Giving produces JOY

Joy In Giving

“Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion,” 2 Corinthians 9:7 says, “for God loves a cheerful giver.”

People don’t give primarily out of guilt. They give out of emotion, out of passion. There’s joy in giving. This is no longer just fundraising theory. It’s scientifically-documented fact. The Economist 10/12/06 says, “When it comes to anonymous benevolence, directed to causes that, unlike people, can give nothing in return, what could motivate a donor? The answer, according to neuroscience, is that it feels good.” Subjects of a study were given $128 each and told to donate anonymously to any of a number of charities. Researchers “found that the part of the brain that was active when a person donated happened to be the brain’s reward centre — the mesolimbic pathway, to give it its proper name — responsible for doling out the dopamine-mediated euphoria associated with sex, money, food, and drugs. Thus the warm glow that accompanies charitable giving has a physiological basis.... Donating also engaged the part of the brain that plays a role in the bonding behaviour between mother and child, and in romantic love. This involves oxytocin, a hormone that increases trust and co-operation.”

* Like what you just read and want to learn more? Check out, More Than Money: The Truth About High-Capacity Givers.

Morning Dedication

Almighty God, as I cross the threshold of this day I commit myself, soul, body, affairs, friends, to Thy care. Watch over, keep, guide, direct, sanctify, bless me. Incline my heart to thy ways. Mould me wholly into the image of Jesus, as a potter forms clay. May my lips be a well-tuned harp to sound Thy praise. Let those around see me living by Thy Spirit, trampling the world underfoot, unconformed to lying vanities, transformed by a renewed mind, clad in the entire armour of God, shining as a never-dimmed light, showing holiness in all my doings.  Let no evil this day soil my thoughts, words, hands. May I travel miry paths with a life pure from spot or stain. In needful transactions let my affection be in heaven, and my love soar upwards in flames of fire, my gaze fixed on unseen things, my eyes open to the emptiness, fragility, mockery of earth and its vanities. May I view all things in the mirror of eternity, waiting for the coming of my Lord, listening for the last trumpet call, hastening unto the new heaven and earth. Order this day all my communications according to Thy wisdom, and to the gain of mutual good. Forbid that I should not be profited or made profitable. May I speak each word as if my last word, and walk each step as my final one. If my life should end today, let this be my best day. In Jesus name, Amen. 

[from Valley of Vision] http://www.oldlandmarks.com/puritan.htm#Morning%20Dedication

A Son Given to the Lord

1 Samuel 1:20 So in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.”
27 I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. 28 So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.

I have 2 sons.  They are a gift to me, and they belong to the Lord.  What if God entrusted 3 sons to me? What if Samuel was given to me right between my 2 boys?  I can learn much from a Hannah-type.  Like my 2 sons, it would be a joy to pray for this child, give him to the Lord, and imagine him worshiping there.

Life Can Be Messy - Love Paves The Way to Victory

The enmeshed relationships we get ourselves into can be quite messy.  This story, from selected verses in Genesis, exposes deceptive hearts, competing relationships, and sacrificial love.  Let's learn to live with integrity, liberate those we love from competition by providing a love that secures, and deny ourselves in our love for others.  Who knows, perhaps a Joseph will emerge.

Gen 29:16  Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.
Gen 29:17  Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful.
Gen 29:18  Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, "I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel."
Gen 29:19  Laban said, "It's better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me."
Gen 29:20  So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.
Gen 29:21  Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her."
Gen 29:22  So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast.
Gen 29:23  But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her.
Gen 29:25  When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, "What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me?"
Gen 29:26  Laban replied, "It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one.
Gen 29:27  Finish this daughter's bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work."
Gen 29:28  And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife.
Gen 29:30  Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.
Gen 30:22  Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and opened her womb.
Gen 30:23  She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, "God has taken away my disgrace."
Gen 30:24  She named him Joseph, and said, "May the LORD add to me another son."
Gen 46:19 The sons of Jacob's wife Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin.



Observations:

• It is a messy thing to have 2 women in your life
• The first woman may conspire and deceive to take advantage of you, and your resources
• The second woman, the one who owns your heart, is worth working for - even for 7 years.
• The fruit of a loving relationship may be a great leader - Joseph
• When all is said and done, the man may walk with a limp [Jacob]- yet be blessed by God
• The man may be transformed in the process from a deceiver to a limping lover - broken, yet close to God

Considerations:

• Do you see yourself in the story?
• Are you a Jacob, needing to shed the comparison with your burly brother Esau?
• Are you content to wrestle with God for a long period, and accept that it may change you forever?
• Will you work for your Rachel?
• Will you hope in the fruit of such a love, investing together in a Joseph initiative?
• Will Rachel rest in the love of her Jacob, or compare herself with the attributes of others? 

