Financial Partnership Development: Fundraising Made Relational

By Jenn Fortner

Financial Partnership Development is a training workbook on how to raise and maintain personal support. The workbook is designed to train a small group or individual christian ministry worker with practical application, templates to draw from in creating your own materials, numerous examples, and a depth Bible study on raising support.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543935974

Book preview

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CHAPTER #1: INTRODUCTION AND VISION STATEMENT

INTRODUCTION TO FINANCIAL PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

It’s no secret that support raising can be challenging, and there are many contributing factors. Support raising is more competitive than it used to be, and people are not giving like they used to. There are more ministry workers raising support and fewer opportunities to share at services, especially in larger churches. People want to be more connected to their money and where it goes. The trend has moved to an individual connection with people, and donors often approach missions giving and ministry giving like an investment.

From where you stand, you may be thinking it’s a hard time to be a ministry worker raising support, but it’s actually a great time to be raising support! In reality, the number of workers and their ability to raise budgets have gone up in recent years. However, it’s important to know that as churches change, we must too. We must be willing to meet the congregation where it’s at concerning our support raising. We must be willing to serve the church. And we must be willing to go to friends and family members for financial support as well as churches.

As you begin your partnership development training, you may already be asking what the best strategy should be for your support raising. What’s the plan? Do I start with churches? Do I start with sending out some letters? One-on-one appointments?

Good questions. And here we will outline the answers! Simply put, a great place to start is by going through this workbook and completing the assignments found therein. There are several helpful documents to prepare before you start meeting with individuals face-to-face as well as outlines, practice needed, etc. This workbook should give you the ideas and tools you will need to begin this process with excellence.

LIFESTYLE OF PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: ORGANIZATION

The rest of this chapter is dedicated to getting you organized and started on the right foot with helpful tools and suggestions. As you begin walking out this season of financial partnership development (FPD), you will quickly discover it is a lifestyle. You may be tempted to view this as negative, but it is not. A lifestyle of FPD is not a bad thing—it has the potential to be one of the most rewarding and fun parts of your ministry. And what better way to prepare you for your ministry assignment? A lifestyle of partnership development means a lifestyle of building and maintaining relationships.

A crucial part of developing this lifestyle and going through it in excellence is staying organized and intentional when it comes to your relationships and potential partners. One practical way to stay organized and intentional as you start your season of partnership development is to create some type of financial/appointment tracking spreadsheet or document. Using a tracking sheet will help you organize all of your current financial partners, potential partners, and much more depending on what you create. Provided below is a comprehensive template to track church and individual appeals. Note there are multiple tabs within the spreadsheet. Consider using these or creating your own to stay organized.

No matter how you track your finances, it is absolutely crucial to keep your own records and not rely solely on your organization’s records. How you do so will vary based on what works for you, but I highly suggest making your personal organization detailed and thorough. 

As you keep your own records, you also want to take care to be informed about how people can give. When your potential financial partner suddenly agrees to a monthly commitment, you should know what exactly happens and what you need to communicate. How do you direct someone to the easiest possible way to give? Do you know the answers to possible questions?

Make sure to know your organization’s giving policies and procedures in and out. Take care to communicate them thoroughly to your potential financial partners so they best know how to give. Make giving as easy and as accessible for your financial partners as possible.

A great place to start is to begin to organize your support raising as you orient your lifestyle to healthy, biblical support raising. Another great place to start for any christian worker is to begin creating necessary documents, such as a nicely branded prayer card, and setting up social media.

CREATING A PRAYER CARD

Creating a prayer card to give to interested individuals and churches is one of the first things you want to begin doing as you start support raising because they may take some time to design and get printed. Check with your organization for any specific requirements in branding when creating yours.

There are endless options in design for creating your prayer cards. Keep in mind some companies are more expensive than others (DIY companies like gotprint.com and vistaprint.com may be cheaper option for those with a design background), and you may need to think through what promotional materials you would like to spend your organization’s allotted promotional budget on. It is best, though, not to use your entire promotional budget for this expense as you may want to create other professionally made promotional materials as well.

Below are a few examples. Get started on your prayer cards ASAP!

SETTING UP SOCIAL MEDIA

Another task you’ll want to do soon is set up your social media. Rightfully so, as these days anyone raising personal support should be active on social media to build community and awareness of their ministry.

Creating a Facebook ministry page or group is one of the cornerstones in setting up one's social media presence. However, often times a ministry worker chooses one before knowing the differences (or consequences) between pages and groups. Pages and groups both have pros and cons. Groups have different settings making one group vastly different from another. Below is a guide to help you set up the page or group that works best for you!

HELPFUL RESOURCES

Finally, as you begin this season of raising support, I would suggest you continually read up on the subject of financial partnership. Great practical tips and inspiration is out there to encourage you during this season. Here are some great resources for you:

The Bible. Continually meditate on verses found in the FPD Bible Study.

www.jennfortner.com Is a blog updated at least once a month dedicated to FPD. Subscribe for ongoing practical tips and information.

Twitter: for tips follow jennforterFPD, SupportRaisingSolutions, Steve Shadrach, and Scott Morton.

http://supportraisingsolutions.org/blog/ Is a support raising blog and a great resource for continual reading on raising your support.

http://www.scottmorton.net/journal/ Is a support raising blog written by Scott Morton, author of Funding Your Ministry.

Facebook: Like/follow AGWM Mobilization, Jenn Fortner FPD , and other social media pages given to you by your organization.

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS SPECIFICALLY FOR AGWM: 

Below are items specifically pertaining to AGWM Associate workers. If you are not an AGWM worker, feel free to read a long and grab ideas for your organization. Updated 2/18

1. STEPS FOR SUBMITTING MA COMMITMENT INFORMATION- from AGWM Mobilization Linda Orrell, MA Commitment Specialist

In order to maintain good relations with your donors, commitments should be processed in one of the following ways:

Fill out a commitment form and mail it to AGWM.

AG Giving online. www.giving.ag.org. This site allows you to contribute to AG ministries and missionaries, review your previous gifts, print giving receipts, manage your recurring contributions, and make commitments.

Contact donors and ask them to fax the commitment information to AGWM (fax to 417-862-0085, attention Linda Orrell).

Email commitment form as an attachment and send to Linda Orrell [e-mail].

Request donors go to http://www.agwm.com/contributions.html to complete the commitment form online or download a PDF.

Request donors attach a memo to their blue and white contribution form indicating a change of support (this takes longer since checks go to the accounting department first).

The church may email commitment information by sending commitment form and attaching it to our office at [e-mail]

Ask donors to call 417-862-2781 x2073 and provide the commitment information by phone. missionaries are NOT permitted to phone in commitments.

Facebook commitments-- the missionary is responsible to submit the information on a commitment form.

As a last resort, if donors have established a monthly giving pattern (ie. at least 3 or 4 months of consistent giving), you may submit a pledge form on their behalf after obtaining permission by phone. If the form is not filled out correctly, we will send it back to you. Be sure the form is filled out completely, including the name of the person giving permission and the missionary name or initials. A copy of the commitment form should be sent to the donor for their records.

2. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GIVING.

This sheet contains everything you need to know about what your financial partner needs to do to give. Please take a few moments and read it now.

3. MONTHLY REPORTING

Staying up to date with what you have done, what progress you’ve made, and who you have asked is a crucial part of this process. AGWM MAs are specifically asked