Support Raising 101

Steve Lutz, May 2006

An introduction to the Scary, Surprising World of Support Raising

[This article was originally written for training of staff at liberti church in Philadelphia, PA].

Support-Raising can be intimidating & even paralyzing. It can be exhilarating & euphoric. It seems to have the power to make or break you, whether a campus ministry rookie or a veteran. To encourage and equip us in this essential aspect of our ministry, I’ve tackled the most prominent concerns and themes that arise in support-raising.

I. Nuts and Bolts
1. It’s All About WHO You Know
This is all about people. The literature all reflects this. (People Raising, Friend Raising). Paul talks about his supporters as partners (Philippians 1:5). If the Apostle Paul regarded those who supported him as his partners, how much more should we do the same! They are journeying with you. You may be on the front lines, but they are your TEAM. This keeps you from looking at them as dollar signs, as a means to an end. You are giving them the opportunity to minister and serve with you. You’re leading them
So keep up with the people! People still read my email updates. Now I’ve started a blog. I think they feel a sense of ownership. It’s about all the phone calls, the emails, the thank you notes, maintaining the relationships, the personal touches.

2. How Do I Get Started?
This isn’t rocket science. Come up with a plan. You can do this by answering the Basic Questions of “Who, What, When & Where, and Why”:
WHO Do I Ask?
In short, EVERYBODY. Ask anyone who may remember your face or your name. Old friends, new friends, friends of friends.
Make a list of names, addresses, emails, phone numbers. Put it in a spreadsheet. You’ll want this at Christmastime.
Quantity is key. Don’t nickel and dime it. Don’t assume 10 people will get you there. They might, but don’t think that way.
Support comes from unexpected places. People who are loaded may not be generous, or they may have already been hit up so many times that their missions budget is exhausted. People of modest means are frequently generous, and may give you their last penny. They also may not be asked very often.

What are your relational networks?
I started with over 300 names, drawing on 4 main networks:
1) My home church, the church I grew up in. Though it was absolutely loaded with home-grown missionaries, it was not tapped out, especially for one of its own.
2) My wife’s former church, the church she grew up in. A smaller church, with people of modest means—and incredibly generous in prayer and support.
3) College friends—They have a great understanding of what we’re doing, and many have given quite generously.
4) Family—don’t assume that unbelieving family and friends won’t give! Try them first!

How many people do I need to contact?
This is rough, guesstimate work and not scientific in any way. Just my experience and informal gathering. People with more experience could provide harder projections here, but here goes:
I would estimate that for $10,000, you need to begin with a list of 100 names.
The yield is greater the more names you add: 200 names will get you between 10 and 30K. 300 names will get you between 30-50k.
I’m talking almost exclusively about individuals—not churches—and people that you have some kind of relational connection to.
Dig up old directories, google people, ask other people to get you current contact info—do whatever you have to do to get in touch with people again.

WHAT Do I Do? WHERE Should I Do It?
What are the ways you will make contact with potential partners? What is your strategy? Will you use snail mail? What will you send them? A one page letter? A pamphlet? A packet? What does your parent organization provide you with? How much does it cost? How much latitude do you have to design or customize your own materials?
Will you email people? Will you call them on the phone? When will you do this?
Will you host cookouts or desserts? Use PowerPoint? Where? Will you try to make appointments to go to their homes and visit 1-on-1? What approach works best for you, and for your potential partners?
These are all questions you should answer as you ask, “How can I best communicate my vision to my support-base?”

WHEN Should I Do This?
The sooner the better! Start now. Start yesterday in fact. The sooner you start, the sooner you will be done and can do what you came to do! Procrastination is your worst enemy.
You will need to set goals for each stage of your plan. If your goal is to raise 100% support in 5 months, chart out your goals and benchmarks for each month.
This means you’ll be able to plan out what you need to do in a given week and even day. If you need to call 200 people over the next 3 months, that means you need to call 16 people/week. If you’re making calls 2 nights a week, that’s 8 people a night. Planning ahead makes a seemingly impossible task manageable.
You’ll need other people to keep you accountable. Of course, you’ll probably have a boss who makes it his/her JOB to ask you how you’re doing. You should also consider being accountable to someone who’s in the same position as you, so that you can encourage, challenge, and empathize with one another. But be accountable—very few of us have the will-power to get through support-raising on our own resources.

