Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

The letters and phone calls just keep coming in.

I received five donation requests yesterday: four fundraising letters and one awkward phone call with a college-age volunteer. The majority of these are from organizations I currently donate to, have donated to in the past, or whose mission I support in other ways. I’m their prime target, in other words, and though we’re just two weeks into November I’m beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed.

All of this has led to a predictable result: I’ve stopped reading the majority of these letters and am now ignoring phone calls from area codes I don’t recognize. (On my personal phone, anyway.) From each weekly batch, I save maybe one or two letters for a Saturday in early December when I’ll sort through the pile of such requests. Only then will I sit at the kitchen table, letter opener in-hand, and think through what I can honestly give to the organizations I care about most.

Of course, a part of me gets it. ‘Tis the season, after all, for giving thanks and celebrating the birth of meaning, hope and joy in the world. For many faithful Episcopalians, this means giving in return. In this vein, a fundraising appeal can be a kind of gift; letters can arrive at just the moment when we are searching for ways to express our deepest held values.

But on most days, these letters feel like junk mail.

Episcopal congregations are by no means excluded from all this. In the democracy of the mailbox, the annual appeal letter and pledge card shows up side-by-side with requests from other nonprofit institutions, including giants like Heifer International and the United Way. And when it comes to actually writing checks, Episcopalians have tended to give approximately the same percentage to their congregations as the average U.S. household gives to nonprofit institutions overall - approximately 2 percent. This suggests that while Episcopalians tend to be more generous than the average U.S. household (Episcopalians are presumably donating 2 percent to their church while making additional contributions to other organizations), there’s room to encourage deeper giving. But this will require different approaches.

A June summit called Growing Philanthropy in the United States addressed this need for different approaches and has made 32 recommendations for nonprofit organizations and the philanthropy field to consider. While some recommendations are specific to professional fundraisers, I believe the following few may be of particular interest to Episcopal congregations: We're More Than ATMs
To the credit of the church, it appears the nonprofit world is only now catching up to what leaders in faithful stewardship have been saying for years: it can’t just be about money. “[Donors] want to be seen as partners in a cause and are increasingly looking for more meaningful ways of expressing their support than merely offering money. Organizations therefore need to develop a more holistic perspective on the relationships they have with their supporters and break down the traditional organizational silos between fundraising, campaigning, and volunteering.” How might your annual stewardship campaign be as much about gifts of time and talent as your annual budget? How can you partner with contributing members in envisioning the future of your congregation?

Tell Us Why
The report points out that nonprofit organizations - churches included - can become overly fascinated with the terminology of campaigns. Whether you’re planning membership drives, annual stewardship campaigns, capital campaigns, planned giving opportunities, etc., keep in mind that “it is not the vehicle that matters to donors; it’s the difference they can make.” Is your stewardship committee clearly and repeatedly saying why an annual appeal matters to your church? Developing a narrative budget goes a long way toward helping to get to the why.

A Shared Back Office
This is perhaps the most refreshing recommendation in the report. Noting that many nonprofits are extremely small - one or two person operations - “it was suggested that groups of nonprofits in a given community share fundraising expertise with the creation of one central back office facility.” Would this also work for churches? As someone who serves on two development committees of small Episcopal organizations, I’m interested in asking this question at our next development meetings. It’s presently impossible for either of these organizations to hire even a part-time development director, but would a willingness to partner change this equation?

Get the Vestry On-Board
While vestries and boards of nonprofits are different in many ways, they appear to be similar in at least one respect: many board and vestry members do not understand what fundraising is and what it entails. “Boards lack both an understanding of the process and their own role within it.” If the only thing your vestry knows about fundraising is that it needs to happen each year and that they themselves should probably write a check, it’s time to make a more deliberate effort to educate and empower vestry members about fundraising and their own role in it.

Other suggestions included engaging young people in giving, encouraging asset based giving and making it easy to make bequests. What do you think about these recommendations and what else would you suggest?