Do the Word

We get letters! (OK, emails.) Here’s a particularly good one from Jo Lisa Blossom:

We just attended the TG training and were thinking about ‘highlighting a Champion’ in our newsletters and email updates. I was envisioning meeting with them, getting to know them and why they give (or go) to our cause and then writing up an article with a picture, quotes, etc. This seems like it would encourage TG principle # 7- ‘The relationship between champion and champion is as important as the relationship between champion an organization.’ Other champions would be encouraged and so would the one highlighted. I intend to make the focus what the Lord is doing in that person’s life to lead them in the cause but is this lifting someone ‘up’ besides Christ? Is ‘highlighting a champion’ a good idea?

Quick answer, LJB: Absolutely.

The New Testament consistently holds up imitation as a key component of the discipleship process. Paul urges the Corinthians to imitate him in 1 Corinthians 4:16. The author of Hebrews says (in 6:12), ‘We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.’ (Hebrews 13:7 and 3 John 1:11 are two more great imitation verses, by the way.)

In newsletters, one of the key components of success is writing in such a way that the reader can identify with the subject. In too many of our articles, we write about what our staff is doing or what the recipients of our ministry are doing. The problem with that is, the reader can’t seem himself or herself in that picture. S/he may be inspired, heartstring-tugged, or fascinated. But none of these are central to the New Testament process of discipleship.

Imitation is.

So yes, highlight a champion for the purpose of encouraging imitation. And make sure to choose one who is both giving and going, since you want to hold up individuals to imitate who are ‘all in’.

Here are some ways to do it creatively:

1. Along with the interview, put the champions’ P/E/O chart in the article. Explain what the P/E/O chart is, and invite the reader to download a blank one they can complete for themselves (or call the ministry for help, of course).
2. Avoid asking general questions that result in the usual expected answers. Ask questions that are intentionally designed to draw out answers that lead to growth for the reader. For example, avoid asking, ‘So why did you get involved?’ Everyone reading the newsletter is already involved at a basic level (else they wouldn’t be holding the newsletter in their hands), so that question is not likely to lead to much of anything other than prurient interest. Ask questions like: Do you see yourself as a P, an E, or an O? What were the steps that brought you the most growth? Were you ever tempted to give up? How did God grow you through that temptation?
3. Make sure to include a single, specific action step at the end. If you only profile the champion, readers will think to themselves, ‘That’s very nice.’ Instead, make sure to end by saying, ‘Take the champion challenge! [Champion’s name] said that what took him to the next level of understanding, commitment, and passion was writing a letter to the government of China on behalf of a persecuted believer [or whatever the growth step is that the champion identified]. Here’s your opportunity to take that same step. Go to the website and etc etc…’

Thanks again for your question, JLB. Make sure to send us a link when you post your champion’s profile online!

Even as I traveled to Phoenix to do the day-long Transformational Giving seminar yesterday, I should have been fixated on the joy of having been able to do the seminar in shirt sleeves rather than a suit (way to go, PHX! Our largest crowd and the best weather so far!)

Instead, I’ve been inexplicably fixated this week on David Meerman Scott’s assertion that what we’re all really after is ‘attention for our companies’.

My final word on the discussion, drawn from my truly enjoyable time with Phoenix folks yesterday, comes from Willie Cheng, author of Doing Good Well: What Does (and Does Not) Make Sense in the Nonprofit World.

Cheng contends that there is something nonprofit organizations should want more than attention.

Extinction.

According to Cheng, ‘the ultimate aim of a charity is to be extinct’:

Individual charities are set up to solve specific societal issues, and hence should be working themselves out of a job by finding the solutions.

It’s modulated slightly differently than we would say it (in TG, we’d say that the role of institutions is to build up God’s people and then become extinct when God’s people reach maturity in the cause), but the principle is the same: nonprofits are intended to be nonpermanent. They’re designed to seek extinction, not attention.

What would happen if your nonprofit set a ten year limit on achieving its purpose, at which point it would automatically dissolve?

Or, in a more TG vein, what would happen if your nonprofit set a ten year limit on transmitting its purpose so fully to its champions and partners that it no longer needed to exist?

Perhaps the animosity between churches and nonprofits would decline if nonprofits declared and practiced their impermanence.

Attention for our companies–that’s what David Meerman Scott recently wrote that we all are seeking.

Not so, we replied this week, noting yesterday that Transformational Giving is focused on the champion, not the company (or, in our case, the nonprofit).

Today we focus on the first word in David Meerman Scott’s wish list–Attention–and we contend that what Transformational Giving seeks is something entirely different.

Rather than seeking attention for the company, Transformational Giving seeks transformation for the champion.

Transformational Giving principle #8 (see here for the whole TG Ten list) says, ‘Giving is not the process but rather the result of the process of the champion being comprehensively coached to advance the cause effectively within his or her sphere of influence.’

In traditional marketing/fund raising/sales/public relations, the goal is to generate attention that leads to sales. In Transformational Giving, the goal is individual transformation.

That is,  the champion of the cause (who is a reflection of the organization, not its representative, by the way) facilitates transformation  in those within his or her sphere of influence who witness the change.

Is it really so far-fetched?

World Vision has already been measuring it.

The Bible commends it as how change happens.

And history demonstrates it’s how Christianity spread in the first place.

Jim Daly, President and CEO of Focus on the Family, offered a vivid reminder of this at the commencement ceremony for Colorado Christian University this past weekend. (My wife was receiving her Master’s degree in Counseling at the ceremony, so I was grateful to get good blog fodder at the same time that I was taking in a seminal moment in the life of our family. Go, Mrs. Foley!)

Daly noted that the early church spread so quickly because during plagues, the early church moved in (to feed last meals to dying patients) just as everyone else was moving out. And as men and women in the ancient world tossed their female and handicapped babies in the river, church members fished them out and raised them as their own.

It might be possible to contend that, in so doing, Christians were doing what David Meerman Scott classifies as ‘earning attention’, and that that attention was indeed attention ‘for the company’, the church.

Much more natural, however, would be Paul’s explanation from 2 Corinthians 3:2, in which he himself turned the traditional notion of marketing on its ear:

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.

Transformational Giving doesn’t equip representatives and supporters with brochures. It equips them to be brochures–living brochures–that transform even in the watching.

Attention, in other words, is the poor man’s substitute for transformation.