Restore the Joy

Scott Rodin has written a short novel called, The Third Conversion.  It is a quick easy read based on the move from being transactional to transformational in giving.  He shows how this shift in the life of the giver impacts the needed shift in the life of the fund raiser.

The book is an enjoyable story reflecting the principles of Transformational Giving.  It is a helpful example of how you may be able to change your conversations with those who give.  He shows both good and bad encounters.

Following a bad encounter, Rodin has one of the characters of the story dissect what went wrong.  He observes that the reason the encounter went wrong was opportunity was missed.  Not the opportunity for the gift but an opportunity for ministry.  Here is what he says, “We had the opportunity to help them recover the real joy of giving in a God-pleasing way, to develop hearts that are rich toward God and blessed in their giving.”

What I love about this quote, is the focus on the “joy of giving”.  Do you believe God’s Word when He says it is more blessed to give than receive?  Every Christian worker I work with says yes to this question. Do you believe there is joy in giving? Again the room says yes. However, a good number of those who need to raise support back off the money question when talking to champions.  So if you back off the money issue, but you believe it is more blessed to give, then is it fair to say you may be in a position of robbing the champion of a blessing by not addressing the opportunity to give.

Maybe we do this because we do not see giving as a joyful event.  Perhaps we have approached giving as a “tax” not as a gift.  It is April and it is tax time.  Those who owe wait until April 15 to send in their forms.  I have been in churches who approach the offering time like a tax payer approaches April 15.  Let’s stop this attitude.  Giving is a joy. 

Two things can happen to change this way of thinking. 

• First, start with yourself.  You become the cheerful giver.  Experience the joy of giving personally.

• Second, pass the joy on to others. (You cannot pass on what you do not possess.)  Teach others about the joy in giving.  Help them recover the joy of giving in a God-pleasing way.

What to Measure - Part 2

I want to follow up from the previous post by joining Covey’s’ lead measures’ in 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) to Moore’s ‘scattering matrix’ in Seize the Vuja De .  Let’s see how these concepts reflect each other in what we measure.

A goal in fund raising is the income.  So this is the lag measure: what you measure when you are done. It is also a gathering matrix because it is what you take in. But we said “A goal in fund raising is income”, not THE goal. In TG the goal is greater than the dollar amount; it is lives transformed through giving.  Hitting the dollar amount is a portion of the goal and the easiest to measure.  But in order to measure transformed lives we have to have lead measurements that help us see if we are scattering the message not just gathering the money. 

In the 4DX book one example is a lady who is a top seller in a shoe store.  The statement made about her is, “The manager knew what she did differently.  She would get lost in the customer’s world.”  This lady would notice what the customer was wearing, offer options to fit their style, ask what they did for a living, etc.  In other words it became about the customer’s need for shoes not the stores need to make sales.  Sound familiar. 

TG is based on the need of the champion not the need of the agency.  If this principle is key in the selling something as temporal as shoes, just think of the importance this principle can play in helping someone in their discipleship journey of giving.  TG happens when it is about the champion’s bottom line not ours.  The beauty is, God then adds fruit to the agency’s bottom line when the champion is transformed. 

So you have a budget to raise.  Your board or someone is monitoring the bottom line.  But what should you monitor.  In TG with a scattering matrix let me suggest a few items you and your leaders can be measuring:

-        Did my encounter with that champion leave them richer than they were before, i.e. Did it add value?

-        Did I give the champion what they need to get involved?

-        How many have I equip to tell others about the outreach?

-        How many of my champions testified that they shared the outreach with someone else?

-        Are people passing on what they learn?

-        How many champions are moving forward in their discipleship journey, i.e. How many are migrating from Participation to Engagement, Engagement to Owner?

Granted, this list is harder to measure than the bottom line.  But remember the bottom line is not just to get funded.  Part of the bottom line is to grow champions for the Cause. So we also need to keep in mind, how many we bring with us on the journey, not how many report back to about the journey.

I would love to discuss these measurements.  Drop a note if you have a comment or question.

What to Measure - Part 1

In Transformational Giving the question of what to measure always comes up.  One thing we know is we will always measure income in fund raising.  But since TG is about moving champions deeper in their journey and commitment to the cause, should measuring the journey be as important as measuring the income?  And if so how do you measure it?

There are two different resources I have come across that have helped me learn about measuring.  Each resource points to the need to measure BOTH.  Income measurements are important, but so are activity measurements

One teaching about measurement comes from Steve Moore in his book, Seize the Vuja De. Moore discusses a ‘gathering’ matrix as opposed to a ‘scattering’ matrix.  The gathering matrix is what we take in, i.e. gather.  It measures things such as: How many people attend church?  How much money did we collect?  How many souls were saved?  Etc.

 The scattering matrix is different.  It does not focus on what comes in but what goes out, i.e. what we scatter.  It may measure activities such as: How many people from our church shared their faith this month?  How did we invest our income to impact the Great Commission?  How many believers did we training in evangelism? So we shift our focus to what is coming in to what is going out.

