We’re four steps in to a comprehensive process to transform your individually focused fundraising/development function into a corporate coaching process. In Step 5, all your hard preparation and change begins to pay off, as champions undertake a year-long process of personal growth and transformation in the cause–a process that gathers momentum every month:

Every month hold a meeting to work through the next of the ten questions generated by the champions.  The homework that each champion (including yourself) should be completing is brought to the meeting, and discussion ensues–along with personal growth in every meeting for each champion.

The homework preparation sheet we recommend is one we created call The Quad Worksheet. It’s based on John Wesley’s Quadrilateral–the idea that each of us brings lenses of Reason, Tradition, Experience, and Revelation to our reading of the Scriptures. As you’ll see when you download the worksheet, it provides a great framework for gathering–and then sharing–information in a group discussion.

For each part of the quadrilateral, your champions should spend time before the meeting answering the question listed, using the sample Quadrilateral worksheet provided.  This is a simple way for your champions (and you!) to work through their own lenses – both in an effort to identify the assumptions they carry in, and in an effort to use those lenses as tools to help answer the questions that Scripture raises.

You’ll want to emphasize with your champions that the goal is not to complete this in the shortest amount of time possible.  Rather, it is to commit to thorough research on each point.

These guidelines might help:

• Coach champions to spend a minimum of one hour on each of the four corners, one corner per week during the month that the group is setting out to find answers to one of the ten questions.
• Challenge your champions to commit to consulting at least one resource for each corner.  It doesn’t matter whether it is a book, a website, a pastor, a nonprofit leader (encourage them to talk not just to you, but to individuals from other organizations involved in the cause), and, of course, friends and family members.
• Encourage them to continue to study the Scriptures during the ten months, in their personal devotional time. Ask them at the start of each meeting to share any insights that have arisen from this process.
• Suggest to champions that they each convene a small group of their own – either of their friends or family or church members – to discuss these questions at the same time that they’re participating in the group.

Here are a couple ideas to pack your meetings with power:

• As the facilitator, follow up with your champions.  Call them during the month and ask what they’re learning.  Challenge them with your own learning, and help them to identify their assumptions.
• Send out articles to your champions – whether they take a favorable position towards what you’re trying to accomplish or not – and help stir the soup.
• During the meeting, don’t just go “around the table” asking each champion to share what they wrote.  Stimulate discussion.  Ask your champions to challenge one another’s findings with findings of their own.  Make every effort to turn your meetings into a place of growth by stimulating friendly and respectful debate.
• Invite guests into the discussion: someone who has participated in one of your programs (not to offer a testimony, but to give their unique perspective as a result of their participation), other nonprofit leaders, a member of the community you are serving or trying to reach.

So where does ten months of these kind of meetings lead? To our next and final post (for now) on the subject of coaching your champions corporately–the “O” (Ownership) level step of helping them to share the process you’ve just modeled for them with others.

Special thanks to .W’s Jesse Medina and Memphis Leadership Foundation’s Larry Lloyd for becoming development blood brothers with me to make this mini-series possible!