Do the Word

Got a great-and-sobering note from a dear brother of mine–a leader at a great missions agency–this week.

Subject? The traditional dial-a-church model of missionary funding is becoming such an exercise in futility that it’s really best termed SPAM.

Here’s the note:

‘We’ve been calling 200-300 churches a week and getting one service out of that.’

That’s the quote that was ringing in my head when I woke up this morning. Last night on our conference call with [a couple of our missionaries] I asked them how [their support raising] was going. That was [one missionary’s] reply.

When I think about my job and think of having to make two to three hundred cold calls a week and getting a ‘no’ every time but one, I wonder just how long I would last. I once sent out one hundred resumes in a month and the feeling of rejection was overwhelming.

As a [mission leadership team] we have had discussions about not wanting to SPAM our constituency. With our past model, if [every missionary raising their support] was as zealous as [this missionary], then from our 60 plus missionaries on home assignment, we would have 12,000 to 18,000 cold calls going out each week to churches asking them for a chance to speak in their service. Is a picture forming in your mind?

The current missions support raising model is on track to run out of gas in our generation. In its last gasp it is managing to cheese off a lot of churches who are ever more tired of and guarded against missionaries who are still taught this funding model as if it were Gospel.

Sadly, the greatest casualty may be the budding missionaries on the receiving end of all those no’s from churches.

I wasn’t surprised to hear from another staffer at the same agency (which is in the process of scrapping the traditional fundraising approach in favor of a Transformational Giving model) that one young couple preparing for missionary service interviewed three agencies before choosing this one.

The basis for the couple’s decision?

They couldn’t stomach the traditional approach to fundraising but resonated deeply with the TG approach.

Read Frank Viola’s From Eternity To Here while slogging away on the Precor machine at the Y tonight. The book’s dedicated to enabling Christians to see the church as what Frank calls ‘God’s ageless purpose’. Some moving passages in there, truly.

Development guy that I am, the voice in my head kept saying, ‘Dang, do we ever need that in fundraising.’ I consider it part of my duty to try to read each new book on fundraising that comes out, as well as checking numerous blog posts each day. I find that it’s harder and harder to read the stuff, however,as what all of it seems to have in common is an unshakeable sense of the ‘donor’ (blech) as human ATM machine.

• In the cult branding/marketing evangelism movement, the donor is a passionate ATM machine
• In the stewardship movement, the donor is a disciplined ATM machine
• In the friendraising movement, the donor is a very well affirmed ATM machine
• In mass fundraising, the donor is on average still a reasonably reliable ATM machine, especially if you apply the best tricks and techniques
• In the upper crust of fundraising and philanthropy, it takes some effort to identify the right ATM machine and even more effort to learn the secret PIN code that sets the large denomination bills kerchunking out the chute, but the allure of that kerchunk seems well nigh irresistable to many nonprofits (Christian nonprofits forming no exception, sadly)

Oughtn’t we to be troubled that this is the diminutive (and just plain dim) light in which we view the saints of God?

I don’t normally read Frank’s stuff, but I picked up the book out of a sense that every so often I just need to remind myself who these folks are with whom we’re deailing. Terms like ‘regular’, ‘middle’, and ‘major’ ‘donor’ sound about like a wind-up monkey with clanging cymbals when read against the backdrop of passages like Frank’s paraphrase of Ephesians 5:25-27:

Jesus Christ loved His bride and gave Himself to die for her. He died to make her holy and pure. He cleansed her with His own blood, washing away every sin she ever committed or will commit. He cleansed and washed her so that He could present to Himself a glorious church…a church full of heavenly glory. She is now without spot in His eyes. She has no stain upon her. She is also without wrinkle. That is, there is nothing old in her. She is new and forever young, free from the aging process of the fall. She is void of all spots, all wrinkles, or ‘any such thing’–which includes warts, moles, scars, knots, etc. She, the bride of Jesus Christ of which you are a part, is utterly flawless. She is as holy as the face of God..and without blemish.

Two weeks away from our first US-based Transformational Giving seminar (still time to sign up), and I find that the term ‘donor’, which I used to be unable not to say when I talked about development, now disgusts me.

What we need is not new tools, techniques, and strategies for raising more money from donors for the nonprofits we consider precious. What we need is a revelation of how God sees champions (individual Christians) and partners (organizations and local expressions of the body of Christ) such that our passion is to raise up and equip His saints, and we are willing to cast our nonprofit organization crowns at His feet as we join Him in preparing His bride to walk in every good work He has prepared for her–giving included.

Two of my dearest friends and most respected colleagues recently paid a visit to the headquarters of a denomination that had in the past closed its churches to fundraising speaking opportunities from the nonprofit ministry my two friends represent.

Reason? The denomination only funds its own denominational projects, and support for those had been flagging. (Hmm… There’s a point to be made there somewhere…)

My two friends were visiting the denomination to share the nonprofit ministry’s shift from traditional fundraising to Transformational Giving.

‘We don’t want to come in to pursue money from your churches,’ said my friend to the denomination’s leader. ‘We really want to come in and help equip your churches to grow in this cause we share.’

He was cut off, however, by the denomination’s leader, who replied, ‘We all know you’re really just doing this to raise money.’

Wow! Talk about a challenging reply to field!

That’s why I always avoid saying to a partner or champion (or potential partner or champion), ‘I’m not here just trying to raise money,’ even though that statement is true. Individuals and churches are rightly skeptical of such an approach and will instead listen quite guardedly as they wait for the other (fundraising) foot to fall.

Or they’ll just cut you off and accuse you of rank dishonesty, as in the case of the denominational leader my friends encountered.

So how would I approach the kind of visit my friends made?

I would say this to the denomination leader:

According to Barna Group research, church members are shifting their giving away from churches and to nonprofits at an astonishing rate. Three years ago the average Christian was giving 84 cents of every donation dollar to the church. Today, that’s plummeted to 76 cents of every donation dollar, and the trend is accelerating.

I suppose it might be possible to try to stop this by blocking nonprofits from interacting with your church members, but I’m not sure how practical that is, since most nonprofits interact with folks by mail, email, banquets, and personal solicitation outside of Sunday morning. You might could take to the pulpit and discourage people from giving outside the church, but that might could backfire on you and strike your congregation as self-serving. These days church members are often more suspicious of church fundraising than they are of nonprofits, after all.

So one approach would be a partnership between your denomination and our nonprofit. Our approach is not to mine your churches like quarries. Instead, it’s to work with them to lay out plans to move their congregations to greater and greater levels of activity related to our shared cause. We’re quite honestly more troubled by the fact that the average congregation is more and more inert related to this vital cause than we are by whether a specific project of ours is funded.

So we propose laying out a plan with you denominationally as well as with interested local churches within your denomination where we help you work toward greater activity related to this shared cause. Giving will of course be a key part of that, since a mature cause-related program can’t be undertaken by congregations who don’t have a mature approach to funding. Fortunately we’re pretty good at that.

As regards funding for our own projects, as we draw up the plan with you and your churches and collaborate together on moving them to greater level of ownership in the cause we both share, we pledge to only bring up projects that are answers to questions that you’re asking–projects that you determine are important to enabling your congregations and your denomination to grow in full maturity related to this shared cause.

We think such an approach gives you the opportunity to reverse the trend Barna identifies, by making the local church the source of the best and most diverse set of opportunities related to this cause.

How would you feel about such an approach?

Not every denominational leader will say yes to such an offer, but should the trends Barna identified continue, I suspect that more and more will see the wisdom in this kind of collaboration and be willing to engage Christian nonprofits who are sincere in undertaking it.