You Must Make Time
Have you set aside a set time to raise support? Is it built in to your schedule?
In order to make money, I believe you have to NOT make money, at least for a season. The initial start-up season, you have to treat it as a part-time job with deferred pay. Minimum, 10 hours a week. At least one evening for phone calls. ½ Admin & prep time, ½ people time. That means working one less day at the job, that means sacrificing your social life, that means even pulling out of some church responsibilities, ministries, fellowship. If you don’t, you will never raise the support!
And once the money comes in, you’re not done. There’s always fall-off and attrition. You have to raise up new supporters, and maintain the old ones. You have to set aside time just to do that. A few hours a week, a day a month, whatever you have to do. Don’t just wait until the summer—build it into your regular ministry schedule, into your weekly routine.

You Must Have a Goal
Do you have a handle on how much you need to raise? What’s your number?
You need a number that you are shooting for, and an amount of time. $10k, $20k, $50k, $80k. The old saying—“Aim at nothing, and you’ll hit it”—is true. You should say, “I’m trying to raise this amount in this amount of time.”
There are different schools on whether or not to let your supporters know your number. Personally, I don’t think you have to publicize the number. But you DO want people to come on the journey with you, so tell them the percentages along the way! “This week I reached 25% of my goal!” Some of the most fervent prayers, and the most enthusiastic “reply” emails I ever received, were during my initial support-raising period when all I had to tell people was my latest percentage. But they were on for the ride!
To have a goal…

You Must Have a Budget
Do you have a budget that you stick to and update? Or is your checkbook a jumbled mess of scribbles and old receipts? –Sample Budget worksheet–
This is obvious, but many, many people don’t live by a budget these days. We haven’t been taught very well about financial stewardship. But this issue is important when it comes to raising support. Why should God reward laziness and sloppiness with the blessings He’s given us? Before you ask people for much, make sure that you’re faithful with the little (or much) that God has given you.
When you have a budget, you can set your fiscal goal with confidence.
When you have a budget, you can spend with confidence and without guilt. (It’s common for people who live off of support to feel guilty when they go out to eat or to a movie—this is often alleviated when you’ve already worked out a budget that includes your “entertainment” line item and you’ve presented it to God and some trusted, godly people).
Having a budget keeps you accountable, and it raises trust and confidence when you can tell people, honestly, that you have a handle on your finances.

You Must Ask for Something
James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask!”
I have found it’s important to ask people for 3 things:
1) To pray!
Your first goal is to build a network of prayer supporters. Do you believe that prayer support is the most important kind of support you can receive? It is, because you’ll never hit your financial goal if you don’t have people praying for you. You want as many people praying for you as possible. Make this your first request, and if all they offer is prayer support, thank them! Keep them updated on your ministry. My own prayer network includes well over 200 people. Some never became financial supporters. Some have over time. This has been essential to my ongoing support.

2) To give financially!
Don’t be ashamed or afraid to ask anyone.
You never know who will give to you. One woman I knew faithfully gave us $10/month. Her husband was a heroin addict. I’m pretty sure that she was giving us money that our church’s deacons had given her. At first I was greatly troubled by this. But I learned something incredibly valuable from her: she needed to give to others to remember that we are not mean to be cul-de-sacs of God’s generosity, but conduits. If I had not asked her, I would have robbed her of the grace of giving (2 Cor. 8:7).

I strongly encourage you to ask for REGULAR giving, or a giving of a defined duration. My monthly givers are the ones most likely to have stuck with me. One-time gifts are great, and not to be turned down. But I try to turn my one-timers into regular givers over time, at least annually. Many people just want to see if you’ll “make it” before they commit. If you prove yourself, go back to your one-timers with confidence and ask again!

3) To help me make some connections with others who may be interested!
You may not get anything from somebody, but who do THEY know? One family friend wasn’t able to support me, but they passed on my info to someone I did not know, who ended up becoming one of my biggest givers. This is where you’re really asking people to partner with you, by helping you expand your network.

You Have to Help People Give Regularly
You know from experience that people are strangling on the volume of snail mail and email that we receive every day. If you want people to give regularly, you’re going to have to help them. Spoon-feed them, in fact. This is worth the effort, since recurring givers are the best givers, and the best pray-ers. So help them to give regularly. If your ministry doesn’t do this already, you should absolutely make up a one-page thank you note, with a tear-off slip and SASE for the next month’s gift. I’ve found this to be extremely effective in retaining my supporters.
Remember Netflix’s secret of success: It’s not that they have movies that no one else has; it’s that they make the process so dang easy! So make it easy for your givers to give to you!

