“Why would anyone want to support me?”

“Why would anyone want to support me?”  In my early days of fundraising, that statement was a great summary of my attitude toward MPD. Have you tried to lead anyone to support raising success who was stuck in this mindset? Today I’d be more likely to say, “Why wouldn’t people support me?” So what changed in me, and how can you help bring about a shift in your support raisers’ perspectives? I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing or Why If I’m completely honest about my early days, I’d say I didn’t really know what I was doing or why. […]

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Shining Light on the Lies

If you are doing God’s work, the devil will try to get you to not do it, using whatever tactics he can. And one of his favorite tactics is lies. Just look at Genesis 3:1-5 to see how he tempts Adam and Eve using lies. His tactics haven’t changed much since then. Lies love to show up along with the other challenges of support raising. If we aren’t diligent in fighting them and training our staff to fight them, these lies can sideline the staff we are leading. Here’s a battle plan for fighting the lies that show up to […]

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The Great Prerequisite for Support Raising Success

Arrogance can keep us ignorant. I should know. I have spent most of my life thinking I knew everything there was to know, and if I didn’t, I could fake my way through. My test preparation strategy in college was to start studying at midnight before the test, then stumble into class with bleary eyes, a caffeine headache and a fried brain. It’s a miracle I even graduated! As a younger man, I thought I had all the answers. Now much older, all I have are questions. Life has a way of making us a little more humble and teachable, […]

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Painlessly Training Staff Online

Some people seem intimidated by the very concept of adult education. In reality, it’s not all that different from what most of us remember (or wish we had experienced) in our own childhood educational experiences. The main difference is now your students get the joy of balancing learning with raising kids, running a household and juggling a job. The natural reticence of adults to learn new things, plus the logistical challenges of training staff online, means as distance learning facilitator you act as motivational coach, content expert, and tech adviser. Reaching them is going to be a constant effort on […]

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Double Duty Fundraising

Raising personal support is its own brand of crazy, but raising your salary plus organizational funds is madness multiplied! If you are tasked with raising operational or special project funds in addition to your own salary, or you lead leaders who do, perhaps you have felt overwhelmed by this doubly daunting task. So how can you best help those fundraising leaders in your organization who are pulling double duty? First, encourage leaders that organizational support raising doesn’t detract from their personal support raising but instead often enhances it. It’s natural to think that approaching the same partners who make up […]

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Different Paths to a Common Destination

Imagine preparing to go on a trip. You open the map app on your smartphone and type in the address of your desired destination. Starting from your current location, you hit the directions button to see what options you have. As is often the case, two to three route options are presented. All of them will get you to the place you want to go, but you have a decision to make regarding which route to take. You choose the one that seems best, hit the go button, and the journey is mapped out. As you follow your chosen route, […]

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Sprinting Towards MPD Success

At the Support Raising Leaders Conference, InterVarsity leaders shared their exciting results from a new “Summer of MPD,” a short term assignment for staff to focus as much as 80% of their summer on raising additional personal support. We asked Emery Silva at InterVarsity to unpack the keys to their success… “We used to believe staff of color couldn’t get funded in New York City,” Sophia, an Asian American Staff Director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), shared. “but now God is rewriting our narrative.” Sophia’s team of 15 Black, Latino, Asian and White InterVarsity staff raised $276,300 in the summer […]

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Support Raising Organizational Health: Culture + Structure + Training + Coaching

After training over 10,000+ ministry workers from over 1,200 organizations how to raise their support through our SRS Bootcamps, and seeing myriads of them get fully funded in months rather than years, our ministry has often become synonymous with this two-day training event. Yes, even though we’ve done hundreds of these Bootcamps in cities all over America for the last 16 years, I need to let you know—we’re no “one trick pony!” I admit, SRS has mainly focused on the support training piece over the years, and not adequately addressed vital aspects of the ongoing coaching required to insure new […]

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Support Training: How Much is Enough?

I won’t bore you with the children’s story of Goldilocks stumbling upon the three bears’ house in the woods (with no one home) only to test out their porridge, chairs, and beds. You remember—each time she tasted, sat, or laid down, she would proclaim it to be too little, too much, etc…and then finally…“juuuust right!” Looks like I bored you anyway, but let’s apply this tale to the critical area of support raising training. In the last eight years, we’ve been privileged to train staff from almost 300 organizations. You might ask, “How many different approaches have you seen as […]

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Placing Priority on Support Training: It Shows You Care

Blindsided. That’s the only word I can think of to describe my experience. It was supposed to just be a short workshop I was doing for the 25 or so staff from the local chapter of this international Christian ministry. But within seconds of my closing prayer I was mobbed by 10-15 crying and emotionally charged young men and women. It soon became obvious their frustration, stress, feelings of failure and guilt were not their fault—but thoughtlessly thrust upon them by their ministry leaders. For years, the leaders of this ministry set incredibly high goals for their staff in the […]

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Support Raising Solutions
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