Fundraising Wisdom from the Desert Fathers: Why You Should Keep Practicing Transformational Giving Even if You’re Really Bad at It

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Call me crazy, but I have a hunch that there may not be a lot of common readership between my blog and the Huffington Post religion section. So as a public service to you, dear reader, I read said religion section and share the tidbits of wisdom that do indeed pop up from time to time therein.

Like Jon M. Sweeney’s recent piece, Practicing the Seasons of the Soul. It’s not a piece about fundraising at all, but, then again, the best writing for fundraisers never is.

So I offer you this excerpt (be sure to read the whole thing, though–what I didn’t include is at least as good as what I did) as inspiration to you if you like the idea of Transformational Giving…and you’ve even tried to put it into practice…but so far success has skillfully eluded you:

There is a profound tale from the Desert Fathers of Christian antiquity that explains why spiritual practice makes sense even in spite of questions without answers:

A young monk approached an older, more adept one and asked, “Father, I am having trouble remembering the instructions that I have been given about living the spiritual life. I ask questions and I listen to the answers and I do what is asked of me, but then, I almost just as quickly forget what I’ve been told! What is the point to trying to learn if I am so simple-minded? Why should I practice when I do not know for certain what is true? Maybe I should just return to my worldly life…”

But the old monk doesn’t give the sort of answer one might suspect. Like a Zen master, he asks the younger man to do something in order to discover for himself the answer to his questions. He points to two empty bottles on a nearby table.

“Take those two bottles. Fill one completely with the oil that we use for our lampstands. As for the other, leave it empty, as it was.”

The young man obediently did as he was told.

Then the old monk said, “Now, take the bottle full of oil and pour it back where it was.” The younger man again did as he was told.

“Do it again,” the elder instructed. “Fill that same bottle that you filled before, once again with oil.” And again he told him to empty the bottle once it was filled. This went on for more than an hour, over and over. Meanwhile the empty bottle sat empty.

With patience, the young man kept doing as he was told. It just so happened that this novice’s job in the community was to clean bottles used for holding lamp oil. He knew all about bottles and oil.

After a while, as they sat together looking on the two bottles now empty, the old monk said, “Please tell me, my son, what you see.”

“I see one bottle that has not held any oil and it is only dusty and dry,” the novice answered.

“But the bottle that I have filled, unfilled, and refilled many times is clean, shining and coated with the sweetness of oil.”

“Precisely!” the old man replied. “In the same way, you benefit from doing these spiritual things even if they make little sense or later pass from your mind. Whether you realize it immediately or not, over time they will change you. Filling yourself with these oils will leave you fragranced.”

Let me hasten to note that it matters supremely what oils you’re using to begin with. Otherwise you might end up using this story to persevere in doing golf tournaments, wine tasting events, or fundraising via selling your soul to Satan.

But having begun with the oil of Transformational Giving, you’ll see that it’s most immediate–and longest-lasting impact–is always how it changes you inside. 

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Storytelling in Fundraising: When Your Donor Responds with These Five Simple Words, You’ve Succeeded

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Books and articles on storytelling and narrative in fundraising are proliferating nearly as quickly as bad storytelling and narrative in fundraising (could there be a connection?). In an effort to bring some rule-of-thumb type clarity to an increasingly foggy subject, permit me to share the five word response you need to be seeking from your hearers each time you speak:

I see myself in you.

In other words, you know you’ve succeeded in your storytelling efforts if at the conclusion of your story your listener feels two things:

  1. “This person has articulated something I believe passionately that I’ve never been able to put into words.”
  2. “This person is like a more mature version of myself. Our stories have a lot in common, only this person is three chapters beyond where I’m at.”

 This is in contrast with the five word response that most fundraisers inadvertently (or–gulp–intentionally!) elicit in response to the stories they tell:

I could never do that.

