This past summer my wife and I spent in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado doing mission work through an organization called A Christian Ministry in the National Park, (I know a mouthful!), ACMNP for short. Through leading bible studies, worship services and even preaching I learned A LOT this last summer, and it would NOT have been possible without a successful fundraising campaign.
The Intent of this blog post is to provide insight on best practices for raising money for missions based from my own experience and additional ideas that I have.
Sharing Your Story
For me, I utilized my Church from my hometown of Richmond, IN. My pastor allowed me to speak about my opportunity to minister in the national park in front of the congregation, which was extremely useful in getting the word out about the need. I emphasized the need in the national parks, as well as the story that God was weaving for my life. I have found that when you believe in something that you are doing and are passionate about it, people connect with your vision and are more willing to come alongside you.
Write Letters
I wrote handwritten letters to each member of the Church that I was close with. Handwritten letters are tedious and time consuming (trust me I KNOW), but it allowed me to personalize the messages. I firmly believe that the personal touch of hand written letters showed the donors how important their support was to me, and that each potential donor mattered enough to me to put the time into their letter.
Giving an Update(s)
Anyone that invests money into ministry wants to get an update. If I invest in something I want to know that it made some type of impact.
For my project I decided to type out letters and send them to my donors. This was definitely a step down from a handwritten letter, but because the update was the same the time saved was well worth it.
The best alternative method of giving updates is email. Depending on the amount of donors you have, you may want to use a service like Mail Chimp. Mail Chimp is great because it allows you to schedule emails in advance.
You should definitely give your donors at LEAST one update, (especially if it was a summer project), but it would be ideal to have two or three.
BoweryJE22
Another way to update and allow for some communication is creating a small website. I will be going to Ecuador with the men’s soccer team this summer, which is a trip that Coach Dreves does every 4 years. The last time the team went, my older brother was on the team and they created a website that allowed all the players to post about what they were doing and they sent the link out to all of the donors and families so they could keep track. It isn’t as personal as hand letters but it allowed the donors to see what everyone on the trip was doing and more information could be exchanged since it could be updated multiple times a day by various people.