Do the Word

In a post last week on D. Michael Henderson and What Mormons Can Teach Us About Major Donor Development, I made a not so subtle recommendation that you buy everything the man ever wrote.

I received a gratifying number of emails from people who ordered Henderson’s Ladder of Faithfulness, from which I quoted in the piece.

Good step.

But it’s not everything the man ever wrote.

So in an effort to coax you into the rest of his catalog, let me quote from Making Disciples One Conversation at a Time on the subject of the kinds of conversations we should be having with our champions as we coach them to full maturity in Christ in our shared cause through the vehicle of a mutual accountability relationship.

First of all, note the centrality of such conversations to your overall effort–and why you can’t expect success if you skimp on them!

Ministry always entails relationships, and relationships require communication. So the way to improve your ministry is to improve your conversations.

Second, recognize that such conversations are something entirely different than friendly chats, nor do they arise spontaneously out of same:

The reason we engage in redemptive discussions with our friends is that both of us are committed to following Jesus. We want to be like Him and to do His will and work. Every time you meet with your friends, you need to keep that objective in mind. All parties to the conversation must agree that this is where the conversation is headed.

In fact, seeking to be spontaneous in such a conversation–because you feel awkward about walking a champion through a P/E/O chart, for example, and prefer to “shoot from the hip”–actually works against you:

Regarding the subject of conversations, in one of my classes a student objected to what he considered regimentation of discussions. ‘I just like to be free to talk about whatever comes up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to be bound by rules. I want to say whatever comes to my mind,’ to which I answered, ‘It’s not all about you.’ Lots of people want to talk, and they do. They drone on and on about whatever strikes their fancy. But self-centered conversations don’t accomplish much. If we want to serve God first, others second, and ourselves last, we need to shape the direction of our discourse.

Coaching conversations follow a delightfully predictable and manageable four-step process:

Here are four elements that every effective conversation should contain:

1. A clear goal
2. Shared information that relates to that goal
3. Strengthening of the relationship
4. Agreement on the next steps toward the goal.

Next, don’t use the coaching call just to “give an update on the ministry” and “let you know how to pray”. Use the call to ask productive questions:

Productive conversations start and end with productive questions. The first words of a verbal encounter set the stage for the rest of the interaction. ‘John, I’m glad we have this time to talk. I know you’re serious about following Jesus, and I know your time is valuable. Let’s make the most of it. What is the most important issue we can discuss today?’ Or you might ask, ‘What’s on the growing edge of your relationship with Christ?’ or ‘Is there a particular decision you need to make or an issue you need to clarify?’ You should also ask, ‘Is there something you sense I should be tackling?’ That insures that the conversation will be mutually beneficial—a discussion between fellow strugglers

Finally, remember that the coaching call itself is just part of a wider process:

The most effective conversations share information before, during, and after the conversation itself. The people who make the most difference in other people’s lives are constantly sending each other supplementary material: books, articles, quotations, personal notes, tapes, or reports. People who are good at this follow up their discussion with a note that reaffirms their discussion, perhaps with an enclosure—an article, a photo, or a news clipping. And, just as often, they send some information prior to actually meeting: ‘John, you mentioned your interest in serving the poor in our own community. Here’s an article on “Neighborhood Networks” that might give you some ideas. We can discuss it when we meet on Tuesday’.

What a fantastic book. Order yourself a copy today, and, while you’re waiting for it to arrive, pick up the phone and call a champion today to put into use what you already learned, above.

There is very little that is heroic about fundraising. And that’s sad, because there should be.

And by heroic, I don’t mean:

• Commendable, touching, or really cool;
• Successful (i.e., raised a lot of money);
• Heart-wrenching (i.e., generates an emotional response).

I mean:

• Heart pounding;
• Changes the very identity of the giver;
• The stuff of legend;

Dan Pallotta, whose Harvard Business Review stuff is always a good read, blogged about that this week in a piece entitled, When Your Goal Is The Impossible:

For two years before I saw the film [Alive, the story of plane crash survivors hiking out of the Andes], I’d had this idea for a 600-mile bicycle ride to raise money for AIDS but was too intimidated to do anything about it. Walking out of the theater, some voice that didn’t seem entirely mine said, “That’s it, we’re going to build the AIDS Ride.” And the next day my staff and I began trying to figure out how to get 500 people to bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It seemed impossible at the time. It hadn’t been done before. But a little over a year later, 478 heroic people of all shapes and sizes, most of whom hadn’t been on a bike in years, finished the 600-mile journey, netting a million dollars for AIDS.