 "We're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday.” Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

Management Questions

The Management Fix Tools for Busy Managers

Great post from The Management Center – check it out and subscribe… http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d14f6e75581b6d76530f3d084&id=f27edc3bf8&e=e9bf5bd673

Hello friends,

We recently received this question from a reader:

I do regular check-ins with my staff members, but I don’t always feel like they help me understand what’s really going on and what problems might be on the horizon. For instance, today I was talking with an employee who’s working to launch a new training program. She says that all the planning is going fine, but how do I know that it really is?

Check-ins often won’t be nearly as helpful as they should if you don’t ask the right questions. What you want to do in these meetings isn’t just run down a list of project updates, but ask questions that will get beneath the surface so that you really understand what’s going on.

Here are the best questions that we’ve found to help do that.

The 3 Best Questions to Get Beneath the Surface

1. What makes you say that?

This is a good follow-up to all kind of statements — from “things are going fine” to “The venue seems like they’re not going to budge on the price.” The idea is that you don’t just want the surface statement — you want what lies behind the surface statement, and this question gets at that.

2. What do you think?

If a staff member isn’t sure how to handle a problem or move forward on a project, before you suggest a path to try, ask this question first. You might learn that your staff member suggests that solution herself — or a better one.

3. What are you most worried about?

This question can open to door to all kinds of information and concerns that you might never hear about otherwise. You might think that staff members will tell you their worries without being asked — but many won’t.

… And 15 – Yes, 15! – More

In addition to the three questions above, here are 15 more than you can use to get beneath the surface:

• What one or two things would make this week a success for you?
• How do you know you’re on track?
• How are you checking to make sure that’s working?
• How are you handling X [a specific element]? 
• What seems to be working well?  Why do you think that’s working?
• What could go wrong?
• Have you thought about what you’ll do if Y happens?
• What’s most important out of all those things?
• What kind of data do we have to inform how that’s working?
• Roughly how much of your time are you spending on that?
• What’s your timeline for that?
• Can you give me a specific example of that? 
• Can we take one specific instance and talk through how you’re approaching it?
• Can we role-play what that might look like?
• What other options did you consider?

Try some of these questions at your next check-in, and see if you don’t find the conversation more substantive and the meeting more useful.

Big Fundraising Gala or Small Event?

Posted on July 16, 2012

from benevon.com, an excellent school fundraising strategy…
Time for a Smaller Ask Event?
Has your annual Ask Event become a burden? Does it seem like nearly as much work as putting on your former gala or auction? Here’s a radical thought: maybe it’s time to focus on quality, not quantity, and significantly reduce the size of your next Ask Event.
Consider the number one measure of a successful Benevon Free One-Hour Ask Event: At least 40% of the people in attendance must have attended a Point of Entry in the prior year. When was the last time your group met that benchmark?
Next, consider this measure from our Sustainable Funding Scorecard: 10% of Ask Event guests join your Multiple-Year Giving Society (pledging at least $1,000 for five years) newly each year. When was the last time that ten out of every 100 guests at your Ask Event joined your Giving Society at one of these levels?
If you are not meeting both of these benchmarks, it’s time to reduce the size of your Ask Event. The ideal Ask Event you are aiming for has 200-300 guests.
As an example of how this problem can happen gradually over time, we work with an organization that had gotten so carried away with having their Ask Event be the biggest one in town that they had lost sight of the real objective. Their event had grown to nearly 700 people. Although they met our official formula for Ask Event success (a 700-person event would generate at least $350,000 in gifts and pledges), it was largely due to the Leadership Gift from the same corporate donor every year for $200,000. That meant their 700 people actually gave only $150,000, far less than the formula calls for. Likewise, they added only eight new donors to their Multiple-Year Giving Society.
The purpose of the Ask Event is to grow your Multiple-Year Giving Society significantly, annually, so as to have a larger pool of donors to cultivate and grow and to draw from for larger major gift, capital, and endowment campaigns. The purpose of the Ask Event is NOT to put on a great feel-good event to thank and reconnect with your donors. The purpose of the Ask Event is to harvest the newly ripened fruit, namely the guests who attended your Point of Entry Events in the year leading up to each Ask Event.
Here’s what I recommend to get your organization’s implementation of the Benevon Model back on track:

