P/E/O—comprehensive discipleship that moves the champion into initial Participation with the cause, and then from Participation through Engagement into Ownership of the cause in his/her sphere of influence—is the warp and woof of Transformational Giving.

Check out the following nifty chart from Matt Bates, SoCal Regional Giving and Training Officer for Mission Increase Foundation. He notes with great modesty that it’s still in draft form, but I’d say it’s already the best comparison/contrast chart for understanding how P, E, and O differ in kind rather than in degree.

(When people hear about P/E/O for the first time, they have a tendency to think that we’re talking small/medium/large, good/better/best, or lukewarm/warm/red hot for the cause, and nothing could be further from the truth. There are as many large/best Ps red hot for the cause as there are Es—almost certainly more, in fact—and a P can be tremendously committed at the P level for years. So check out Matt’s chart and git yerself a first class education in P/E/O.)

peo-descriptions (Click that to download the file)

Seems like every day I see a new post from a different nonprofit blogger extolling ‘donor experience’. ‘Donor experience’ typically translates to a series of P level involvement opportunities—great for newbies, but hardly the kind of diet you’ll want to feed your Es and Os. (Reminds one of the milk/meat comeuppance offered in Hebrews 5:12-14.) As Bates demonstrates in his chart, it’s not enough to give champions ‘experiences’. In Christian development practice we need to collaborate with our champions by equipping them to munch on experiences designed to grow them to maturity in a given P/E/O category while drawing them on to the next one.