Do the Word

Role reversal.

That’s the phrase that keeps coming to mind for me as I reflect on the vastly different way that Transformational Giving views and treats the subject of champions lapsing, as compared to how traditional/transactional development deals with ‘lapsed donors’.

As we talked about in yesterday’s post (and when you review it, make sure to check out the comment posted by Mission Increase Foundation Expansion Officer Tracy Nordyke), John’s words about those who were not ‘of us’ and Jesus’ words about shepherds reverse the roles normally played in the lapsed drama by organization and champion.

In traditional/transactional lapsed donor strategy:

• the organization determines what constitutes a lapsed donor. Typically they determine that a donor is ‘lapsed’ when the donor, after having in the past given X gifts in Y period of time, has now ceased altogether from giving over Z period of time.
• the donor is responsible for the lapse due to their inaction. In fact, if their unresponsive behavior keeps up, we usually term them ‘inactive’.

Notice how these two key points are inverted in Transformational Giving:

• In 1 John 2:20, notice what John says is the opposite of not being ‘of us’. It’s not ‘staying with us’. It’s knowing the truth. In other words, activity isn’t the measurement; knowledge is. And knowledge here, of course, means something entirely different than amassing information. It might better be translated by a word far more familiar to us in Transformational Giving, namely: Engagement. More on this as the week unfolds. The key to note for today is that the standard of lapsing is not  set by the organization. It’s set in relation to the truth (to which, I would add, both the organization and the champion are subject. This raises the fascinating spectre of lapsed organizations, which, provocatively,  John raises in Revelation 2:3-5 with regard to the Church at Ephesus.)
• As we noted yesterday, Jesus doesn’t say, ‘Suppose a sheep wanders.’ He says, ‘Suppose a shepherd loses a sheep.’ So the subject and verb here are switched. The emphasis is flipped 180 degrees. The focus is not ‘donor lapsed’. It’s ‘shepherd lost’.

So let’s take stock of where we are as of Day 2 of our lapsed champion odyssey:

• In TG, organizations don’t define what counts as lapsed. Scripture does.
• According to Scripture, organizations can lapse just the same as champions can, even when they are by all appearances quite active.
• The shepherd, not the sheep, has an accountability role not comprehended in traditional/transactional development.

Having fun yet? More tomorrow.

Traditional/transactional fundraising usually defines lapsed donors as those who gave a certain number of gifts over a certain period of time before failing to give for a subsequent period of time.

If that’s a lapsed donor, then the opposite is pretty obvious: a donor who continues to give a certain number of gifts in a certain period of time.

In this way of thinking, the opposite of a lapsed donor is an active one.

Sounds sensible. But is it?

You know me well enough to know that the reason I ask the question is because I intend to turn the traditional/transactional answer on its ear. What may surprise you is that it’s going to take this whole week to do it.

Fortunately, the fact that a multiple-day answer is required doesn’t mean that we have to slog through four days of arcane nonsense before we get to something meaningful. Instead, if I do my job right, we’ll be having major a-has every day this week. The length of the answer is due, in other words, not to the complexity of the question but rather to the degree that it is so close to the heart of God.

To understand this, we have to turn immediately to scripture, where two verses in particular serve as the biblical ‘bookends’ when we talk about lapsed champions.

In 1 John 2:19, John writes, ‘They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had really belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.’

In Luke 15:4, Jesus says, ‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?’

These two verses bookend a very different shelf on which the question of lapsed champions sits.

On the one side, John’s statement helps make clear something that is obscured in most discussions about lapsed champions, namely:

Most individuals labeled as lapsed champions (or donors) by an organization really shouldn’t be classified as lapsed at all.

 For John, and by extension in Transformational Giving, we recognize an entire category of people who were never ‘of’ us, though for a while they were ‘with’ us.

In TG, we call these people Participants.

They may do projects with us. They may give through our organization. They may even be around  for some period of time.

What they don’t do, however, is engage with the cause through us.

As a result, we don’t use the term ‘lapsed’ to describe them. Participants, in other words, don’t lapse by definition. They participate for a time (sometimes even a long time) and either become engaged with the cause, or they just stop participating.

Turn now to the other bookend.

Notice Jesus’ language. It doesn’t speak of a sheep lapsing or wandering.

It speaks of a shepherd losing a sheep. 

As such, TG turns the question of lapsing on its head. Rather than seeing it as a characteristic of the sheep, it sees it as part of the responsibility of the shepherd.

It’s a great fundamental observation:

Sheep wander. Shepherds bring them back.

So when we talk about lapsed champions in TG, we’re talking about you bringing back those who were of you and who have now wandered, as champions are prone to do.

Since this is a very different way of thinking about the question, it stands to reason that we’re going to have a very different way of going about the process–a way so different, in fact, that the opposite of a lapsed donor will quickly be seen to be something more than simply active.

More in tomorrow’s post.

Just finished recording the Mission Increase Foundation DVD on reactivation of lapsed champions. I’ve always liked the subject, but teaching the material really choked me up emotionally in ways I wasn’t expecting.

In next week’s posts I want to share some specific thoughts and counsel from that workshop regarding the reactivation of lapsed champions (the DVD should be ready in two months, Lord permitting, and there’s still time for you to register for the live workshop and next month’s labs all across the MIFsphere).

But what I wanted to highlight today about the subject really does center around the subject of emotion; namely:

What emotion do you feel when you think about champions who have lapsed from involvement in the cause through your ministry?

Do you feel like…

This video clip?

Or do you feel like…

This video clip?

There’s  a lot of recession-motivated talk these days on blogs and in fundraising books and mags about how reactivation of lapsed donors is an efficient, cost-effective way to generate net income more efficiently than new donor acquisition.

And it’s all true.

But when I hear lapsed champions being talked about in that way, I can’t help but be reminded of that first video, above.

And I don’t say that from any high horse. That’s the way I thought about lapsed donor reactivation as recently as a few years ago, as one of my staff reminded me when they showed me the “We haven’t heard from you in the last year, and frankly we’re concerned” letter I had recently recommended to ministries.

But one can’t study Transformational Giving in the Bible without being absolutely whalloped by the reality that God is the God of lost sheep. For crying out loud, Jesus even defines His mission as one of lapsed champion reactivation when He talks about being sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

So in preparation for next week’s posts on lapsed champions, I invite you to join me in praying that God gives us a heart more akin to the second video noted above rather than the first.

It’s with such a heart that tools, techniques, and strategies lose their luster and fade to black, and we tuck the airplane ticket in our shirt pocket and head out to the door to renew a broken relationship, not focused on generating cost effective net income.