• Bite the bullet and cut your Ask Event back from 700 people (in this example) to 250-300 people.
• Do an analysis of how much more money was given at your last Ask Event, on average, by people who had attended a Point of Entry in the year prior to the Ask Event versus those who hadn’t. You will probably be surprised at the difference.
• As you call last year’s Table Captains, share your results with them.
  • Tell them that the event is not raising the money it needs to raise, largely because you are focusing on quantity over quality. As wonderful as the event was, it has veered away from its original purpose—to ask well-cultivated donors to make five-year pledges to join your Giving Society. It has become more of a social gathering for long-time supporters of the organization.
  • Tell them the statistics about the average gift size from those who had attended recent Points of Entry versus those who hadn’t.
  • Tell them that you are changing the process for next year, so as to allow your team to focus on adding more long-term donors and free up time for cultivating the donors you now have in your Multiple-Year Giving Society.
  • Tell them you will be offering two special Free Feel-Good Cultivation Events in the next year for your loyal donors (including those who attend the Ask Event more as a social event now).
• Rather than recruiting Table Captains a few weeks before your Ask Event, expecting them to fill a table of ten, focus on recruiting passionate Ambassadors who will follow through and have at least ten people attend Points of Entry in the year prior to the Ask Event. About eight to ten weeks prior to the Ask Event, invite those Ambassadors to become Table Captains and encourage them to invite their Point of Entry guests to sit at their tables.
• To get started recruiting Ambassadors, go back to the Table Captains from your most recent Ask Event and ask each of them to host a Point of Entry. They could invite the people who sat at their table at your most recent Ask Event, yet who had never attended a Point of Entry Event.
• Aim for 80% ripened fruit at your next Ask Event, not 40%. There will be attrition. 40% is your absolute minimum.
• When it comes time for them to invite people to their Ask Event tables, supplement their guest lists with any additional Point of Entry guests who may not otherwise have someone to sit with.
• In the meantime, get back to basics with your own Points of Entry. Set a goal of finding one new Ambassador during your Follow-Up Calls from every Point of Entry Event. Keep using your Treasure Map to identify groups of people who would naturally want to learn more about your organization.
• Be sure to secure your Leadership or Challenge Gift just like you did last year. Going into your next Ask Event, knowing you have that large gift in hand will give you confidence—and inspire additional giving from the 40% or more of your well-cultivated audience.

Finally, imagine having a 200-person Ask Event with 80% Ripened Fruit. That would be a good use of everyone’s time! Focus on the ripened fruit percentage, not the total number of guests in attendance.
If your emphasis is on having the biggest event in town, you have deviated from the Benevon Model.

Donors and Prayer

Prayer power

Donors are tuned in to the power of prayer. Many think of their prayers for the ministry as a significant part of their support for the ministry. The oft-repeated concept of “your prayers and giving” is not an empty cliché with these donors. They take it seriously. If anything, our communications with donors need to reinforce the importance, the value, of their prayers in support of the ministry. After asking donors to pray with the ministry about a certain need, share the outcomes — the answers to prayer — in a newsletter or other communication device.

But prayer can go in the opposite direction, too — toward the donor. We have seen donor relationships dramatically strengthened when a ministry establishes a strategy of what we call “prayer bonding.” The organization begins with whatever portion is affordable of their donors who have given more than once in the past 12 months. Break this list into 12 monthly segments (or 52 weekly segments if that works better). Distribute the names among staff members, with instructions to pray for these donors on a monthly (or weekly) basis, perhaps in a staff meeting. In that month (or week), send a letter to those donors — a smallish, perhaps monarch-sized letter, with no request for a gift — thanking them for the difference they are making for and through the ministry, and letting them know that you prayed for them. Enclose no reply device or reply envelope.

Check out, The Disappearing Donor: Where Your Ministry's Lapsed Givers Went, and Why .

Assessment Time

 Lamenations 3:40
A Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.

This week, I will have the courage to re–assess.

Do you still hold today exactly the same beliefs that you held ten years ago?

“Always.” We like that word. “I’ve always believed...”

We’re fond of the idea of rock-solid values. We believe in sticking to our guns, holding fast to our beliefs.

