We’re in the middle of a series of posts about how to create migration (or maturation) plans for your champions and potential champions by drawing upon your own growth journey by which you became a champion for your cause.

In our immediately preceding post, I began to show you how I would draw upon my own growth in Transformational Giving as I develop a maturation plan for a potential Mission Increase Foundation champion. (MIF is the charitable foundation for which I teach and the organization promoting the cause of Transformational Giving. Hope to see you at an upcoming training event, most of which are free.)

I concluded the post by asking: What kind of a maturation step could I develop for a potential MIF champion based on what I experienced as a seven-year old?

Answer:

What happened to me when I was seven was that a cause to which I had been  indirectly related (church) suddenly became available to me as a cause I could experience directly (leading worship in our living room).

If I were to talk with a potential MIF champion and I wanted them to begin to participate in the cause of Transformational Giving, I would ask them:

“Let’s think through the charities you presently support one by one. You don’t even have to tell me what they are. But as you think of each one, I want you to ask yourself, ‘Does my giving here connect me directly to the cause, or is my giving here in lieu of a direction connection?’ For the causes where your giving is currently indirect (likely because you are giving to a nonprofit so that they can connect directly with the cause), why do you suppose you are choosing to be indirectly related to the cause? How does this impact your growth in relation to the cause? And what ideas can you think of to give directly and relate directly to the cause? How would that direct giving change the relationship you have with the nonprofit in question?”

If, for example, someone was giving to a rescue mission to help the homeless, they might ask themselves, “Is this giving connecting me directly to cause of caring for the poor? Or am I doing this giving in lieu of caring directly for the poor?” They might then ask, “Why am I giving indirectly to this cause? What would it look like for me to give directly to the poor?” And that would be a fascinating conversation indeed–worthy of a few blog posts in and of itself.

In any case, that’s how I would use my own experience to create a P-level (Participation level–it’ll make more sense when you read the book) champion maturation step for my cause of TG.

In our next post we’ll push on past my seven year old self to an experience I had in my late teens as I continue to model for you how to draw upon your own maturation journey as a model for your champions and potential champions.