Overview
Fundraising is a daunting task. 70% of American missionaries must raise their own support in order to serve. Some people don't even begin; the idea of fundraising scares them off.
The following are methods historically employed by some different missionaries and ministries:
1. The Mueller approach - don't tell anyone, just pray. It works, but you need to understand that you will sit down to empty tables with this method. The food only appears after you are seated. Mueller wasn't about fund raising, he was about ministry. That was his focus and he left the fund raising or lack thereof to God. But the people knew, and they spread the word, and food appeared. He had a great unspoken support team. Many good small ministries operate in our cities and churches this way today. We need to gossip about them more to enlarge the base. The common folk caught the vision, his life and example connected with them at a feeling level and they responded with open hearts.
2. The Wycliffe way - in groups and individually, ask for prayer, don't share the financial need unless asked. But we all knew that we needed to ask them, because we were about supporting missionaries. And we pulled the details out of them.
3. The DL Moody approach - share the financial needs and appeal for action.
4. The Campus Crusade approach - a direct ask for money over a businessman lunch. Direct, logical, spell out the vision, the need and that God is calling you to be part of the answer. Colorful brochures and presentation notebooks are desirable. Great for businessmen, executive types, leaders, thinkers. Overwhelming to the common folks who support me.
The photograph above is from The Body Builder's Fundraising Boot Camp. Former Boot Camp lackey John Patton is role-playing with a student.
Your fundraising experience
The top five fundraising blogs
According to FundraisingSuccessMag.com
- Creating Passionate Users
- "Brooks calls this a 'user power' blog that talks about connecting with people in a way that makes them passionate about their lives and the technology they use."
- Don't Tell the Donor
- "Brooks says he likes the voice of this blog, whose author is an anonymous nonprofit professional. The blog's tag line reads, "News and opinions from the world of nonprofit fundraising %u2026 ripped from the headlines and passed as gossip through development offices %u2026 these are the stories you might not want to tell the donor."
- Getting Attention
- "Authored by nonprofit marketing consultant Nancy E. Schwartz, this blog offers ideas and advice to nonprofit communicators to help them better their organization's marketing."
- Non-profit Marketing Blog
- "This is a blog by Katya Andresen, vice president of marketing at Network for Good and author of the book "Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes."
- Church Marketing Sucks
- "Part of the Center for Church Communications, this blog is, as described in its tag line, 'the blog to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.' Brooks says he likes this blog for its edge in critiquing church marketing efforts. 'It's got a real point of view,' he adds."
- Donor Power Blog
- This is Jeff Brooks' blog. Brooks reviewed the above websites for FundraisingSuccessMag.com.
- mFund
- My own reflections on personal support raising.
Great Books on Fundraising
People Raising: A Practical Guide to Raising Support
Amazon Price: $12.23 (as of 07/26/2008)
Friend Raising: Building a Missionary Support Team That Lasts
Amazon Price: $9.99 (as of 07/26/2008)
Funding Your Ministry: Whether You're Gifted or Not
Amazon Price: (as of 07/26/2008)
Interview: What it's like to raise support
Taken from Propel, an M-DAT publication
Casey and Traci Letellier are on a mission to serve with Innovista (www.Innovista.org). For the past four years, Casey - a Minnesota native - has been the graphic designer for a mission organization based in Denver. Traci - born and raised in Arkansas - is a writer and folk musician.Propel: You are in the midst of fundraising for a term in the United Kingdom. Did you receive any type of training before beginning the funding process?
Letelliers: Yes. It was fairly informal training. Jason Lane, the director of Innovista International, spent a day with us to help strategize a fundraising plan and an initial time table. We've also received lots of good advice from our missionary friends and acquaintances along the way - something we really value.
P: How has the support raising process been different than your expectations?
L: We didn't fully realize how many missionaries were already being sent from this area [northwest Arkansas]. Many of the people traditionally interested in missions work are already giving to their capacity and are unable to help anyone new. Some of our most generous support has actually come from people about our age who are just getting established in their jobs and are interested in missions. But then again, one of our most generous supporters is a World War II veteran.
P: From your experience, what word of advice or encouragement would you offer to others preparing to begin the support raising process?
L: At times we felt the expectation (and have received advice) suggesting that to be effective we needed to approach our support raising as we would a political campaign, and use carefully chosen emotive terms throughout our presentation. One time in particular, we received this kind of advice and went away really discouraged because taking an approach like that would be completely inauthentic to who we are. While the support-raising process is almost certainly going to be stretching, and some serious hard work no matter how you go about it, it seems to us that support raising shouldn't require you to be people that you're not. We're still figuring out how this looks for us. One thing that we have found is that we usually connect better with individuals or small groups, rather than a crowd.
See the whole interview at Propel - move into missions
m.Fund
snippets from a missionary's fundraising experiences
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byTraining for Fundraising
- The Body Builders Boot Camp
- Boot Camp for Personal Support Raising is an intense two day training seminar to help Christian workers get to their ministry assignment quickly and fully funded.
- Missionary Tech Team Fund Development
- In keeping with the tradition of customized client services rendered by other departments of Missionary TECH Team, Ministry Development Services takes a tailor-made training approach to helping each client meet its own particular needs.
- GenerousGiving.com
- Generous Giving is a privately funded ministry that seeks to encourage givers of all income levels-as well as pastors, church lay leaders and others-to experience the joy of giving and embrace a lifestyle of generosity, according to God's word and Christ's example.
A myriad of great resources here!
Potential Funding Sources
- Harvesters Trust
- Our aim is to financially support Christian workers whilst, at the same time, raising and investing a large sum of money in order to produce an annual income.
- The Masters Fund
- As a family whom God has blessed, we desire to be good stewards of His money in order to provide funds for global missions projects, provide global vision for families within the body of Sutherlin Family Church (SFC), in Sutherlin, Oregon and to challenge the SFC body of Christ to a greater commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission stated in Matthew 28:19-20
- Change.org
- Potential fundraising for organizations (as reported in GuideStar) a la social networking. Interesting concept. There are a lot of ministries here, but also a lot of other "worldy" non-profits.
Visual art and giving
- Paintings
- Masaccio, Theodore Weller and others.
- Woodcuts
- As reproduced by Martin Luther.
- Mosaic
- Mosaic in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.
- Mixed media
- Rembrandt van Rijn and others.
Other online resources
- First Giving
- "Firstgiving provides a web-based fundraising service that lets individuals raise money online for any registered U.S. tax-exempt organization. Fundraisers set up an online fundraising page using our simple template and send it with a personal message to family and friends to ask for support for a walk, run, bike ride or any other event they might be participating in."
- Just Giving
- UK counterpart to First Giving.
- Mission World
- This website allows you to set up a profile which visitors can search in order to find missionaries they wish to support - based on location, ministry type, organization and so forth. Quite well done in comparison to one or two previous efforts of the same vein, although still needs some fine-tuning (which I'm sure they're aware of).
