Are Donors Really Looking for Impact…or Vision? (And If So, Do We Even Have One?)

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Pastor Foley

Visionaries can see a world that doesn’t exist. This is the reason we call them visionary – because they can see into the future.  They can imagine products or services not yet invented. They can envision a way of living  different to the way we live now.

Great quote above from Simon Sinek in his Re:Focus post entitled The Visionary’s Dilemma. And it causes me to ask the question–amidst all of the paeans to how donors want IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT from nonprofits (or should want it, since apparently they don’t want it badly enough yet):

Are donors really looking for impact…or could it be genuine vision that they hunger for? And if so, do we know how to share ours in a way that excites them?

Hence what Sinek terms the Visionary’s Dilemma: Visionaries may see the brave new world that only exists in their mind’s eye. But they typically stink at describing it to others.

Sinek offers three really good suggestions for remedying this deficiency. I especially like point 3, which is, sadly, an exceedingly rare skill and practice among visionaries:

1. Words that require thinking should be avoided, words like “convergence,” for example. When someone says that in a sentence, I have to furl my brow and really pay attention.

2. Explain why it matters, not what you’re doing. Who cares if you’re  “developing applications for mobile devices…blah blah blah,” why should I care?

3. And most importantly, always, always speak as if you’re describing an image.  A picture.  A scene.

An image. A picture. A scene. Sinek’s phrase sent me rifling back through an old external hard drive of client proposals and other marketing documents I have written over the years. The following one was written when both Transformational Giving and I were much younger. It was never adopted by the organization to which I presented it. They’re out of business now, though I’m sure that’s sheer coincidence.

Of all the vision pieces I’ve ever written, I have to say that this one–the images, the pictures, the scenes–still captivates me the most.

And I have absolutely no idea why.

We believe in the almost magical power of the shared meal to strengthen community bonds and overcome division.  When people eat together, it’s harder for them to pull further apart.  At times, eating together can collapse boundaries that nothing else overcomes.

We bring many different groups together that are either traditionally at odds or simply strangers:  young people and old; people from different racial backgrounds or economic levels; labor and management; even different gangs and political parties.  When we gather these people together, we don’t preach.  We don’t moderate.  We don’t negotiate.  We simply prepare a hospitable table and let the sharing of a meal work its magic.

We have a variety of programs that operate at a variety of levels in society.

For individuals and families, we offer a monthly package containing all the ingredients necessary to make four delicious, nutritious, complete, and easy-to-prepare meals.  Because of our buying power, we’re able to offer high-quality food products at surprisingly low prices.  In exchange for this, however, participants are required to pledge that at least one of the meals will be used to bridge a boundary.  This hardly has to be anything so grand as hosting rival gangs at one’s house; in fact, one of the most important boundaries we work to overcome is the increasingly fractionalization of the American family: Agreeing to prepare, serve, and eat a meal with one’s own family once a week will fulfill the package requirement.

At a local level, we work to help churches and other community-based organizations rediscover the lost art of hospitality.  At the most basic level, that means that participants pick up their monthly meal packages there.  At a more advanced level, we equip these groups to host meals that strengthen bonds and overcome division in their communities—Muslims dining with Christians, for example, or Koreans dining with Americans.

At a wider community level, we work to host special events that recapture the transforming power of a community gathered at table.  Our annual Great Day of Thanksgiving, for example, seeks to restore the lost power of this great holiday to draw together whole communities.  Today, Thanksgiving has become a highly privatized family affair, but this is far away from the events of the first Thanksgiving in which an entire community gathered together across ethnic and economic boundaries to give thanks for the goodness they had received in the past year.  By hosting community-wide Thanksgiving meals, we see the holiday re-imbued with its original, almost breathtaking significance.

At a national and international level, we participate in high profile opportunities to bring at times warring factions to eat around the same table.

Further, our catalog serves as a thoughtful resource not only for treasured items like table settings, utensils, and high quality food materials like our own private label bread, but also as a gathering together of everything from cookbooks to scholarly writings about the power of a shared meal and recovering the lost art of hospitality.  Our financial base consists of revenues from meals package and catalog sales, as well as grants and donations we receive from private foundations and donors who share our conviction about the power of a shared meal.

Man. Someone should really bring that vision to life someday. Someone…

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Big-Time Blow for TG: Pennsylvania Governor Approves Bake Sale Crutch for Churches

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Pastor Foley

Everybody likes pie.

True, that.

The quote comes from Pastor Mike Greb of St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in Philadelphia, courtesy of a Christianity Today article that announces Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendel’s signing into law a bill that lets churches sell home-cooked food at bake sales without fear of being shut down by the health department.

