Every year I get about 200 inquiries from ministries and Gathering participants asking to talk about the possibility of their organization or their favorite ministry making a presentation at The Gathering.  While The Gathering is not a grant making foundation it does have one asset that is valuable to ministry leaders: exposure to present and potential funders.  The opportunity to be visible with those who attend the annual conference is a rare one and I understand that.  As well if a ministry is doing it’s development job right ” it will have Gathering participants asking me and the program committee to invite them to speak – whether it is a general session or a class breakout.

So” just as grantmakers provide ministries with guidelines for making requests ” I thought it might be helpful to give some guidelines about what we consider when deciding who speaks.

1.      Does the person have any understanding of the mission and core values of The Gathering?  Many times I get calls from people who have never been to the website or talked with anyone about our purpose. They have heard this is a conference of wealthy people and that is enough information.

2.      Does the person have an interest in the people of The Gathering primarily as an audience for their presentation or do they start with the interests of the participants. How does my cause or ministry align with the interests of the audience?  This may be an issue or cause that is either too new or not relevant to enough people at the moment to generate an interest.

3.      Do they have something unique to say to The Gathering that will increase their learning about the issues or are they simply another ministry working in a field that is already full of duplicate ministries?  It doesn’t mean they are not a good ministry but it may be hard to distinguish their work from that of others.

4.      Are they good communicators?  Do they have evidence of their ability to connect with people or are they so dependent on powerpoint and visuals that their message is about technology and graphics instead of their calling to the work.

5.      Are they recognized by others as doing good work that can be substantiated or are they very good at presenting and not so good at getting results?

6.      Finally” is this the right time to bring them to The Gathering?  We never have a theme or a slogan for the year.  It’s more like cooking a stew than anything else.  That’s probably the hardest element to describe because everyone feels (or should) that people in The Gathering need to hear this message right now.