Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

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.