Do the Word

The nonprofit sector’s commitment to informing is best seen in its love of newsletters. Newsletters are great for informing donors. They are not so great, however, for educating champions.

What is the difference between education and information?

I like the way the difference is described on worldeducationsites.com. Information, says the site, is the acquisition of new knowledge. Proper education requires information but goes beyond it–way beyond it, as the site notes:

Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation. Education also refers to the, facilitation of realization of self-potential and talents of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy, applied research related to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, computer science, linguistics, sociology and anthropology.

That, my dear champion, is hard to pull off in a newsletter.

(It is not, however, impossible, as Mission Increase Foundation Regional Giving and Training Officer Matt Bates notes in his Thoughts on the Nonprofit Newsletter.)

The fundamental difference between informing and educating is the outcome:

• When a champion is informed, s/he possesses knowledge.
• When a champion is educated, s/he possesses not only knowledge but the critical judgment and values maturity to know how to act upon that knowledge in such a way that the cause is advanced.

Nonprofit ministries tend to make two heinous errors by conflating information and education:

1. Nonprofit ministry leaders say, “I don’t ask anyone for money. I just share the need and leave it to the person to pray how to respond.” Sounds holy, but it’s really an exercise in wholesale negligence. We who know the cause well have the responsibility not only of informing our Christian brothers and sisters about the need but also of educating them why the need exists, what the Bible calls each Christian to do in relation to the cause, and the range of options of how the listener can respond. Else how will they reach full maturity in Christ in relation to the cause?
2. Nonprofit ministry leaders typically inform Christians about a situation and then ask them to give and pray. But such an approach also leaves out the education step. Even if I give and pray, I am in most cases no more able to understand and act upon that challenge in the future than before I was asked. The nonprofit ministry may be better funded and supported with prayer, but the giver himself or herself is still wholly dependent on the nonprofit ministry to know what to do and when to do it. That state of permanent adolescence is never commended in the scripture.

Education, then, is one of the three key components of Engagement. You know that you have educated rather than simply informed when the end result of the process is that the champion is able to bring others to full maturity in the cause–the state of champion development known as “O”, or ownership.

We nonprofit ministries would do well to ponder Hebrews 5:11-14 as we ask, Are our champions living on the milk of information…or the solid food of education in relation to the cause?

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Equip, Educate, and Experience are the three essential elements of Engagement.

(Today’s blog is sponsored by the letter E?)

Of those many E’s in that initial sentence, the one that trips up nonprofits the most is Equip.

Reason:

Our traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) heritage causes us to confuse equipping with encouragement.

That is, a cornerstone of ttf is the sychophantic relationship between fundraiser and donor.

Adj. 1. sycophantic – attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery

bootlicking, fawning, obsequious, toadyish

Adj. 1. sycophantic – attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery. Synonyms: bootlicking, fawning, obsequious, toadyish

We’re taught to laugh at major donor and prospective major donor’s jokes…send birthday cards on their children’s birthdays…and engage in a detestable practice known as “friendraising” in which we befriend those whom we believe can give us lots of money.

Needless to say, this doesn’t put us in a particularly advantageous position to hold individuals accountable, subject them to strenuous training, coach them to do things they are really uncomfortable doing…and then drill them when they fall short. These are all the things any coach must do, and it’s certainly no less true in TG coaching where our goal is to equip individuals to grow comprehensively into the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause.

That’s a matter completely different from encouragement.

What could be wrong with encouragement? After it, doesn’t everyone need to be encouraged?

Make no mistake: encouragement is a great accessory to equipping. It is, however, a deadly substitute.

Consider:

I’ve been talking with a ministry for the last couple of weeks.

The ministry had anointed a champion (a board member no less!) to coordinate a banquet using the Mission Increase Foundation model.

Good move!

Bad move: The ministry sent the champion the MIF fundraising banquet manual and asked him to read it. They checked in by phone to see if he had any questions. Then they checked in with him every week or two to see how it was going.

“Great!” he would say.

Until…

Until the time of the banquet drew night. Then he noted that he had lost his job and that he had had to move to a different state. He had some friends still working on the banquet in the original state, of course, but he himself hadn’t been able to devote the kind of time to it that he needed. Could the banquet date be rescheduled?

