 3 charities and 25% to a sister-in-law.  During her lifetime Judy gave mostly $25 checks with the biggest checks being around $500.  I don’t know if she ever gave $500 to any of these three charities.  I wrote each of the charities a check for $16,000 and included a letter saying Judy had died on April 25, 2009, and asked them to call me when they got the gift and to send a letter acknowledging the estate gift for my files.  I have been shocked by the lack of response or no response.

I wrote a check for $16,000 to her small local church.  The bookkeeper called me when the check arrived.  He was not a good communicator on the phone with a tone that said he was doing his job, not appreciative of Judy’s gift.  He asked if the year-end book statement would serve my purpose as a receipt letter.  I asked him to send a letter that specified that it was an estate gift.  He also said he could send another envelope for a small final distribution next year if we so desired.  A week later I did receive a handwritten note from the pastor.

I wrote a check for $16,000 to a foreign missions organization. The bookkeeper called and left a message that the check had arrived.  Since then I have received two letters from the director to Judy talking to her like she is still alive. He obviously didn’t see or read the letter. 

I wrote a check for $16,000 to a large, national ministry.  I received a computer generated receipt.  That’s it.

I cannot believe these responses.  Please keep up the good work of equipping fundraisers to be good stewards with money and appreciation.”

By the way, it doesn’t matter that these were $16,000 checks – they could have been $6 checks. 

What leads a person to give?  An openness to God’s will; God’s prompting; listening to His voice; desiring to make a difference; taking a step of faith.  Let’s not forget that giving is spiritual.  Even more.  As individuals give they are taking a wonderful step on their spiritual journey.

So… how should that be acknowledged by non-profits?  It seems to me that even a genuine “thank you” might not be the answer.

I’ll pick this up soon.

Even seasoned practitioners of Transformational Giving lose their way sometimes.  Whenever I do, I return to the TG definition.

Transformational Giving is a collaboration between you and God in which He infuses your corporate and personal assets with His grace as you offer them in the way He asks to the people and purposes that He directs. Read MIF VP of Training Eric Foley’s post on the TG definition here.

That word ‘collaboration’ is the one that differentiates TG from most other fundraising.  Collaboration is the start of the PEO road.  And ultimately, collaboration with God is how champions are nurtured and grown on their road to full maturity in Christ relative to any cause.

But here’s the problem.  Most champions are asleep at the wheel.   They are suffering from Sleepy Champion Syndrome (SCS) — a contagious disease they might have caught from you.  Are you permitting or encouraging champions to participate in your cause with little or no collaboration?

Are your champions awake to God’s calling for them or are they sleepwalking? Is your development program based on enabling your champions to interact with your organization while on autopilot? The harsh reality is that many of the secular fundraising practices the Christian nonprofit community has embraced are poor impersonations of donor development.

Think about it — opportunities to sign up for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), monthly receipt packages full of information about what the organization has accomplished, fundraising events that parade big names across the stage while hoping to collect big checks in return for the show — your champions can do all that in their sleep.

But God intends more for them. He has meaningful work for them to do.  Yes, even heroic work that will transform them. But your champions can do nothing heroic while sleepwalking!

EFT has always bugged me a bit, but now I know why.  EFT is the epitome of autopilot. Sign on the dotted line and watch my funds transfer to the organizational bank account.  I don’t even have to think about it.  But, isn’t thinking about my giving part of the point?  Some may say that EFT is a helpful tool for champions who need to learn to give more regularly. Granted; for some the discipline of regular giving may equal growth. But, when it is automatic, I fear the tradeoff is too steep.

With EFT, I can delude myself into believing that I’ve done something good. And to some degree, I probably have given the statistic that the majority of Americans give less than 3% of their income. But giving more than most Americans won’t transform me. With EFT I don’t even have to write the organization’s name on a check, let alone speak to a homeless person, share my faith, or challenge a young woman to consider alternatives to abortion. Those activities may all be somewhat scary but they are also very enlivening because they require collaboration with God and an infusing of His grace. 

EFT is just one way champions catch SCS.  So, dear ministry leader, I implore you, don’t be party to permitting your champions to sleepwalk. Determine today to wake them up and offer them meaningful opportunities to impact your cause. If you do, I predict that they will call you on the phone and ask for more.

Looking for a place to start?  One of the best ways to snap your champions out of autopilot is to change the way you respond to their gifts.  Our workshops this month on Thanking and Receipting and in July on banquests will challenge you to consider ways to wake up your champions. Register today.