What will you do differently in fundraising in the new year?
Six Do-Able Action Steps
With turning the calendar, mission-workers resolve to improve their funding. For example, “This year we will…”
Break through the 80% ceiling.
Set aside savings each month.
Write our mailing list every quarter.
Get out of deficit.
But within days, the busyness of life crashes in. Funding resolutions last no longer than the goal to avoid chocolate cake. Resolving to have different results but not changing your activities will get you to where you are now.
Here are six do-able action steps to improve your funding this year. Don’t launch out with frantic activities. Start with these actions. “The worker is worthy of his [or her] support” (Matthew 10:10).
Discover your current reality. Resist the temptation to make new plans before you have studied the past. Your office has data that will help you—ask for it! As you review your history, the Lord will encourage you with appropriate action-steps.
Three-year tracking report (click downloads). Fill in your donor income for the past three years including the number of local and foreign donors. Mission-workers tell me this report is helpful. You might be doing better than you think!
Lapsed donors. Jot down the names of those who gave at least one gift in the past five years but did not give in the last 12 months?
Your donor base. Exactly how much donor income do you have?
Personal finance. How much in your emergency savings? Old age savings? Kids education? Debt? List your creditors one by one with how much you owe.
Identify your holy number. Exactly how much do you need each month for personal and ministry costs—what will it take to live life and minister well? That’s your budget. Ask your supervisor or Board to advise and approve it so it is not merely “your number.”
Subtract your donor base (1c above) from your official budget—that’s your new funding goal, your Holy Number.
What will you do differently from last year? Name three things.
As a kid on the farm it was my job to gather the cows for the evening milking. Even though they had 40 acres of grassland to roam, they trod the same dozen or so dirt ruts day by day as they went out to feed. We do that too. It is easier to follow an old habit than to establish a new one.
Identify your Top 25 potential partners. Ask: “Who needs to hear about my ministry in the next 12 months?” Do not ask, “Who will give to me?”
Find a funding coach and a prayer partner. Two people. They need not be financial nor prayer experts—just two friends (without the gift of mercy!) to pray for you and to ask how you are doing on your fundraising plan every two weeks.
Pray every day over your Holy Number. Matthew 6:11—“Give us this day our daily bread.”
It is time to put a stop to complacency in funding! Too many gospel-workers are satisfied at 60% of budget. Others rely on their spouse working a secular job to bring home what is lacking in donor support. What was supposed to have been a temporary job has lingered for five years! Other workers have given up—“Fundraising is impossible in my culture!”
Here is a quote from Jesus in Luke 16:11 that haunts me:
“If you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?”
“True riches” are spiritual things we cannot see—eternal truths, the souls of men and women—things more valuable than “unrighteous wealth.” True riches (that which we can’t see) come as we faithfully handle unrighteous wealth (that which we can see). Your ministry fruitfulness and your fundraising are related. Wow!
As we start a new year, let us breakthrough to more effective ways of funding! Let me know if I can help.
What will you do differently in funding for the new year?
