HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY
Balance for Fruitful Christian Fundraising
GFA
DILEMMAS OF SMALL(ER) CHARITIES
 Limited resources
 Limited staff
 Limited skill
 ‘Competing’ with those who don’t have
limited resources and staff
 Sorting out priorities
 God’s leading versus everything else
PRINCIPLES vs. METHODS
 Principles don’t change
 Not the American way
 Methods change
 With region, culture, ministry life cycle, goals
 Distinguish between the two
 Change methodology as needed
 Always Clarify principles
What I ‘stepped in’...
 Sent from the US office in 2006
 Develop the work
 Transition to being independent of US office
 A very US organization
 An American from a ‘US organization’
 2500 sq ft building rent (2 staff)
 Ace Administrator in Gretchen
 Big organisation, Little office
Gospel for Asia
 16,500 national missionaries in 10 nations
 Planting 17 churches every day
 64 Bible colleges with over 6,000 students
 Broadcasting the Gospel in 110 languages
 Helping over 53,000 Dalit children
 Drilled wells for over 1800 villages
 Over 90 fund designations
 100% goes to mission field
GFA’s Fundraising Model
 Exposure/Acquisition
 Conversion
 Development
 Reporting and Retention
 Partner focused, Mission field centric
 Ministry oriented
 Ends to an Ends
 Lots of prayer
GFA’s Fundraising Model
 Exposure/Acquisition
 Conversion
Reporting and Retention
 Partner focused, Mission field centric
Prioritising
 Ministry life cycle
 P vs. PC
 (Production vs. Production Capability)
 80/20
 Fly Wheel vs. Doom Loop
The hole I dug...
 Started the Development engine running
 Website, Conferences, Meetings, etc.
 Dealt with inefficiencies
 Ditching the US database
 Sorting/ mail equipment, etc.
 Gretchen called to the US
 Poor transition to new database
 Overwhelmed by amount of new work
A look at 2006
 £584,000 income (normalised)
 1,343 Donors
 1,214 ‘Partners’
 £268,000 Sponsorship funds
WHAT THE LORD HAS DONE
£1,200,000
£1,000,000
£800,000
Income
£600,000
Sponsorship
£400,000
£200,000
£0
2006
2007
2008
2009
A BIT MORE DETAIL
The Numbers
2006
2009
Increase
Avg Increase
Income
£584,000
£1,072,000
£488,000
18%
Donors
1343
2595
1252
20%
Partners
1214
1937
723
14%
Spons Income £268,000
£445,000
£177,000
15%
Sponsors
1379
527
15%
852
So what happened?
 Lots of Ups and Downs
 Lots of prayer
 Hope is not a strategy but prayer is




Focused on faithfulness
Eliminated inefficiencies
Kept focus on priorities
Developed each aspect of our fundraising
model
 Understood our strategic life cycle
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
50000
45000
40000
35000
30000
Donors
25000
Partners
20000
Sponsors
15000
Database
10000
5000
0
2006
2007
2008
2009
A BIT MORE DETAIL
What’s right and wrong?
What’s right and wrong?
 Excellent Exposure/Acquisition
 Add value
 Poor Conversion
 Higher costs, both financial and staff
 Poor follow-up (3% conversion)
 Part of this is ministry life cycle
 Felt it best to keep fly wheel spinning
 18% growth vs.???
So what’s next?
 Branding
 Enhancing all conversion activities
 Re-writing follow-up series
 Email follow-up
 Improve Free Book offer
 Better qualifying
 Stronger Messaging
 Developing other methods of Acquisition
HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY
Balance for Fruitful Christian Fundraising
GFA