The beauty is, if we are effective in scattering it impacts what we gather.  This may sound familiar since the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 9 that those who sow generously reap generously.

Another resource that mirrors Moore’s ‘scattering’ matrix comes from the 4 Disciplines of Execution.  The authors of this book mention lag measurements as opposed to lead measurements.  Lag measurement measures what has already happened. It is called lag because it is after the fact and can no longer be influenced. This is a similar concept to the ‘gathering’ way to measure.  Lead measurements are different.  They are fluid and can be influenced because they are measurements of activity during the process not the results at the end. 

An example from the book is airline safety records.   The lag measurement is 100% of the planes landed safely.  But how do you get these lag measure results.  Well you have a pre-flight check list that you can control.  This checklist is measured while it happens.  And when done properly it produces the desired result.  So the ‘scattering’ matrix you measure is not the number of planes landed safely, it is how many pilots are properly doing their preflight check list.

So for a church, ‘scattering’ measurements may look like this:  Not just how many pastoral visits the church staff made, but how many church members are being equipped for visitation and doing visitation. 

This entry is the ground work.  The next entry we will look at how all this can impact measurements in TG.

Can the Sales Pitch

I am on an email list that sends me very helpful teachings called McKaughan Musing.  I wish I could provide the link, but after days of trying, I am having technical difficulty.  So I will cut and paste.  These musings are from http://www.missionexus.org/, but I cannot get you to the direct link to the article I am quoting.

For the February 2013 edition the focus is Marketing vs. Sales.  McKaughan says this,

 I was re-reading a book on Peter Drucker, who was my generation’s leadership and management Guru. (A Class with Drucker by William Cohen) I came to a chapter on Marketing and Sales and it got me thinking.

   For Drucker, marketing was central to strategically leading any organization. Sales, on the other hand, was merely a second or third tier tactical issue

   To Drucker, the clear distinction between marketing and sales was that in marketing you found out what your customer wanted and then you built that into your product. Since what you produced was what was wanted or needed, a well- designed and carefully manufactured product hardly needed to be sold. What you produced met the customer’s needs and desires. Sales on the other hand had to do with pushing things on people where there was little intrinsic need or desire. Selling had to do with the creating or manipulating need or desire. According to Drucker, sales dealt with tactics, not strategy. Strategy always trumps tactics. If your strategy is wrong, your tactics will never lead to success.

Transformational Giving is about principles that guide our strategy, which in turn will guide our ‘tactics’.  Wrong strategy leads to wrong tactics. 

Could it be that the reason the listener often hears our fund raising presentation as ‘begging’ is because we are using tactics built on poor strategy?

McKaughan strikes on a truth Drucker taught that is core to TG.  "To Drucker, the clear distinction between marketing and sales was that in marketing you found out what your customer wanted and then you built that into your product."  The teaching we give in the migration of the champion (donor) is to find out what God is doing in their life.  This strategy is built on principle #4 in the 10 principles of TG.  Principle 4: A champion connects with an organization for the purpose of enhancing their mutual impact on the cause, not only to support the organization’s impact on the cause.

It is about the champion’s impact not ours.  So it is about the champion and what she needs, not my need for their funds.  Then as Drucker said, “Since what you produced was what was wanted or needed, a well- designed and carefully manufactured product hardly needed to be sold.”  So if your ministry is designed to fill the gap God has placed in someone’s life (i.e. their need) then God will go before you and the need you present meets the champion’s need not just yours.  In this case it will hardly need to be “sold”.

Let’s take helping orphans as an example.  You are trying to raise money for your orphanage. So the tactics could be to show starving, lonely children.  The tactic being, show the kids and the funds will come.  I talked with a group that even flew the kids from a Majority World Culture to the states and paraded them to churches to raise money.  It worked, short-term. The problem was, in two years they had lost momentum.  They could not sustain the sympathy.  So they were trying to find a new group of kids to fly to the states for another ‘tour’.

But if raising money for orphans is not just about you or the kids, but also the giver and his need, how would this change the tactic?  Does the Bible not tell us to take care of the orphan?  Is this need being meet by the local church or the members sitting in the church that day?  The ministry to orphans is not just about the kids, it is also about the listener’s need to answer the call of God to serve children.  So now the strategy changes to reflect the biblical need of the believer to get involved in the lives of orphans.  It moves to an all-encompassing need.  The children have needs, the agency designed to reach them has needs, and the listener has a need to obey the command of God to serve. 

Now giving is fulfilling the champion’s need to obey and be a part of ministry.  The strategy moves from closing the deal to get the sale, to meeting the need of all involved.  We have moved from a transactional exchange to lives being transformed. The giver is now as blessed as the receiver. 