But the practical fact is ... Life is fluid. Our values will actually shift over time. I can’t foresee the challenges that my standards will undergo in the days ahead. Many of our values are actually birthed out of unforeseen conflicts and challenges.

Solomon, wise as he was, discovered this himself. “When times are good, be happy,” he wrote in Ecclesiastes 7:14; “but when times are bad, consider: ... A man cannot discover anything about his future.”

Parents deal with this phenomenon. They map out a standard for their family, then find out that their child got into a situation that their family standard doesn’t really cover. So they morph the standard — only to find that some new surprise occurs!

Each of us establishes many of our values “on the run,” simply by responding to challenges as they occur. In each case, I make the right call, or the wrong call. Afterward, I feel good about it, or I feel crummy. I need time to think about it, talk to God about it, hear from God about it, assess my position on it. Out of the crucible of surprise, my values gradually emerge. But a solidified value still encounters new surprises and challenges ... so I find myself continually re-assessing.

Re-assessment isn’t a sign of weakness or sin. Indeed, it’s healthy. As we lead and serve in God’s Kingdom, we need to continually scrutinize our organizational values, taking a spiritual stethoscope to the heart of our ministry. God has wired us to handle issues and inspect them as one handles a beautiful, complicated piece of jewelry — holding it up to the light, considering the flaws, considering the potential, and counting the cost. Examination and re-examination of our standards, our values, are intrinsic to our human condition.

So when I find myself doubting my own values, I need to “go with” that instinct. Ask questions. Probe deeply. Question my motives, my perspectives. Get to the bottom of it. Did I think something was important some time ago, when I established that value — but it’s really not that important anymore?

As I talk to God and listen to God ... as we “kick the tires” of my ministry’s values ... as we journey together in intimate conversation ... I’ll learn God’s heart for my ministry. And that, I’ll discover, will be continually fresh and new!

My Prayer for the Next Seven Days... Father, let me hear your heart every day. Let me be solid, but not solidified — I want to be pliable in your hands. Give me whatever fresh, new thing you want me to have, and help me to be flexible as you teach me and grow me. Amen

Email Techniques for Donor Communication

People who work in nonprofit email communication programs understand that too many emails equals increased unsubscribes, lower open rates and reduced click-throughs. However, with average nonprofit open rates at 13 percent and click-through rates at 2.1 percent, there is a good reason why nonprofits should send several emails to subscribers -- crowded inboxes.
As in-boxes become more and more crowded, the likelihood of an email being left unread is high. Thus, sending constituents multiple emails gives them several chances to take action. With multiple emails being distributed, knowing how to approach or respond with follow-up emails is crucial.
Mike Snusz, a senior consultant with Blackbaud, has five follow-up email strategies from top nonprofits to help fight against the crowded inbox.

• Related News of the Day -- When sending a follow-up email, leverage what is making news that day to add urgency.
• Progress Update -- Before asking for a donation, update constituents about the current situation and which goals have been met. This approach is a great way to grab attention, draw readers in and make another ask.
• “In Case You Didn’t See This”-- Include in an email a brief note such as, “I wanted to be sure you saw our email from Monday.” This strategy can be used to briefly explain why another email is being sent. It is a great way to get attention, or simply to explain the reason for sending another email. However, be careful to not send the wrong tone. Try to relay a casual and non-confrontational tone within the message.
• Deadline Alert -- Sending multiple emails asking for help can sometimes seem redundant to constituents. However, including a brief note stating the imminent deadline or starting the subject line with “deadline” can effectively convey the urgency of the need.
• Same Theme, Different Options -- Send emails that have the same underlying purpose, but give constituents different options and ways to help the organization.

Talk to Donors about your other Donors

Your donors need to know

“Beyond who you are and what you are raising money for, major donors need to have several other questions answered and concerns addressed by you in your communications with them. For instance, donors want to know about other financial supporters of the ministry. What about your current donor constituency? How many donors do you currently have? What levels of support are they giving? Who serves on your board of directors? Do your board members give? If not, why not? What percentage of your budget is represented by board support? (A red flag goes up for a new major donor if a ministry has a great mission statement on paper but its own board members don’t take an active role as donors.) How do you know whether an individual donor is asking this question? Answer it in advance. Assume the information is desired, and offer it. You’ll sense the donor latching on to the concepts of greatest importance to him.”

* Like what you just read and want to learn more? Check out, Donors Are People Too: Managing Relationships With Your Ministry's Major Contributors.