Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

Every day I hear about wonderful ministries doing remarkable things.  So what does it take to get my attention and get me involved?  Genuine cause coaching – someone taking the time to educate me about a Biblical cause and providing me meaningful ways to engage in it.

Gary Haugen, president and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), gets this.  When he visited my church last month, he delivered, hands-down, one of the best presentations on a particular cause I’ve ever heard.  Why was I so impressed?  Instead of talking about what IJM was doing to stop human trafficking, Haugen focused on what he clearly sees is his real job – engaging God’s people in the Biblical cause of justice and liberty.  While most nonprofit leaders still confuse their organization for their cause, Haugen took the time to educate and equip me about the cause of justice – rarely even speaking the name of IJM.  He looked at Biblical examples and language for each Christian’s role seeking justice and liberty for the oppressed.

What Haugen and IJM did equally well was the follow-up.  After he spoke, there was an IJM table filled with meaningful opportunities for me to get immediately involved.  Right on the spot, I was able to sign a prepared postcard to my representative in Congress urging support of The Child Protection Compact Act.   I also bought Haugen’s book, Good News About Injustice, that had a wealth of information in the appendices alone to help readers learn, explore and engage in the cause – everything from tools for developing a simple action plan to advice to students considering a career in international human rights. 

This experience prompted me to discuss the cause with Justin Hime, MIF’s GTO in Raleigh, North Carolina, who’d recently encountered the cause in a new way as well.  Don’t let this slip by you – because of our recent encounters with this cause – two ministry professionals, whose jobs involve daily contact with Christian ministries, were prompted to begin spreading the cause in their own spheres of influence.  Justin observed that by comparison those involved in the cause of justice have mastered the art of articulating their cause. We noticed how well we, as relatively new champions, had been prepped with the causal language that allowed us to have a spirited and meaningful discussion.   Because a Cause Coach had worked with Justin, I learned from him that the three biggest commodities in the world are guns, drugs and women.   Because of Gary Haugen’s visit to my church, I was able to fill in some opportunities for action.  Staggering information that incites action; I want to do something. And isn’t that what IJM wants? More importantly, isn’t that what God wants?

Hats off to Gary Haugen and IJM for being a shining example of cause coaching!

This month MIF is offering workshops on Fundraising Banquets. While executing an effective banquet is the main focus of the workshop, a Big Idea this month is the fact that every speaker at every event your organization holds should be a coach for your cause. Even if you don’t have a banquet on your calendar, the workshop will help you and any of your champions become coaches for your cause. Register here today.

I recently came across Elevator Pitches For Good Causes, featured in the April 16 edition of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and it struck a chord.  The article features eight charity veterans sharing their pitches on video.  According to the article:

“Most nonprofit executives have an elevator pitch—a short speech that explains their organzations' work to people they meet on an elevator, at a social event, or at a conference. But even the most seasoned pro is usually looking to refine his or her pitch.”

Watch a few or all of them and see what you think.  My opinion is that the majority of these pitches represents a boring, traditional marketing brochure that has been memorized and regurgitated.  Most of these pitches, like ineffective marketing brochures, are:

-          Organization-focused, clogged with seemingly unimportant details such as staff size, client base, and years in existence

-          Mission-focused, meaning the emphasis is placed on services currently provided by the organization

-          Filled with jargon, academic language, or insider phrases that the average listener will not easily comprehend

-          Drawing a line between the expert staff who do the work and the listener who is relegated to the role of bystander

How would your pitch size up to the features listed above?  Assuming you are inspired to spend some time refining yours (you are inspired, aren’t you??), below are some thoughts on how to strengthen your elevator speech.  It should be:

-          Cause focused.  Listeners care about problems and issues in their communities.  Help them connect directly to the cause of teen pregnancy, drug use, homelessness, the persecuted church, etc.  Leave out the unnecessary details about your organization until you are asked about it.

-          Vision-focused.  Help your listener catch the dream of where you are headed and what you aim to accomplish in the future with respect to your cause; help them clearly see that you need their help – working alongside you - to impact the cause and get to this future place.

-          Simple to understand.  The fifth grader next door should be able to understand your language and generally repeat back to you the same pitch

If you want an excellent, in-depth look at how to effectively communicate about your work, check out the book, Made To Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. 

Take some time to refine your elevator pitch!  And remember that the tips above apply equally to other communications like newsletters, appeals, and websites!

One of the byproducts of being an officer of a foundation is that I get included on loads of nonprofit e-mailing lists.  I don’t complain about this, in fact I encourage it, for three reasons:

1. I find these e-newsletters and e-solicitations to be a bottomless source of examples—both good and bad—for my work as one who trains nonprofits in fundraising
2. I become exposed to organizations that might be good recipients of an MIF grant, organizations that I otherwise wouldn’t know much about if I wasn’t included in their communications
3. I learn really cool stuff about the things I'm passionate about.

Unfortunately, of the dozens of nonprofits that send me their material, I can count on one hand (while holding chopsticks) the number of nonprofits that reliably land in the third category.

In the past month at Mission Increase Foundation, we’ve been training nonprofits on grantwriting, and one of the key lessons is to understand that foundations have a mission and a passionate commitment to a cause, so as nonprofit leaders you should become reliable and recognized sources of expert information in that cause.

But why is this so uncommon?

Sadly, nonprofit leaders are typically more committed to their particular organizations than they are to their cause, so foundation leaders have come to see them as provincial, and therefore biased in their communications.  And frankly, we tire of the organization-centric nature of most nonprofit communications—which wrongly assume that we foundations exist to give them money to carry out their work—so we’ve learned to ignore them.

One of the exceptions is the e-newsletter I get every month from Rudy Carrasco, an example of which you can read here.  Rudy mentions his organization's events and his speaking engagements, but he also includes links to items that directly impact his cause, which is Christian community-based development.  Rudy assumes if you are on his list, you care about these things too, so he wants to share them with you.  Then he includes a Bible verse and a cute photo of one of his kids. 

Does Rudy’s approach work?  Well, I can tell you I forwarded his email to foundation colleagues all across the country because I wanted them to read the “better vision for short-term missions” link.  These colleagues now know Rudy and his organization not because he did such a great job representing his organization, but because he pointed us to useful and stimulating information on the cause.  And because he does this consistently, I look forward to each of his e-newsletters, which is not something I can say for many organizations.

Marketing maven Seth Godin recently offered a blog posting on the Pareto principle, which you’ve no doubt seen applied in marketing theory, that suggests that for many events roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, by offering some interesting case studies from the book industry.Unlike Godin, I don’t have the #1 rated marketing blog as measured by Advertising Age, but permit me to take issue with his closing line:  “Don't treat people the same, find the ones that matter...

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Recently MIF taught a great workshop on the topic of marketing (you can see some of my prior posts on marketing here) so I guess it's still on my mind.  In fact, after seeing several blog posts across the web about some marketing Doctors Without Borders (DWB) is doing, I can't help but address it myself adding a twist of Transformational Giving (TG) thinking.DWB is getting a ton of press because of their recent video ad entitled "boy".  The scene for the entire 59 seconds is a bullet-ridden...

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