WHY Am I Doing This?
If you can’t answer this question, no one else will, either. Formulating and learning to articulate the compelling reasons for your ministry is the single most important piece of this puzzle. Do research. Do you know how many college students are on your campus or in your city? How many are Christian? How many ministries are there, if any? Cast the vision for the need your ministry will meet, and what you hope things will look like as you meet that need. What is the difference you hope to make? Can you say in 30 seconds or less why people should support you? Because you’ll need to, over and over again, for the next few months.

II. Some Spiritual Lessons
Count the Cost!
This is not for the faint of heart. Jesus talked about this in Luke 14:25-33. What is true about discipleship in general is true about this aspect of following Jesus. Know what you’re getting into. Don’t be naïve. It might be easy; it probably won’t be. Take a sober assessment of your abilities, your level of faith, your willingness to sacrifice and go without certain things—especially entertainment.
Expect this to probably be the most difficult thing you have ever done. Expect it to stretch your faith in places you didn’t know existed. Expect it to build your faith in ways you never thought possible. Expect that you will never be the same, and that is part of God’s intent for you in this. Stretched objects don’t return to their original shape. And in this case, that’s good!

Presume only upon God’s provision of what you need.
Now you (typically suburban, generally affluent, never in serious need people) have to really take Jesus at his Word, maybe for the first time.
You will pray “Give us this day our daily bread” with new fervor and meaning.
You will hear Jesus commanding us to not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, your body (health insurance?), what you will wear, even tomorrow, in Matt. 6:25-34 and you will realize that’s hard! You will hear Paul commanding us to not be anxious about anything in Phil. 4:6 and think, “he can’t be serious!”
It’s very possible that God will seek to teach you the difference between what you want and what you need. If this sounds like a lesson your parents taught you when you were six, just remember that as our Father, God disciplines those he loves!

Does this mean I have to take a vow of poverty?
No! People give so that you don’t go into poverty! Proverbs 30:8-9 says it well:
Give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, `Who is the LORD?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.

This is a great prayer to pray for support-raisers. But it does mean you must be a good steward of all the resources God gives you. If you are being a good steward, you’ll be able to eat out or go to the movie with a clean conscience. Just remember, whatever isn’t of faith is sin. Regularly thank God, and thank your supporters, for the good gifts you receive.

This is all about faith. This is all about hard work.
Actually, it’s both, and these things are held tightly together! Support Raising is a great microcosm of the Christian life, of the “Gospel mystery of sanctification,” described in Philippians 2:12-13:
12 Therefore, my dear friends…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
And also in 1 Corinthians 15:10:
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them–yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
Passivity in support-raising that just expects God to “do” it all does not come from faith. Faith will encourage us to pick up that phone, to go ask that person for money, to learn how to use an excel spreadsheet. Faith empowers us to work hard.

This is a battle. Fight with the weapons God gives you.
Expect that you will need to fight this battle with the means of grace, and with your armor of God on. Take up, in particular, the Shield of Faith and the Sword of the Spirit, which is Scripture.
You must pray! My wife and I never prayed as much as we did when we started raising support. We were told it couldn’t be done—and that made us pray all the more! We prayed before each meeting, each dessert, each presentation, each night of phone calls. We prayed frequently. We prayed hard. We prayed for faith, boldness, courage, open doors. It is prayer that moves the mountains. You will get nowhere fast if you are not praying.
Your prayers need to claim the promises of God in Scripture. Memorize some encouraging, truth-preaching Scriptures like the ones above or these:
• And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19
• And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
2 Corinthians 9:8

III. Resources
There are many good resources out there, and this article is indebted to many of them. These books are just a sample of what’s out there.
• Getting Sent: A Relational Approach to Support Raising, Pete Sommer. IVP, 1999.
• Funding Your Ministry (Whether You’re Gifted or Not!), Scott Morton. Dawson, 1999.
• People Raising: A Practical Guide to Raising Support, William P. Dillon. Moody, 1993.
• Don’t forget people who have done it before!

IV. Endnote
If much of this seems common sense, it’s because it is!
That should be encouraging to you. Support-Raising is not just for the realm of all-stars. Support Raising is a faith journey for ordinary people, trusting God and working hard by the grace God has given, is giving, and will give to us!