I like pie, too. My wife and daughter just made a killer key lime pie last week. It’s the rest of Pastor Greb’s quote that doesn’t sit quite as well in my stomach:

“These fundraisers are our survival,” Greb said. “In tough economic times, they keep the doors open and the lights on.”

Hm.

Please don’t misunderstand: I’m deeply concerned in my gut for the 1 in 7 US congregations that are flirting with closure in the midst of this present economic gut-punch.

But since when did pie become our financial lifeline?

“In early 2009, an inspector from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture shut down a St Cecilia’s Lenten bake sale,” notes CT’s Trevor Persaud. “Since the food was coming from a non-state-inspected kitchen, the state government considered it a ‘potentially hazardous substance.'”

It is a hazardous substance–when it’s used as a financial lifeline.

When a church or a nonprofit turns to traditional transactional non-cause related ways to support its cause-related mission–whether through jog-a-thons, fruitcake drives, golf scrambles, or even the sale of one of my wife and daughter’s priceless key lime pies–it robs its constituents of the opportunity to learn ever more deeply–and share ever more broadly with potential new constituents–the truth of Jesus’ statement, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Even when what one is receiving is a yummy pie.

In this ruling, the church lost. As much as we don’t like persecution–even pie persecution–it’s what has always driven us on to new levels of scriptural obedience and creativity…and greater distance from the tools, techniques, and strategies of the world. Until we hit Acts Chapter 8, Christianity is a tiny one-city sect. When persecution hits, Christianity hits the world scene.

So is it really true that without pie to sell, our lights would flicker out and our doors would close?

If so, perhaps our lights may already be dimmer than we realize.

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Passion Check

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Pastor Foley

So as you may have surmised from my post earlier this week, I went through a great season for soul searching earlier this year. I asked a question that can be traced back in some form or fashion to St. John Of The Cross, namely:

What can you not not do?

In other words, if–heaven forbid–you found out you had a week left to live, what would remain on your to-do list after you crossed out everything you could “not do”, if you catch my meaning?

More precisely for folks in our nonprofit neck of the woods:

Where does your passion, your gifting, your very wiring, intersect with your organization and its mission?

Let me share a chapter from my story and then ask you a question about the chapter of your own story that you’re presently in:

In 1992, I moved to Indianapolis to be assigned to my second pastorate at a church that was slated by my denomination to be closed.  I was supposed to be the last pastor.  The one to come in and turn out the lights.  The average age of the congregation—no joke—was 75.  Attendance was no more than 25 every week.  The building was leaking, creaking, and falling down.

The only problem was, those 25 old folks were the stubbornest people I’ve ever met.  They had no interest in closing down and considered the idea completely objectionable.  In the face of mountains of common sense and evidence to the contrary, they still believed in that place and had no intention of locking the doors for good.

Problem was, they had no idea how to turn things around.

Other problem was, neither did I.  On the face of it, there didn’t seem to be much of a good reason for them to continue.  There were other churches, better churches nearby.  The building was literally unsalvageable.  One visit from the city, should they have ever cared enough to darken that part of the city of Indianapolis, which they never did.

So why keep going?

I begin to research the history of that church for some kind of answer, really more out of desperation than anything.  Turns out, it was once a great church—a huge church.  A vibrant church.  900 kids in Sunday School alone.  It was the axis on which the whole neighborhood of Woodside turned.

And that, it turned out, was just the issue.

There was no Woodside neighborhood anymore.  Or so the city said, anyway.  Honest to God truth, on the city map of Indianapolis, we were the spot underneath the compass.  True story.  So as the neighborhood ceased to exist, so did the church.  It was the church of a neighborhood that was no more.

But researching the history of the place opened my eyes to something new.

That neighborhood still existed.  It could only be seen by those twenty five seniors, but it was real.  Sure, it looked funny.  A huge coal plant gobbled up most of it.  But there were people who worked there.  And a factory.  People there, too.  A motley assortment of houses containing transients who tried to stay one step ahead of landlords who tried to evict them once they got in there for a month and never paid the rent, which they had no intention to pay, anyway, when they first moved in.

People there, too.

And once my eyes were open, I became the pastor to that church and to that neighborhood.  And in less than two years we became the fastest growing church in our area and a poster child for urban church renewal in our denominational jurisdiction.  We had some denominational execs come to visit us and ask, “So which denominational program of ours are you using that’s bringing you all this success?”

Hm.

Now, my question to you:

What was the passion that started your organization originally?

What was the passion that started you in the organization originally?

Do you remember?

Have you fallen far from it?

Does that make you wistful?

1“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. 4Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.

Jesus, in Revelation 2:1-4

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