As we rode into West Hollywood together, I couldn’t stop crying.

I would cry at dozens of these kinds of closing ceremonies over the years as tens of thousands of average people completed long journeys after raising large sums of money for urgent causes — both things they never thought they could accomplish when they started.

Why in fundraising do we say that an activity is successful if it raises money and is generally ethical? Isn’t that an exceedingly low standard? Why can’t we say that an activity raising money is a necessary but insufficient condition of calling it a success?

Then we would be doing more than fundraising. We would be doing, you know, development.

As I think back over my development career so far, I find that the most successful campaigns I have been involved in so far have done more than transfer money into a nonprofit’s bank account.

They ennobled people. For a brief moment, people truly became heroes.

They didn’t just get called heroes. And it wasn’t because we stroked them and said, “You are really a hero!”

I mean:

People became heroes.

• If you can describe your fundraising activities and only get choked up by the brochure or PowerPoint and the “take” for the night, not the heroics of those in the moments in the middle…
• If your fundraising doesn’t make your donors better, more capable people…
• If people who participate in your fundraising activities don’t reminisce about them and tell other people about them and describe them as life-changing moments…

…then it’s no wonder that you don’t like the job of fundraising, that you see it as a necessary evil–a vile means to a noble end–rather than a mutual adventure of discovery with your weird and very cool donor friends.

Regular readers of this blog know that my admiration and adoration of the writings of D. Michael Henderson borders on the man-crushy. Dude is flat out brilliant. Read everything he ever wrote. Then read it again.

No, he’s not a ‘fundraising’ writer.

(The best writers on fundraising, in fact, are those who never write about fundraising. They are those who write about things like coaching and discipleship. What makes them great is that they help us to see that we’re holding the wrong end of the scissors, which is why our scissors don’t cut so well. Translation: we focus on fundraising activities, whereas coaching and discipleship focus on the recipient of those activities, i.e., the major donor, or what in Transformational Giving we would call the champion.)

So take a read of Henderson’s ode to Mormon discipleship strategies (noting that Henderson is anything but a Mormon, but he knows a good strategy when he sees one), and ask yourself, “How would my major donor development program look differently if I Mormonized it?”

“The Mormons are growing rapidly because their methods are more biblical than ours. We call ourselves ‘Bible-believing Christians,’ but that’s only half true: we believe the message of the Bible, but we don’t practice the methods Jesus modeled. Here are some things the Mormons do which are more biblical than our evangelical model:

1. Every Mormon is a witness. They tell people about their experience in the church. This is what Jesus said should happen when the Holy Spirit comes: ‘You shall be my witnesses…’
2. Every Mormon is expected to be a missionary. Young Mormons commit two years of their lives to missionary training and on-the-job experience. This is not perceived as something they will do and ‘get it over with.’ No, the two years of missionary service is preparation for an entire life of outreach, service, witness, and evangelism.
3. They meet people in their homes. They don’t call non-Mormons to public meetings. Here’s an interesting statistic: Mormon missionaries going door-to-door report less than one convert for every thousand homes on whose doors they knock. However, when presentations are made in the home of a Mormon friend or relative, the conversion rate is more than 50% Just like Jesus did!
4. In every local ‘ward,’ there are trained evangelists who can be called upon at any time to make a presentation for Mormonism. They’re good at it. They receive special training. These are not professional revivalists who travel around the country giving speeches in churches; these are local Mormons who are evangelizing local prospects. This is the Ephesians 4 pattern of the early church: apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors/teachers.
5. From the very outset, a ‘ladder’ of spiritual development is presented: a seeker is presented a picture of what he or she could become by faithful participation in the Mormon community, and it is a compelling motivator. Jesus did this. ‘Follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.’
6. The invitation to become a Mormon is not based on getting rid of guilt, but on gaining an abundant life. It is not a guilt management system. The focus is not on past sins, but on future fulfillment—not future fulfillment in eternity, but right now. This was Jesus’ message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come; it’s right here, right now’

The quote is from Henderson’s The Ladder of Faithfulness. Make sure to get thyself a copy straightaway–it’s under 10 bucks even.