Sadly, fundraisers feel they’re on the way to fundraising success when, after a presentation, audience members shake their hands and say, “Man, you are great! I could never do what you do.” For the records, that roughly translates into: And I don’t plan to do what you do, or to support you in your doing it, either.

Brian McDonald is the author of The Golden Theme–the best book on storytelling for fundraisers. (Read the whole thing online here or order a paperback copy cheaply from amazon here).

Writes McDonald:

This simple sentence, we are all the same, is the Golden theme that all stories express.

And it is my first belief that the closer a story comes to illuminating this truth, the more powerful and universal it becomes, and the more people are touched by it.

Master organizational storyteller Thaler Pekar puts it, well, masterfully, in her recent post on Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Benefits of Building a Narrative Organization:

In every organization, there is the big story—the organizational narrative—and the smaller stories that support, reiterate, and personalize the larger narrative. Your organization’s narrative is at the core of its values, mission, and actions. Your brand is strengthened when the smaller stories are consistently refreshed and shared. LIVESTRONG, formerly the Lance Armstrong Foundation, offers a terrific example of a strong organizational narrative, consistently supported with stories from cancer survivors and caregivers.

Sum it up and say:

Your story: The big story

Your donors’ stories: The smaller stories

To the degree that donors and potential donors see their smaller stories as aligned and connected to your big story, with your big story just a more mature and developed version than their own, you’re on the way to fundraising success.

To the degree that they don’t, the handshake and hearty words of praise you receive when you step down from the platform are all you’re going to get.

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What’s a Church Congregation Worth? $476,663.24

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Christianity Today ran a fascinating infographic recently that profiled the work of self-described “nonreligious” University of Pennsylvania sociologist Ram Cnaan. Cnaan has been working for years to accurately estimate the economic value of urban congregations to their communities, and he recently upwardly revised his earlier estimate of $140,000.

To $476,663.24.

That’s the average amount of services provided to the community by a typical urban church, in the form of things like:

  • Volunteer hours worked: $94,770
  • Reduced crime: $64,476
  • Divorce prevention: $22,500

Cnaan contends that while the actual numbers in each category are debatable, the real value of his work is that it proves that it’s possible to determine the economic impact of a church on a neighborhood.

Some might pooh-pooh this, either denying the legitimacy of the specific calculations Cnaan proposes ($523 in income produced by trees on the church property?) or worrying that such a calculation could lead to unfavorable restrictions once local governments realize that a church congregation provides much less value to a neighborhood than, say, a Starbuck’s (hard to tell the difference between them and churches sometimes) or–even more provocatively–a mosque. And some might suggest that a church’s real value is in intangible spiritual benefits which defy measurement.

But I’m all for the attempts to calculate. After all, they force us to ask: What are the outcomes we’re seeking? If they’re not reducing divorce and suicide and growing, um, trees, then what are they–and how might we measure them?

My old philosophy prof at Purdue, Dr. David Fairchild, used to say, “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.” What difference does being a Christian make in our lives really, anyway?

In my new Whole Life Offering book, I contend that the difference Christianity makes in our daily lives is an increasing movement towards Christlikeness, which can be measured in the maturity, proportionality, and comprehensiveness of our involvement in the ten disciplines of loving our neighbor and seven disciplines of loving God that the Bible commends to us.

It may not yield a dollar figure like $476,663.24, but it does yield a series of measurables that we can use to compare things like:

  • the relative effectiveness of the discipleship methods we use;
  • the congregational structures in which we undertake such discipleship; and even
  • the way that whole life discipleship impacts our economic distribution, i.e., what impact does growth to maturity in each of these causes have on the percentage of our income that we give away, and where and how we give it?

To that end, Cnaan’s books may be worth us checking out.

Then again, with Cnaan’s Faith-based Social Services: Measures, Assessments, and Effectiveness currently running at a cool $175 per copy, perhaps we’d just be better off bartering for the book in exchange for putting in a few more trees around the church parking lot.

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