How Would Your Staff Answer? 

I use to say intellectual, but I changed my mind after writing national direct mail appeals. I quickly learned that intellect and logic alone do not inspire givers nearly as much as logic plus emotion. People make giving decisions with their hearts.

Even Moses' tabernacle givers were those with "stirred hearts."

And everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose spirit moved him came and brought the Lord's contribution (Exodus 35:21-22)

The end of a calendar year is an ideal time to accelerate your fundraising. In some cultures, year-end giving brings about 30% of the total giving for the year. Here are some common questions I have been asked over the years about year-end appeals…

Years ago I conducted my first fund raising home appeal in Singapore. Ten friends from my church waited eagerly to hear me. They were not strangers—I knew them all by name. But I was nervous—I’d never asked face-to-face before.

As I walked into the house, everything seemed so dark. The window blinds were down and I felt a strange gloom…

In 1954 a singer was fired from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville after one performance. The manager told him, “You’re going nowhere son. Go back to driving a truck.”

Has anyone told you to “go back to driving a truck” on a FR appointment?

Recently a friend strongly exhorted me to use a certain type of health supplement which he used daily. The veins in his neck bulged out as he evangelized me about the how this supplement would “do wonders for me.”

The New York Times recently introduced a new term to the English language.  “Manalogue”–-men talking, talking, talking. The writer, Julia Baird, described a speaker who was answering a simple question:

Even if you are fully funded you will experience financial bondage if you neglect Jesus’ parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25.

You know the story. Ten virgins planned to attend a wedding. Five wise virgins took extra oil for their lamps, but five foolish virgins “took no oil with them.” (Matthew 25:5)

A generous friend in Minneapolis frequently receives fundraising appeals from mission workers. He said, “They come sheepishly to my office to ask for support for their work in Brazil or Germany or downtown with their heads down. Without looking me in the eye they apologetically ask for help. But I surprise them. I bark, ‘Get your head up! Stop looking at your shoes!’”