Do the Word

If you’ve been with the blog for a little while, you’ll recognize the phrase “SPP”, or Signature Participation Project. (If you’re new to the blog or want to find a convenient way to read through all the past posts on creating an SPP for your organization, trying starting here.)

There’s an SPP taking place tomorrow that I think is especially well done:

One Day Without Shoes.

So well does it meet the SPP definition of being understandable in and of itself without any explanation necessary that I don’t even need to describe what it is or what it’s for, nor do you even need to click the link to figure it out. Still, it’s worth clicking through in order to see all the cool tools they have available for champions to participate and spread the cause. You might even be drawn to going shoeless yourself tomorrow.

You know, ever since I wrote the Cookie Book, I receive so many emails and questions from folks involved in international ministries who say, “Well, your book is great for local ministries. But how can you do an SPP for an international ministry?”

Humorously, I wrote the Cookie Book using the example of a local ministry because I developed the SPP practice for the international ministry my wife and I co-founded, so people used to always say to me, “Well your examples are great for international ministries. But how can you do an SPP for a local ministry?”

And indeed, most of the examples of cool SPP’s I cite are for international ministries and projects. In addition to the Shoeless SPP I just noted, make sure to check out Evoke, which is:

…the first massive multiplayer online game that’s based on trying to help people learn more about and act to address global social challenges. Each week, all “Evoke Agents” are sent an urgent message that asks them to learn about a new challenge, take some action to participate in the solution and then imagine a world in which the problem has been solved.

Your new Evoke mission this week, should you choose to accept it:

Create a power grid for Africa.

Too bad local ministries can’t do a cool SPP like that! Pass the cookies, please.

Sigh.

You know my recurring rant:

Christian nonprofits, by virtue of what we ought to know from reading the Scriptures–everything from networking (cf. Body of Christ) to comprehensive involvement (cf. discipleship)–ought to be setting the pace for secular nonprofits to follow along behind jealously.

But this isn’t happening…because we Christian nonprofits are too busy jealously and fearfully following along behind secular nonprofits, copying the traditional transactional fundraising strategies that they are jettisoning…in favor of the very strategies we Christian nonprofits ought to already have been practicing.

I almost suspect on my most suspicious days that it’s because we Christian nonprofits don’t read or apply the Scriptures to our development efforts nearly as seriously or as boldly or as comprehensively or as faithfully as we should.

Anyway, my sigh today is prompted by a forthcoming secular nonprofit website, Jumo, being launched by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who also directed online organizing for the Obama campaign in 2008.

Just see if any of this sounds familiar (i.e., things we’ve been teaching Christian nonprofits for the last several years; not that Hughes has been secretly listening in, but this stuff is just in the air, friend!). Says Hughes:

We are trying to re-imagine how individuals connect to organizations that are working the change the world on the Web…

You mean, connect differently than donor “pins” stuck into a nonprofit “pin cushion” where the key relationship is the financial transaction between the donor and the nonprofit?

The goal with Jumo, said Hughes, is to create longer-term relationships between people and causes.

Connecting people with causes, with nonprofits serving as the platform? But if you don’t treat people like human ATM machines, how will they ever remember to write checks?

“If you can help people discover and truly connect with these organizations and issues, then that is where you really open up a whole set of resources that were previously inaccessible. That is a very different experience from seeing an organization that you already know and giving them $10 bucks,” he said.

But donors are a simple lot, right? If you do anything more than ask them to write a check for the urgent need of the month, they just get get all confused and fold up into a fetal position, don’t they?

From the Obama campaign, Hughes learned that “people want to engage in a more substantive level, if you just open up the information channels,” he said. While the Obama campaign helped enlist voters through the Web in an unprecedented manner, non-profits outside of politics haven’t been able to easily replicate that experience.

But that’s why all the forward-thinking Christian ministries are getting on Facebook Causes, correct?

There have been other attempts to bring social issues into the world of social networking. Among them is Causes, a Facebook application that is popular among non-profits. “Causes does a good job of enabling people to either give some money or to raise some money for a non-profit they already know about,” said Hughes. But to help make deeper connections – and more of a difference – will take a whole new freestanding site, he said.

I’m having an Isaiah 45:4-6 moment, recognizing that God can’t get His own people to embrace and practice biblical champion development strategies because they’re so afraid of running out of money that He turns to Democratic presidential campaigns and secular nonprofit organizations to raise up the principles instead. Fortunately Christian organizations won’t have to wait long to jump on the Jumo bandwagon:

Jumo, which has an informational site up today but will launch in September or October, will help people find out about new organizations and other issues, as well as donate money and skills. He hopes the free site will be particularly useful to organizations that aren’t large enough to hire new media staff of their own.

Donating money and skills as two sides of the same coin. Sigh. Who would have ever thought of that from reading the Scriptures?

Participation–especially how to develop a Signature Participation Project for your organization–is one of the most frequent inquiries we receive on this site. So we write about it a lot.

Engagement was the subject of literally a half-month’s worth of posts on the site last year. (A good place to dig in if you haven’t yet read those is right here.)

But Ownership? As the culmination and intended end and purpose of the Transformational Giving journey of each individual champion–you know, we don’t write about it as much as we should.

So I was especially delighted to happen across the following insight from D. Michael Henderson, one of my favorite authors. Please–buy everything he wrote (which would be the top three books in the search; the nephrology thing is definitely not the same guy). You’ll be the better Transformational Giving practitioner for it. Mike formally writes about discipleship and wouldn’t likely have heard about TG, but darn near everything he writes in these books is better TG material than I produce.

In The Ladder of Faithfulness (a book so short you’ll be able to read it on your lunch break the day you receive it), Mike captures the essence of what we want to convey about ownership in the Transformational Giving process:

There is a certain threshold of spiritual maturity one cannot cross without getting involved in others’ spiritual growth. Followers of Jesus can attain a certain level of spiritual growth by studying the Bible, listening to sermons, praying, and attending classes. However, they will not move ‘up the ladder’ of spiritual formation by focusing on themselves. At some point, they must take responsibility for others’ growth. As they become channels of grace to others, that same grace will transform their own lives and characters

A channel of grace to others in the cause God has given you to champion–with that grace continuing to transform your own life in the process: That is the definition of Ownership in Transformational Giving!