Do the Word

I and my Mission Increase Foundation Giving and Training Officer posse are hotly and heavily planning now for what I have the sneaking suspicion will be the most important workshop in last three years in the development of Transformational Giving, namely:

A January 2010 workshop on Engagement.

I think the Engagement workshop will be even more seminal than the newly updated Transformational Giving (TG) seminar (now on DVD) and the Coach Your Champions book, and here’s why:

The TG seminar and the Coach Your Champions book are TG through and through, and yet both have diggable nuggets that can be dislodged and applied by nonprofits that are still straddling the great gulf between traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) and TG.

Engagement, on the other hand, is a thoroughly crazy body of practice that no one in their right ttf mind would contemplate. To do the kinds of things we’re going to advocate you do in Engagement, you have to have the Apostle Thomas level of commitment to TG:

Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

To plunge into Engagement with your champions is to drink the TG Kool-Aid without a sippy cup lid. I’ve seen ttf devotees who profess interest in Signature Participation Projects and the Realm of P. I’ve even had chats with ttf’ers who nod in agreement when I talk about Ownership, Replication and the Realm of O.

But I’ve never seen a ttf practitioner be able to avoid making the Bill the Cat face when we talk about Engagement.

That’s because Engagement is the sine qua non of Transformational Giving, which is the fancy Latin way of saying that unless we’re doing Engagement as the central element of our development program, we’re really not doing TG.

Much of the cool stuff we’ll be saving for the Engagement workshop. But in the interest of spilling a bean or two, I’ll be devoting my posts over the next two weeks to sharing a thing or two about Engagement, the best and most distinctive part of TG.

We’ll start Monday by asking the crucial core question:

Um, which one is “E” anyway?

China Inland Mission founder Hudson Taylor famously said, “God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack God’s supply.”

This is one of the most commonly cited quotes among Christian organizations when it comes to their fundraising, and it is one of my favorite quotes as well…though for a different reason.

Taylor’s quote is typically understood to mean, “If we just stay faithful to doing the ministry God has given us, we’ll have enough money to pay the bills.”

But notice that’s not quite what Taylor said.

It’s the final phrase that’s the kicker:

God’s supply.

Whoever said that God supplies in clean, crisp, unmarked hundred dollar bills?

A quick check of the Old and the New Testaments reveals surprisingly few occasions where God, like a gracious grandparent commemorating a birthday, sends cash.

One could certainly protest that this is because in Bible times cash was a rarity. But really now…

There’s a common thread that runs through all God’s giving, namely:

When God gives a gift, the recipient must be transformed in order to be able to receive it.

In fact, you’d almost think that what God was seeking to accomplish through His giving was not only provision but transformation…

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Mt 7:9-11)

I suspect one of the grave ways we impoverish ourselves as missionaries and nonprofit ministry organizations is that our engines run only on cash; every other kind of gift (and here I’m not talking only about gifts-in-kind but people, especially the various and sundry kind, offering themselves as if they were treasure–the audacity!) just seems to choke the motor.

Taylor’s promise was not that God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack for our supply. Rather, his contention was that God would supply as a good Father giving good gifts to His children. Kids always want cash, but sometimes parents know that other gifts are far more needed by their children.

Think through the scriptures at the gifts God gave, and how each one required an “engine conversion” for the recipient to be able to run on it.

Think through the gifts God has given your ministry–and is continuing to give your ministry–and ask yourself, “What kind of ‘engine conversion'”–i.e., personal and corporate transformation–“is God calling me/us to in order to be able to ‘run’ on this…without growing weary?”

That kind of approach might lead us to suspect that in the midst of recession there’s really no downturn in giving at all…

I resonate with most everything that Katya Andresen writes, including her recent trend alert post, Impact is the new black.

Says Andresen:

For a select group of funders and major donors – and perhaps mainstream givers, someday – you must show real, measurable impact in a way that enables you to be judged on a social ROI or compared to other causes in effectiveness.

And further:

All funders want reporting. Some foundations and major donors want data on nonprofit impact organized in a way that allows them to compare and contrast charities – or to choose high performing nonprofits.  They are interested in social ROI.  But this is a small demand relative to overall giving.  Most individuals are far too lazy and rushed to want that degree of information.  The vast majority of people give because they care (it’s emotional) and only need basic confirmation that their money will make a difference.  They aren’t going to spend a lot of time analyzing their charity’s performance – heck, they may not even do that with their 401k.  The desire for data on impact or ratings will only gain traction on a grand scale if the insights on performance are reduced to a simple star system or Consumer Report-style bubbles.

My reply:

Necessary…and yet not sufficient.

• Habitat for Humanity continues to grow not only because of impressive social ROI but because they stick a hammer in your chest and tell you it’s your responsibility to build a home for those in your community who don’t have one…and they can show you how to do just that.
• Kiva.org continues to grow not only because of low overhead and high impact but because they create a platform where you can be an international lender…something you can’t be anywhere else.
• Even in child sponsorship for organizations like World Vision and Compassion International, sponsors are clearly making a choice for a kind of impact that can’t be fully quantified through social ROI…but that extends into personal ROI as well.

Impact, in other words, must be measured on two axes. One is social. The other is personal. A nonprofit can attend to first supremely well, providing reports that prove that it is at the head of its class in social impact…and still go out of business. Happens every month, especially in this recession. No one has yet postulated that impact and funding are directly correlated, despite how much our common sense might like to believe they are.

After all, plenty of inefficient (and sometimes even dishonest!) nonprofits are still doing quite well these days, thank you very much. We could chalk this up to slick advertising and the gullibility of some donors in the general public. But far more likely is the possibility that there are a group of nonprofits that fare poorly on the social ROI axis but quite well on the personal impact axis. Such charities can–and should–be exposed, and usually are.

But while we should condemn such charities, we should not praise ones with high social ROI but negligible personal impact. Donors don’t. The law of the donor jungle says that over time, such charities will fall by the wayside as well.

What’s necessary and sufficient for future nonprofit success?

High social ROI plus high personal ROI. Two forms of impact, not just one–that’s the new black.