The Great Compassion

In a post on July 6, 2011, I wrote about a new equation.  The basis of this equation is that a transformed life (T) is a result of following the Great Commandment (to love God and your neighbor) and then to practice the Great Commandment one must fulfill the Great Commission (go make disciples).  So the equation is T=GC²

I would like to add to the equation of T=GC².  It is another GC.  Paul Borthwick in his book Western Christians in Global Missions has another GC he calls the Great Compassion.  Matthew 25: 34-40 is the famous passage that Jesus tells us how to perform ministry.  It’s pretty simple really, we serve each other. (To refresh your memory, Matt. 25 is where Jesus tells the help we give the least of these, is serving Him.) 

So the math is simple.

First we must love God and our neighbor.  (If you wonder who your neighbor is, Jesus answered that with the telling of the Good Samaritan.)

Second if you love God and your neighbor then you are to obey the Great Commission.  So loving your neighbor is taking the Gospel to them and making disciples.

Third, we implement the Great Commission.  But how?  Isn’t the Great Commission just for teachers, missionaries and preachers?  And if the Great Commission is for the teachers, missionaries and preachers then the rest get to stop at step one?  No that is fuzzy math. 

 

Everyone who claims the Great Commandment is to do the Great Commission and the Great Compassion tells us how.  We disciple the world by giving.  Not just giving dollars but giving ourselves as Christ did.  We give to others through our service.  When we serve we transform.  So the new formula is a Transformed Life (T) equals all three Great C’s…T=GC³.

Growing

Transformational Giving can pop up anywhere.  In the last post I mentioned Paul Borthwick’s book, Western Christians in Global Missions. As I read this book I see Transformational Giving principles popping up all the time.  But this is only because Transformational Giving has far more to do with our spiritual walk than just giving our money.  As believers we are to live transformational lives (some call it The WholeLife Offering).  So TG is one key component of Transformational Living.

 

Borthwick reflects this truth in a chapter of his book called “Sacrifice-Not Just Generosity”.  He touches on the old truth that is “it is often easier to be financially generous than personally sacrifice.” (page 143. Western Christians in Global Missions). This truth is a big reason I am an advocate of our giving being transformational and not simply a transaction between parties. 

 

Borthwick goes on to say that issues facing the world today are not solved by generous checks.  They are solved by long-term work and sometimes sacrifice for the endeavor God has laid on our hearts. To illustrate this teaching Borthwick uses examples that are straight out of a ‘Participate-Engage-Owner’ type thinking.  Let me give you a few quotes he gives as examples in his book.

In our world long-term sacrifice grows as we get involved.  It can progress

·        From dedicating thirty minutes a day to pray for the nations of the world, to building cross-cultural friendships, to going to serve in a multicultural organization

·        From going on a short-term mission trip to reach children in a poor barrio, to supporting a child for forty dollars a month, to becoming a social worker dedicated to serving children.

 

You can see how these examples reflect the teachings that TG gives in regards to moving our champions from participants, to a level of engagement, to being owners of the cause.

 

A key word for our spiritual journey and in TG that Borthwick uses above is GROW.  Growth is a long-term venture.  One-time shots at it do not make it happen.  I do not plant new grass seed and expect to mow my lawn the next morning.  Our activity in God’s work must grow.  And what is planted today does not bloom by morning.  However, with work, progress and maybe even sacrifice we see fruit in the long-term.  So don’t bail out early.  Stick with your champions and be the example for them that long-term activity in their cause is where the growth is.  Help them Own it.

Walking Together

In the book Western Christians in Global Missions, I have found a lot of good teaching.  In these next few posts I will pass some of these thoughts along.  However a better way for you to get this info may be to just get the book yourself.

The author, Paul Borthwick in one chapter asks a Ugandan pastor what the role of the North American is in missions.  The pastor’s answer, for me went far deeper than our role in missions.  The pastor said we should be like to two men on the road to Emmaus. We should travel together.  “What need to seek out are those whom the Lord may want to travel with.”  Borthwick ask the question. “Are we walking together?” (page 159)

Great question for missions.  Great question for being a witness. Great question for your church.  Great question for fund raising.

In Transformational Giving our giving and our receiving ought to be a journey.  And it should not be done alone.  You see transactional giving is very independent.  I gain what I need and then I go on my way to do my thing and you can go your way and do your thing.  However if giving is transforming, going my own way alone is not an option.  We take the journey together.

With this thinking in mind the request to be funded is far more than money. It is a request to take the journey together.  (This means for those who give a onetime gift we are done.  It is just the first step in what should become a journey.) The destination of the journey is not to get my ministry funded or to feed the poor, or even to save the lost.  The destination is Christ.  We are to walk together in following Christ.  If we follow Christ together we will see the lost brought to Christ, we will see the hungry fed, the sick will meet the Healer, and we will see ministry budgets met.

As you raise funds, perhaps it will change your thinking and the thinking of the listener, to approach the need as a journey.  Help them see who you are following.  Communicate that he journey is not designed for you or them to walk alone.  Seek for those whom the Lord calls to walk with you.