Do the Word

I loved Kristin Ivie’s whole piece on millenial activitism (Is it activism 2.0 or slacktivism?). It’s worth reading in its entirety, but she definitely buries the lead:

Research on what motivates people to give shows that people are more likely to give when there is a difficult event or action required along with the donation.

Let that sink in just a bit.

Research–you know, not anecdotes or common sense or “what we’ve always done”–proves that when you require that champions perform a difficult action in addition to sending in a gift, they are more likely to give than when you just ask them to cut a check.

What pops immediately to my mind are missionaries who present their polished PowerPoint presentations in churches and, when asked by teary-eyed congregation members, “What can we do?”, they reply:

The most important thing I need is your prayers.

Hm.

Dear missionary friend, do you realize that the next time you present your polished PowerPoint presentation in churches, when you are asked by teary-eyed congregation members, “What can we do?”, statistically you have a better shot if you say:

The most important thing I need is for you to fly to Africa with me for a special Christmas outreach I’m planning there next month. We’ll be gone two weeks, and you’ll need to raise $1,000 towards the project above and beyond your airfare.

You know who understood that idea better than anyone?

Jesus.

A certain ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.’ ” He replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

You, dear astute reader, may quickly protest, “Yes, but the rich young ruler said no to Jesus’ high-degree-of-difficulty invite!”

But notice Peter’s reply:

Then Peter said, “Look, we have left our homes and followed you.”

Translation: high-degree-of-difficulty offers were the only kind Jesus made.

This line of thinking is part and parcel of Transformational Giving (TG).

When I was serving as President of the Los Angeles Mission I can recall the flack we took when we did an about-face with our marketing campaign and started telling people:

Look, if you’re serious about changing the situation of homelessness in L.A., it’s going to take more than your check. Your check is necessary but not sufficient. You need to come down to Skid Row the day before Thanksgiving and prepare, serve, and eat a meal with homeless people. Yes–cook the turkey together. Eat it together. Clean up the mess together. Only by mixing and mingling and celebrating with them will you ever be convinced that they’re not a different species.

What was the result of asking for people to come with their hand attached to their check?

• 20% more volunteers showed up.
• Giving to the campaign increased by 12%.

As a direct result of increasing the difficulty of what we were asking for, people gave more.

What would it look like for you to require your champions to pair their next check with an exceedingly difficult deed?

I received a thank you card in the mail today. Handwritten. First class stamp.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Foley,

Thank you so much for your support of [our ministry]. Through kind donations like yours, we are able to feed children who wouldn’t have healthy food. And we have a chance to teach them about the “Bread of Life” who feeds them so they’ll never hunger! May God bless you.

In Christ,
[Missionary names]

It’s the first personal message I’ve received from these missionaries. It comes three months after I stopped supporting them.

I wouldn’t even mention it to you except it’s the second time it happened.

The first time, we made a difficult, painful decision to stop supporting missionaries whom we had supported for three years. We had received only sporadic support letters from them over the years, in addition to receipts from the mission agency that was processing the support payments we were making. In all of those communications we learned virtually nothing about the field we were seeking to impact, since all of the prayer requests related to the missionaries themselves.

We sent a letter four months before the end of the year, indicating we’d be concluding our support at the end of the year, and sharing our reasons why.

No reply.

So with each of our four remaining gifts that year, including a final year-end gift, we dutifully noted that our support would be coming to an end. We even wrote “SECOND TO LAST DONATION” and “FINAL DONATION” on the last two gifts.

After the year ended, we regularly received monthly “overdue letters” from the mission agency, kindly reminding us to send in our support.

Then we received a phone call from someone in the mission agency’s development department letting us know that the president of the agency was in town and wanted to meet with us to thank us for our faithful support.

Then we received a handwritten note from the couple, thanking us for our faithful support.

Then we received a phone call from the couple. From Central Asia. Thanking us for our faithful support.

Notably, none of these things ever happened to us when we were supporting the missionaries faithfully. No calls from the mission agency. No visits from the president. No handwritten notes. No calls from the missionary.

Missionaries assure me they are “too busy” on the field to do these kinds of things.

Except, it appears, when I break up with them.

When I started the series of posts on measurement in TG, I thought I had a week’s worth. Now I realize that it’s far wider and deeper–it’s definitely stretching me and taking me places in TG that I’ve never been before. Hope you’re finding the same to be true for you.

Thought it might be good to take a brief time out from the series to get caught up on a few posts on subjects that have come up as I’ve been cerebrum-deep in the subject of measurement, especially since I’ll be teaching (and recording) the Marketing Your Ministry workshop mid-week this week in Colorado Springs.

(Mission Increase Foundation Giving and Training Officers are teaching it all across the Western US this month, so make sure to check your local listings and sign up for the free workshop in your area.)

The perfect backdrop for the workshop is the piece in the London Telegraph entitled Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide, warns Archbishop Nichols.

(Thanks to The Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet for the tip-off on the article.)

Admittedly the headline sounds like the article could contain the typical Luddite dreck attributed to churches in these kinds of technology issues. But the Archbishop makes a series of powerful observations that are spot on with what we’ll be teaching in the Marketing Your Ministry workshops.

Says the archbishop:

Facebook and MySpace might contribute towards communities, but I’m wary about it. It’s not rounded communication so it won’t build a rounded community. If we mean by community a genuine growing together and a mutual sharing in an interest that is of some significance then it needs more than Facebook.

The quote is directed towards teen’s use of Facebook, but it might as well have been written to nonprofits–especially this next nugget:

We’re losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person’s mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part of community life and living together.

I always hate to use the “f” word (friendship) when talking about nonprofits’ relationships with their champions and partners, since “friendraising” is in my view the most repugnant distortion possible of Transformational Giving. (TG relationships may involve friendship elements, but they are first and foremost mutual accountability relationships.)  Archbishop Nichols’ comment in this regard, however, is way too good not to quote verbatim (and then tattoo on our foreheads):

But friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it’s right.

At times I wonder whether what troubles some ttf-oriented nonprofits and missionaries about TG is precisely this point:  TG relationships are not commodities. They are hard work…and enduring when right.

I suspect that what I personally like less than anything about ttf is the way it commoditizes relationships, taking everything that is good and right and true and enduring about them…and twisting them in the name of raising support.

As Archbishop Nichols observes:

There are echelons of football, as in society, where some players are clearly mercenaries.