This myth deals with giving motivations. Giving motivations have probably been studied more than most topics in fundraising and stewardship. Depending on who you ask, there can be as many as 40 or 50, or as few as a half-dozen, all based on character and/or circumstance.  

As we saw in last week’s post (myth #2), Christian giving is based on character, and is driven by a commitment to the faith and discipleship.  In fact, Christians give most of their charitable donations to Christian charities (including churches) and approximately 35 per cent of all charitable donations go to Christian charities.

Christians are very focused in their giving.

So why are our churches struggling financially? Because people do not respond in a vacuum of information, and we are failing to prepare our donors to respond.

Fundraising is not asking for money, it is preparing the donor to respond.

It is easy for leaders to over-estimate what people understand about stewardship and the church. Put the chair of the church board on one end of the pew on Sunday, and on the other end, put the person who comes only to worship, enjoys it, but then disappears. There is a great gulf between what the two understand about the church, and that gulf needs to be bridged.

How do we do that?

By preparing the donor to respond and giving the donor the right context in which to give. Contextualizing the donor to respond and what we place in the bubbles is what will generate the greatest response from our donors and members. So, what information do donors need to give? This varies depending on the type of campaign you are doing, but there are a few key elements that need to be addressed.

Sense of Purpose and Vision

The Old Testament Prophet once said, “Where there is no vision, people perish!” This statement is probably the finest management principle ever articulated. Certainly, in the context of stewardship, there is nothing more motivational to giving than a clear sense of vision and purpose. If the vision and purpose are wobbly, you need to sort that out and get good buy-in from your membership before you can expect people to support you financially.

Much of what we must communicate to the donor is not necessarily the what we are doing as much as the why we are doing it, and this is directly related to having a clear vision.

Money is NOT your problem!

We worked with a large congregation in Toronto. They had 400 families attending but were running a consistent $30,000 annual budget deficit. Our first meeting involved some 40 people, including the board and some of the church members. The chair introduced us and explained their dire situation and the annual deficit. 

My father’s opening remark was, “Money’s not your problem,” and proceeded to point out that several of the people sitting in that meeting were professionals with remuneration well into not just six figures, but some at seven. Then he added, “there are probably a few of you who could take $30,000 out of petty cash and never miss it.” At first there was dead silence, but within minutes people were smiling and nodding because they knew he was right. Money was not the issue. Giving people a reason to give the money to the church instead of somewhere else, was the issue. We ran a visioning program with this congregation, and they raised half a million dollars.

Educating your members

A second critical piece of the pie is education. We have taken stewardship teaching off the agenda of most churches for at least a generation, and this often has a direct impact on a church’s financial health. This trend is not unique to any one denomination or category; most denominations are struggling. You need to assume that, with only rare exceptions, people coming to church today probably have very little idea what their church is all about … and far more important, what it means to be a Christian. If giving in the church is based on the principles of Christian discipleship, and our newest members are unaware of this … asking for financial support will be difficult.

Christians will only move from giving to the church as just another charity to giving to the church sacrificially when they understand the biblical principles of stewardship, how those principles impact their value systems, and how those value systems impact the resources God has entrusted to each of them.

At the heart of our discipleship therefore is the need of the giver to give, and preparation or education of the donor at this level is crucial.

The other key elements in contextualizing the donor and preparing them to respond are project clarity, a good planning process, a positive environment with creative giving opportunities, and good communications with open lines of communication.

Yes, it will take time

Congregations are not homogenous wholes that think the same, act the same, and respond in the same way for the same reason. Moving change or acceptance through the system of the church or organization takes time because people accept change at different rates.

Look first to the visionaries, and the rest will follow

So how do you move an organization from point A to point B? Well, you need to start with the visionaries. In every group there are the 2-3 percent on the left, the visionaries who drive change. They see the future and believe it to be real. Merriam Webster defines them as, “one having unusual foresight and imagination.” They’re also described as “a person who is ahead of his time and who has a powerful plan for change in the future.” 

Next to the visionaries are the 15-20 percent we like to call the early adopters. They quickly join the visionaries in understanding the issues at hand and recognizing the need for change. Then the middle adopters, about 60 percent of the group, are slower to respond, but if the right people on the left are promoting the change, if it’s seen to be legitimate, and if the early adopters are supportive and on board, there is almost a snowball effect, and the change gains momentum.

“The gatekeeper’s name, though, is Art”

The late adopters, the next 15-20 percent, are like the group in the middle, but they just need a little more time and possible information to come on board. To the right of them are a group that are called many things, but we call them the gatekeepers, a person who controls access to something or someone. Often in the church setting this precious something is permission. At a seminar we were running, when we came to this point, a Lutheran pastor raised his hand and said, “His name is Art!”

Never underestimate the power of a gatekeeper to thwart your visionary’s plans.

The Gatekeeper said No

One of my father’s first clients was a church in Jacksonville, Florida that was embarking on a capital campaign to expand its ministry and was planning for growth of the congregation. Part of the regular campaign process is always to secure leadership gifts from prominent individuals in the congregation. Ben and the pastor went to meet with one of these individuals one-on-one, and during the meeting he seemed to be in agreement with the plan and supportive of the campaign.

A few days later, the pastor called Ben and said, “We have a problem,” then explained that the individual they had met with a few days earlier had contacted many of his peers in the congregation and said, “we’re not doing this!” After some further discussions, they decided to pull the plug on the campaign and the project was dead. The gatekeeper or permission giver had said no. Ultimately, the church ended up splitting over the issue and started a church plant. The new congregation flourished and grew, and the old guard ended up closing its doors a few years later.

Change takes time, and preparing the donor to respond takes time. It simply takes some people longer than others before they are prepared or ready to respond. If asking for money is the issue you can do it quickly, but you may well be disappointed with the result. The secret to releasing significant resources is to surround the prospective donor with specific, pertinent information and an environment that will generate the best response.

The Seven Myths of Church Fundraising

This is a series of seven articles based on the book originally written by my father, Ben Harder, and recently re-written by myself. We came up with what we referred to as the Seven Myths of Church Fundraising. I suppose they could just as easily have been called pitfalls, or misguided beliefs, but the point is, these myths are widely-held assumptions people in the church had and still have surrounding church finances and fundraising. For many churches, these assumptions became part of the church operations and more importantly, an informal narrative of things the church should not do. 

It will be helpful to learn how to recognize and identify these pitfalls and why it’s important to move past them, because if anything is holding you back from financial success, it is one of these myths. 

If you would like to watch my video on The Seven Myths of Church Fundraising, you can watch on my Youtube channel or on the about us page of my website.