Yes, said the helpful ministry. So the date was rescheduled, and the check-in process began again in earnest.

Until…

Until the time of the rescheduled banquet drew nigh, at which point the champion acknowledged that he really didn’t have a whole lot of table sponsors, and there wasn’t really anyone who was confirmed to come.

The ministry, on the hook for $12,000 in banquet costs, contemplated its next move. Should it cancel the banquet and eat the loss? Should it plow ahead and try to recoup something? anything?

“I think we’ll do great,” assured the champion. “There’s a lot of people who will come. Trust me.”

Encouragement can be very expensive, indeed.

In contrast, TG Principle 5 says:

Transformational Giving relationship between a champion and an organization is primarily a peer-level accountability relationship, not merely a friendship or a mutual admiration society.

And equipping is at the heart of that accountability relationship.

When a champion wants to host a banquet for us, we help them count the cost. We mentor and coach them through the process. Due dates. Metrics. Deliverables. The occasional strained phone call. Times they want to give up, but we don’t let them. Times they want to vary from the model, but we say no. We’re coaches after all, not permissive parents.

Equipping is the process of collaborating with the champion on a detailed, structured plan with dates and metrics where we help the champion identify:

• What does fullness in Christ in relation to the cause look like, according to the scriptures?
• Where am I at presently, in contrast?
• What are the steps that I need to and am willing to take to move from where I am to where Christ calls me to be in relation to the cause, according to the scriptures?

That phrase, “according to the scriptures”, is key. We’re not coaching champions to achieve their passion in relation to the cause. We’re coaching champions to achieve their calling, which is something distinguishable from passion. God doesn’t call us to do the things we’re passionate about. He calls us to do the things He’s passionate about, and, in doing those things, remarkably, His passions become our passions.

P/E/O charts are the heart of equipping in TG. The Coach Your Champions book shows how to develop one for your ministry.

Ministries often ask me, “Do I really need to do a P/E/O chart with each Engaged champion?”

My reply: “Only the ones you want to see grow.”

The Participation (P) phase of Transformational Giving (TG) is all about champions being recruited into a cause by means of a project. The Ownership (O) phase of TG is all about champions recruiting others into a cause by means of a project.

The Engagement (E) phase of TG sits in between P and O. Omit it and you have the next wave of traditional transactional fundraising (ttf), as well as an explanation for 90% of nonprofit social media strategies.

In other words, ttf is rapidly moving towards a P-O model of donor involvement: empower the individual to own a project, and let him or her recruit everyone else to join in.

Problem is, it’s a counterfeit kind of ownership: the donor gets to own the project…but the nonprofit continues to own the cause.

Why?

Because in the ttf mindset the donor can’t possibly be expected to understand the complexities of the cause. They lack the personal experience and education to act in such a way that the cause is genuinely, seriously impacted and social ROI is created.

In ttf, it is axiomatic that organizations create social ROI, not individuals. Individuals invest, and according to ttf’ers, the wave of the future is that they’re given better data to invest in the orgs that create the most social ROI.

But you did not so learn TG.

In TG, individuals create social ROI, not organizations. Organizations are the ones doing the investing, and what they are investing in is individual champions.

The Engagement (E) phase is the crucial differentiator. It’s the piece that ttf cannot replicate (and, truly, has no interest in replicating).

E is where champions are trained to impact the cause. It’s where they live out Ephesians 2 and 4 by being coached to carry out the works God has prepared them (not orgs) to do since before the foundation of the world.

To achieve this, three elements must be present in any Engagement strategy. Get two out of three of these and you still fall short. Get all three and you still fall short unless the Holy Spirit shows up. After all, when the goal is transformation, we can foster the conditions for it…but God must bring the increase.

The three elements that are co-essential for Engagement are as follows:

• Equipping
• Educating
• Experiencing

Sadly, because of our ttf conditioning, we’re prone to mis-read the above list as follows:

• We substitute Encouragement for Equipping
• We substite Informing for Educating
• We substitute Emotion for Experiencing

To these three false cognates and the three true embodiments we now turn in each of our next three posts.